It was not easy under the circumstances to tell the colour of her skin,
but she had fine large Juno eyes, and her mouth was unmistakably
good-humoured, as she smiled when returning my salutation. Her husband
sat on the clay floor against the wall, his bare feet stretched straight
out before him, while across his lap lay an immense surcingle, twenty
inches broad at least, of a pure white, untanned hide; and on it he
was laboriously working a design representing an ostrich hunt, with
threads of black skin. He was a short, broad-shouldered man with
reddish-grey hair, stiff, bristly whiskers and moustache of the same
hue, sharp blue eyes, and a nose decidedly upturned.
He wore a red cotton handkerchief tied on his head, a blue check shirt,
and a shawl wound round his body in place of the _chiripa_ usually
worn by native peasants. He jerked out his _"Buen dia"_ to me in
a short, quick, barking voice, and invited me to sit down.
"Cold water is bad for the constitution at this hour," he said. "We
will drink _mate."_
There was such a rough, burr-like sound in his speech that I at once
concluded he was a foreigner, or hailed from some Oriental district
corresponding to our Durham or Northumberland.
"Thank you," I said, "a _mate_ is always welcome. I am an Oriental
in that respect if in nothing else." For I wished everyone I met to
know that I was not a native.
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