Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/151



NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS. 121

the " addition ;" still the pay is safe^ and the hotel-keeper is sure to keep a good room ready for Camp.

Here and there you see, as they lean against a wall because too lazy to stand upright, a few creechurs in long hair and the ridiculous chiripa or poncho â€” don^t say " puncho^' â€” turned into a kilt. Local colour, however, is on the wane, and the costume is not so barbarous as that of the milkwoman or the billycock hat and smockfrock wearer in the streets of London. Some Englishmen, doomed to the outer districts, affect it because good for riding ; they are looked upon by the true Gaucho as " Compadritos,^^ or proselytes of the gate. The wild native shows far better lounging on horseback than on foot. Here the equine is the only comfortable locomotion, and strangers wonder how the animals keep their footing as they gallop down the slippery hill-pavement. The beasts, hobbled with " maneas,^^ as the law, under pain of line, directs, stand champing before the doors, or hop on and off the pavement, or attempt to gambade down the street ; they are said not to kick, and if you believe it you will be kicked. The advanced native looks forward to the day when never a saddled quadruped will be seen in the streets, even as the Brazilian sighs for the disappearance of the slave and the " burro." Mean- while, the baker's boy, known by his leather-covered pannier, rides, so do the milk and the waterman with his tin cans, so does the washerwoman with her bundles.

At each corner of the Montevidean street there is usually a post, formerly represented by a gun, whose open mouth was fall of rain, cigar-ends, and pebbles. These weapons have been mostly sold to Marshal-President Lopez. Here porters gather, lottery boys tempt you, and Basques jabber guttural discordance. Of the few native gentry met in the streets, most have some anecdote appended to them. An Arab poet sings : â€”