Evidently the father is the
white-skinned, golden-haired one, I thought. When the girl's brother
came in, by and by, he unsaddled my horse and led him away to pasture;
this boy was also dark, darker even than his mother.
The simple spontaneous kindness with which these people treated me had
a flavour about it the like of which I have seldom experienced
elsewhere. It was not the common hospitality usually shown to a
stranger, but a natural, unstrained kindness, such as they might be
expected to show to a beloved brother or son who had gone out from
them in the morning and was now returned.
By and by the girl's father came in, and I was extremely surprised to
find him a small, wrinkled, dark specimen, with jet-black, bead-like
eyes and podgy nose, showing plainly enough that he had more than a
dash of aboriginal Charrua blood in his veins. This upset my theory
about the girl's fair skin and blue eyes; the little dark man was,
however, quite as sweet-tempered as the others, for he came in, sat
down, and joined in the conversation, just as if I had been one of the
family whom he had expected to find there. While I talked to these
good people on simple pastoral matters, all the wickedness of
Orientals--the throat-cutting war of Whites and Reds, and the
unspeakable cruelties of the ten years' siege--were quite forgotten.
I wished that I had been born amongst them and was one of them, not
a weary, wandering Englishman, overburdened with the arms and armour
of civilisation, and staggering along, like Atlas, with the weight of
a kingdom on which the sun never sets on his shoulders.
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