Far Away and Long Ago | Page 9

The incidents and impressions recorded in the preceding chapter relate,
as I have said, to the last year or two of my five years of life in the
place of my birth. Further back my memory refuses to take me. Some
wonderful persons go back to their second or even their first year; I
can't, and could only tell from hearsay what I was and did up to the age
of three. According to all accounts, the clouds of glory I brought into
the world--a habit of smiling at everything I looked at and at every
person that approached me--ceased to be visibly trailed at about that
age; I only remember myself as a common little boy--just a little wild
animal running about on its hind legs, amazingly interested in the world
in which it found itself.
Here, then, I begin, aged five, at an early hour on a bright, cold
morning in June--midwinter in that southern country of great plains or
pampas; impatiently waiting for the loading and harnessing to be
finished; then the being lifted to the top with the other little ones --at
that time we were five; finally, the grand moment when the start was
actually made with cries and much noise of stamping and snorting of
horses and rattling of chains. I remember a good deal of that long
journey, which began at sunrise and ended between the lights some
time after sunset; for it was my very first, and I was going out into the
unknown. I remember how, at the foot of the slope at the top of which

the old home stood, we plunged into the river, and there was more
noise and shouting and excitement until the straining animals brought
us safely out on the other side. Gazing back, the low roof of the house
was lost to view before long, but the trees--the row of twenty- five
giant ombu-trees which gave the place its name--were visible, blue in
the distance, until we were many miles on our way.
The undulating country had been left behind; before us and on both
sides the land, far as one could see, was absolutely flat, everywhere
green with the winter grass, but flowerless at that season, and with the
gleam of water, over the whole expanse. It had been a season of great
rains, and much of the flat country had been turned into shallow lakes.
That was all there was to see, except the herds of cattle and horses and
an occasional horseman galloping over the plain, and the sight at long
distances of a grove or small plantation of trees, marking the site of an
estancia, or sheep and cattle farm, these groves appearing like islands
on the sea-like flat country. At length this monotonous landscape faded
and vanished quite away, and the lowing of cattle and tremulous
bleating of sheep died out of hearing, so that the last leagues were a
blank to me, and I only came back to my senses when it was dark and
they lifted me down, so stiff with cold and drowsy that I could hardly
stand on my feet.
Next morning I found myself in a new and strange world. The house to
my childish eyes appeared of vast size: it consisted of a long range of
rooms on the ground, built of brick, with brick floors and roof thatched
with rushes. The rooms at one end, fronting the road, formed a store,
where the people of the surrounding country came to buy and sell, and
what they brought to sell was "the produce of the country"-- hides and
wool and tallow in bladders, horsehair in sacks, and native cheeses. In
return they could purchase anything they wanted-knives, spurs, rings
for horse-gear, clothing, yerba mate and sugar; tobacco, castor-oil, salt
and pepper, and oil and vinegar, and such furniture as they
required--iron pots, spits for roasting, cane-chairs, and coffins. A little
distance from the house were the kitchen, bakery, dairy, huge barns for
storing the produce, and wood-piles big as houses, the wood being
nothing but stalks of the cardoon thistle or wild artichoke, which burns
like paper, so that immense quantities had to be collected to supply fuel
for a large establishment.

Two of the smallest of us were handed over to the care of a sharp little
native boy, aged about nine or ten years, who was told to take us out of
the way and keep us amused. The first place he took us to was the great
barn, the door of which stood open; it was nearly empty just then, and
was the biggest interior I had ever seen; how big it really was I don't
know, but it seemed to me about as big as Olympia or the Agricultural
Hall, or