Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/313



A WEEK AT CORRIENTES. 283

places, must bury themselves up to their noses in the folds of their ponchos.

A day at Corrientes, when the novelty wears off, is not lively. The people rise early, eat oranges, and suck mate. They breakfast or dine at 11 to 12 a.m., as in Egypt, Syria, and the Andine provinces generally ; and they dine or sup at 8 to 9 p.m. Office hours are between 5 to 10 A.M. and 4 to 7 p.m. The siesta is of course universal. Half the day is spent in sleep, and the " balance " in eating, drinking, and smoking home-made cigars, which the fair ones roll up, preferring the femoral muscles to the unelastic wood-slab. We also rise betimes, but when it is fine we walk. We feed at the Cafe Restaurant de la Paz, Calle de la Independencia, where an itinerant band also re- freshes itself. The Carte du Jour, lithographed in Buenos Aires, a reminder of the days when money was coined at Corrientes, offers the usual allowance of potages, entrees rotis, legumes, and desserts.

After breakfast we say, Flanons ! On Sundays there is the sortie de TEglise, where youth and beauty runs the gauntlet between two rows of men. The "lady^^ walks to church leading, in sign of dignity, an Indian-file of half a dozen servants, or rather slave girls. They carry her prayer-book and the rug which is to be spread upon the nave floor. Poorly treated, and purposely kept in profound ignorance, they must stand before their owners in the abject position of crossed arms. A redskin boy may still be here bought for $80 or $100; and the many foreigners, especially the Basques, set in this point the worst example.

Pretty faces are not rare. At a large ball lately given the amount of beauty which cropped out from the far inte- rior surprised all the strangers. The " upper ten" appeared in a variety of Parisian toilette ; hence one remarked that "even Buenos Aires looms out in the distance as a beacon