Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/210



180 A GLANCE AT BUENOS AIRES.

amidst a community of assassins â€” bandits in the country and murderers in the city. An ^^ accident^-' takes place every day, it is no man^s business ; the policeman, smoking his cigarette, calmly surveys the corpse, and hardly turns his head to see the fugitive felon^s back. In this matter of life-taking the foreigners are bad, the natives are worse ; you must not think it always positive bloodthirstiness, it is rather an utter disregard for human existence. A popular story is told of a friendly Gaucho who cut a friend's throat in order to cure the "pobrecito^^ of headache. Accustomed from babyhood to wear and to use his knife, he draws it when he pleases, and not unfrequently for the fun of a little murder. The only life religiously respected is that of the non-political criminal ; to hang him would be bad taste, brutality, barbarism, and it would be worse taste still to flog him. His proper punishment, no matter how brutal his crime, is ten months of prison, after which common decency allows him to escape. Perhaps he is sent to some distant Presidio or frontier garrison ; here his residence is ad libitum, and he can always join the Montonera or Gaucho bandits (the Kaum, ^^j, of the Arabs), or ride with the wild " Indian'^ raiders. A permanent gallows in the out- skirts of the city would do a power of good to Buenos Aires. And yet, you know, I would abolish in civilized countries capital punishment.

The fact is, since Dictator Rosas, then the only mur- derer, fell before the foreign idea which he had outraged, every man has been his own Rosas. Therefore would many, especially foreigners, hail with pleasure his return ; this re- version to the " good old times" is, however, of course im- possible. But of that peculiar personage, who disappointed Mr. Darwin, some good is to be said. True he had his '^ saladero," his human shambles ; he put to death a priest and a nun for incontinence ; he murdered an English