Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/227



VISIT TO GENERAL UllQUIZA. 197

of the meat â€” even as freshly caught salmon is exceptionally fishy and new-laid eggs are remarkably eggy â€” form the main of its merits. The eupeptic African chooses for you, when hospitably disposed, the veteran rooster of the poultry yard, the venerablest patriarch of the goats : that takes long to masticate ; this has the highest haut gout. The Asado is the nearest approach to the raw beef of Abyssinia, and you may eat it in the self-same style with your snick-and-snee shaving your nose tip. It should be washed down with a cow^s horn full of muddy water. I know only one thing worse than the Asado, and that is the Matambre, whose relation is that of garlic to onion. But it is the fashion to speak succulently of the Asa^o. " St. Antonio himself could not have resisted the temptation of an Asa^o/^ says a tra- veller who makes his attendant address him â€” " Oh! Don Enriquez, query el Cafife V (Pix)h pudor!) Sir Francis Head tells us that Asa^o and Yerba, the most " lasting" of diet, enabled him to ride liO miles a day, and readily to recover from heavy falls ; also that the Gauchos can select tender bits from meat that no Englishman could manage. It is the fashion to eat game that taints and cheese that walks : it is now the fashion to carry the " polisson" outside, to wear Hessians, and to display the tassels. Basta!

We bargain down, or rather Dr. Gibbiugs bargains down, a carriage to three dollars Bolivian (each 3^. 3i/.), say half a sovereign per head. Coachman, a berry -brown boy about twelve years old, who answers to " Amiguito,"' sturdily handles the ribbons of the quadriga, the four mules or horses being all abreast. Galloping over the springy turf, not the mud called a road, we change nags at the frontier of D. Justo's little estate. We visit a Gaucho's ranch to take mate and notes ; and we shake hands with his wife, a middle-aged body whose prehensile member feels â€” the com- parison belongs to the lively Mr. Power â€” like a half-alive