It is his wish, and the priest's duty, to keep them in this darkness.
Yet, - One came from God, "a light to lighten the Gentiles," and He
said, "I am the Light of the world." Some day they may hear of Him
and themselves see the Light.
Already the day is breaking, and superstition must prepare to hide
itself. The uneducated native no longer pursues the railway train at
thundering pace to lasso it because the priest raved against its
being built. He even in some cases doubts if it is "an invention of
hell," as he was taught.
The educated native, Alberdi, a publicist and an advocate of freedom,
in the discussion over religious rights of foreigners in the
Argentine, wrote: "Spanish America reduced to Catholicism, with the
exclusion of any other cult, represents a solitary and silent convent
of monks. The dilemma is fatal, - either Catholics and unpopulated, or
populated and prosperous and tolerant in the matter of religion."
CHAPTER IV.
TEE PRAIRIE AND ITS INHABITANTS.
The Pampas, or prairie lands of the Argentine, stretch to the south
and west of Buenos Ayres, and cover some 800,000 square miles. On
this vast level plain, watered by sluggish streams or shallow lakes,
boundless as the ocean, seemingly limitless in extent, there is an
exhilarating air and a rich herbage on which browse countless herds
of cattle, horses, and flocks of sheep. The grass grows tall, and
miles upon miles of rich scarlet, white, or yellow flowers mingle
with or overtop it. Beds of thistles, in which the cattle completely
hide themselves, stretch away for leagues and leagues, and present an
almost unbroken sheet of purple flowers. So vast are these thistle-
beds that a day's ride through them only leaves the traveller with
the same purple forest stretching away to the horizon. The florist
would be enchanted to see whole tracts of land covered by the
Verbena Melindres, which appears, even long before you reach it, to
be of a bright scarlet. There are also acres and acres of the many-
flowered camomile and numberless other plants; while large tracts of
low-lying land are covered with coarse pampa grass, affording shelter
for numberless deer, and many varieties of ducks, cranes, flamingoes,
swans and turkeys. Wood there is none, with the exception of a
solitary tree here and there at great distances, generally marking
the site of some cattle establishment OP estancia. An ombu, or
cluster of blue gums, is certain to be planted there.
On this prairie, man, notwithstanding the fact that he is the "lord
of creation," is decidedly in the minority. Millions of four-footed
animals roam the plains, but he may be counted by hundreds. Let us
turn to him, however, in his isolated home, for the Gaucho has been
described as one of the most interesting races on the face of the
earth. A descendant of the old conquerors, who, leaving their fair
ones in the Spanish peninsula, took unto them as wives the unclothed
women of the new world, he inherits the color and habits of the one
with the vices and dignity of the other.
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