Joaquim Miller’s lines “For those who fail,” the advertisement for my fox-terrier Jack, the “condemndest little buffler” the Texans called him, couched in the choicest of Castilian, and setting forth his attributes, colour and name, and offering five dollars to any one who would apprehend and take him to the Callejon del Espiritu Santo, Mexico, curious and striking outsides of match-boxes, one entire series illustrating the “Promessi Sposi”; of scraps, detailing news of Indian caciques long since dead, a lottery-ticket of the State of Louisiana, passes on “busted” railways, and the like, is this same coffee-coloured card.

I cannot remember that I was a great dealer at the emporium, the glories of which the card sets forth, except for cigarettes and “Rapadura”; that is, raw sugar in a little cake done up in maize-leaves, matches, and an occasional glass of white Brazilian rum.

Still during two long months the place stood to me in lieu of club, and in it I used to meet occasional German “Fazenderos,” merchants from Surucaba, and officers on the march from San Paulo to Rio Grande; and there I used to lounge, waiting for customers to buy a “Caballada” of some hundred horses, which a friend and I had p. 5brought with infinite labour from the plains of Uruguay. Thinking upon the strange and curious types I used to meet, clad for the most part in loose black Turkish trousers, broad-brimmed felt hats kept in their place by a tasselled string beneath the chin, in real or sham vicuña ponchos, high patent-leather boots, sewn in patterns with red thread; upon the horses with silver saddles and reins, securely tied to posts outside the door, and on the ceaseless rattle of spurs upon the bare brick floors which made a sort of obligato accompaniment to the monotonous music of the guitar, full twenty years fall back.

p. 5

Yet still the flat-roofed town, capital of the district in Rio Grande known as Encima de la Sierra, the stopping-place for the great droves of mules which from the Banda Oriental and Entre Rios are driven to the annual fair at Surucaba; the stodgy Brazilian countrymen so different from the Gauchos of the River Plate; the negroes at that time slaves; the curious vegetation, and the feeling of being cut off from all the world, are fresh as yesterday.

Had but the venture turned out well, no doubt I had forgotten it, but to have worked for four long months driving the horses all the day through country quite unknown to me, sitting the most part of each night upon my horse on guard, or riding slowly round and round the 

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