Chapter III: Part 3

One day we returned to the camp at about two. I was rather hot and tired, so I made a cup of tea and sat under the trees and smoked my pipe until almost four. Then I picked up my rifle and went out by myself to look for sheep. I climbed to the top of a great crater hill and sat down to look around with my field-glasses. Hearing a stone move behind, I turned very slowly around. About a hundred and fifty yards off, on the rim of the crater, stood six sheep, two of them fine rams. Very slowly I put down the field-glasses and raised my rifle, and I killed the finer of the rams. It was getting dark, so, without bestowing more than a passing look upon him, I struck off for camp at a round pace. Now the Mexicans, although good enough in the saddle, were no walkers, and so Dominguez saddled a horse, put a pack-saddle on a mule, and followed me back to where the sheep lay. We left the animals at the foot of the hill, and although it was not a particularly hard climb up to the sheep, the Mexican was blown and weary by the time we reached it. The ram was a good one. His horns measured sixteen and three-fourths inches around the base and were thirty-five inches long, so they were larger in circumference though shorter than my first specimen. He was very thin, however, and his hair was falling out, so that one could pull it out in handfuls. All the sheep that I saw in this country seemed thin and in poor shape, while those near Tinah’alta were in very fair condition. The extreme dryness and scarcity of grass doubtless in part accounted for this, although the country in which I got my first two sheep was in no sense green. Making our way back to camp through the lava-fields and across the numerous gullies was a difficult task. The horses got along much better than I should have supposed; indeed, they didn’t seem to find as much difficulty as I did. Dominguez muttered that if the road past Tule was the Camino del Diablo, this certainly was the Camino del Infierno! When we reached camp my clothes were as wet as if I had been in swimming. I set right to work on the headskin, but it was eleven o’clock before I had finished it; that meant but four hours’ sleep for me, and I felt somewhat melancholy about it. Indeed, on this trip, the thing that I chiefly felt was the need of sleep, for it was always necessary to make a very early start, and it was generally after sunset before I got back to camp.

The Mexicans spoke about as much English as I spoke Spanish, which was very little, and as they showed no signs of learning, I set to work to learn some Spanish. At first our conversation was very limited, but I soon got so that I could understand them pretty well. We occasionally tried to tell each other stories but became so confused that we would have to call it off. Dominguez had one English expression which he would pronounce with great pride and emphasis on all appropriate or inappropriate occasions; it was “You betcher!” Once he and I had some discussion as to what day it was and I appealed to Casares. “Ah, quien sabe, quien sabe?” (who knows, who knows?) was his reply; he said that he never knew what day it was and got on very comfortably without knowing--a point of view which gave one quite a restful feeling. They christened our water-hole Tinaja del Bévora, which means the tank of the rattlesnake. They so named it because of the advent in camp one night of a rattler. It escaped and got in a small lava-cave, from out of which the men tried long and unsuccessfully to smoke it.

At the place where we were camped our arroyo had tunnelled its way along the side of a hill; so that, from its bed, one bank was about ten feet high and the other nearer fifty. In the rocky wall of this latter side there were many caves. One, in particular, would have furnished good sleeping quarters for wet weather. It was about twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet deep, and it varied in height from four to six feet. The signs showed that for generations it had been a favorite abode of sheep; coyotes had also lived in it, and in the back there was a big pack-rat’s nest. Pieces of the bisnaga cactus, with long, cruel spikes, formed a prominent part of the nest.

After I had hunted for antelope in every direction from camp, and within as large a radius as I could manage, I was forced to admit the hopelessness of the task. The water-supply was getting low, but I determined to put in another good long day with the sheep before turning back. Accordingly, early one morning, I left the two Mexicans in camp to rest and set off for the mountains on foot. I headed for the main peak of Pinacate. It was not long before I got in among the foot-hills. I kept down along the ravines, for it was very early, and as a rule the sheep didn’t begin to go up the hills from their night’s feeding until nine or ten o’clock; at this place, also, they almost always spent the noon hours in caves. There were many little chipmunks running along with their tails arched forward over their backs, which gave them rather a comical look. At length I saw a sheep; he was well up the side of a large hill, an old crater, as were many of these mountains. I made off after him and found there were steep ravines to be reckoned with before I even reached the base of the hill. The sides of the crater were covered with choyas, and the footing on the loose lava was so uncertain that I said to myself, “I wonder how long it will be before you fall into one of these choyas,” and only a few minutes later I was gingerly picking choya burrs off my arms, which had come off worst in the fall. The points of the spikes are barbed and are by no means easy to pull out. I stopped many times to wait for my courage to rise sufficiently to start to work again, and by the time I had got myself free I was so angry that I felt like devoting the rest of my day to waging a war of retaliation upon the cactus. The pain from the places from which I had pulled out the spikes lasted for about half an hour after I was free of them, and later, at Yuma, I had to have some of the spines that I had broken off in my flesh cut out.

An hour or so later I came across a very fine bisnaga, or “niggerhead,” cactus. I was feeling very thirsty, and, wishing to save my canteen as long as possible, I decided to cut the bisnaga open and eat some of its pulp, for this cactus always contains a good supply of sweetish water. As I was busy trying to remove the long spikes, I heard a rock fall, and looking round saw a sheep walking along the opposite side of the gully, and not more than four hundred yards away. He was travelling slowly and had not seen me, so I hastily made for a little ridge toward which he was heading. I reached some rocks near the top of the ridge in safety and crouched behind them. I soon saw that he was only a two-year-old, and when he was two hundred yards off I stood up to have a good look at him. When he saw me, instead of immediately making off, he stood and gazed at me. I slowly sat down and his curiosity quite overcame him. He proceeded to stalk me in a most scientific manner, taking due advantage of choyas and rocks; and cautiously poking his head out from behind them to stare at me. He finally got to within fifty feet of me, but suddenly, and for no apparent reason, he took fright and made off. He did not go far, and, from a distance of perhaps five hundred yards, watched me as I resumed operations on the cactus.

Not long after this, as I was standing on the top of a hill, I made out two sheep, half hidden in a draw. There was a great difference in the size of their horns, and, in the hasty glance I got of them, one seemed to me to be big enough to warrant shooting. I did not discover my mistake until I had brought down my game. He was but a two-year-old, and, although I should have been glad of a good specimen for the museum, his hide was in such poor condition that it was quite useless. However, I took his head and some meat and headed back for camp. My camera, water-bottle, and field-glasses were already slung over my shoulder, and the three hours’ tramp back to camp, in the very hottest part of the day, was tiring; and I didn’t feel safe in finishing my canteen until I could see camp.

The next day we collected as much galleta-grass as we could for the horses, and, having watered them well, an operation which practically finished our pool, we set out for Tule at a little after three. As soon as the Mexicans got a little saddle-stiff they would stand up in one stirrup, crooking the other knee over the saddle, and keeping the free heel busy at the horses’ ribs. The result was twofold: the first and most obvious being a sore back for the horses, and the second being that the horses became so accustomed to a continual tattoo to encourage them to improve their pace, that, with a rider unaccustomed to that method, they lagged most annoyingly. The ride back to Tule was as uneventful as it was lovely.

On the next day’s march, from Tule toward Win’s tank, I saw the only Gila monster--the sluggish, poisonous lizard of the southwestern deserts--that I came across throughout the trip. He was crossing the trail in leisurely fashion and darted his tongue out angrily as I stopped to admire him. Utting told me of an interesting encounter he once saw between a Gila monster and a rattlesnake. He put the two in a large box; they were in opposite corners, but presently the Gila monster started slowly and sedately toward the rattler’s side of the box. He paid absolutely no attention to the snake, who coiled himself up and rattled angrily. When the lizard got near enough, the rattler struck out two or three times, each time burying his fangs in the Gila monster’s body; the latter showed not the slightest concern, and, though Utting waited expectantly for him to die, he apparently suffered no ill effects whatever from the encounter. He showed neither anger nor pain; he simply did not worry himself about the rattler at all.

We reached Wellton at about nine in the evening of the second day from Pinacate. We had eaten all our food, and our pack-animals were practically without loads; so we had made ninety miles in about fifty-five hours. Dominguez had suffered from the heat on the way back, and at Win’s tank, which was inaccessible to the horses, I had been obliged myself to pack all the water out to the animals. At Wellton I parted company with the Mexicans, with the regret one always feels at leaving the comrades of a hunting trip that has proved both interesting and successful.

IV

After Moose in New Brunswick

IV

AFTER MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK

It was early in September when the four of us--Clarke, Jamieson, Thompson, and myself--landed at Bathurst, on Chaleur Bay, and took the little railroad which runs twenty miles up the Nepisiquit River to some iron-mines. From that point we expected to pole up the river about forty miles farther and then begin our hunting.

For the four hunters--“sports” was what the guides called us--there were six guides. Three of them bore the name Venneau; there were Bill Grey and his son Willie, and the sixth was Wirre (pronounced Warry) Chamberlain. Among themselves the guides spoke French--or a corruption of French--which was hard to understand and which has come down from generation to generation without ever getting into written form. A fine-looking six they were,--straight,--with the Indian showing in their faces.

At the end of the third day of poling--a lazy time for the “sports,” but three days of marvellously skilful work for the guides--our heavily laden canoes were brought up to the main camp. From here we expected to start our hunting expeditions, each taking a guide, blankets, and food, and striking off for the more isolated cabins in the woods. My purpose was to collect specimens for the National Museum at Washington. I wanted moose, caribou, and beaver--a male and female of each species. Whole skins and leg-bones were to be brought out.

A hard rain woke us, and the prospects were far from cheerful as we packed and prepared to separate. Bill Grey was to be my guide, and the “Popple Cabin,” three miles away, was to be our shelter. Our tramp through the wet woods--pine, hemlock, birch, and poplar--ended at the little double lean-to shelter. After we had started a fire and spread our blankets to dry we set off in search of game.

We climbed out of the valley in which we were camped and up to the top of a hill from which we could get a good view of some small barren stretches that lay around us. It was the blueberry season, and these barrens were covered with bushes, all heavily laden. We moved around from hill to hill in search of game, but saw only three deer. We’d have shot one of them for meat, but didn’t care to run the chance of frightening away any moose or caribou. The last hill we climbed overlooked a small pond which lay beside a pine forest on the edge of a barren strip. Bill intended to spend a good part of each day watching this pond, and it was to a small hill overlooking it that we made our way early next morning.

Before we had been watching many minutes, a cow moose with a calf appeared at the edge of the woods. She hesitated for several minutes, listening intently and watching sharply, and then stepped out across the barren on her way to the pond. Before she had gone far, the path she was following cut the trail we had made on our way to the lookout hill. She stopped immediately and began to sniff at our tracks, the calf following her example; a few seconds were enough to convince her, but for some reason, perhaps to make doubly sure, she turned and for some minutes followed along our trail with her nose close to the ground. Then she swung round and struck off into the woods at a great slashing moose trot.

Not long after she had disappeared, we got a fleeting glimpse of two caribou cows; they lacked the impressive ungainliness of the moose, and in the distance might easily have been mistaken for deer.

It was a very cold morning, and throughout the day it snowed and sleeted at intervals. We spent the time wandering from hill to hill.

For the next week we hunted industriously in every direction from the Popple Cabin. In the morning and the evening we shifted from hill to hill; the middle of the day we hunted along the numerous brooks that furrowed the country. With the exception of one or two days, the weather was uniformly cold and rainy; but after our first warm sunny day we welcomed rain and cold, for then, at least, we had no black flies to fight. On the two sunny days they surrounded us in swarms and made life almost unbearable; they got into our blankets and kept us from sleeping during the nights; they covered us with lumps and sores--Bill said that he had never seen them as bad.

It was lovely in the early morning to stand on some high hill and watch the mist rising lazily from the valley; it was even more lovely to watch the approach of a rain-storm. The sunlight on some distant hillside or valley would suddenly be blotted out by a sheet of rain; a few minutes later the next valley would be darkened as the storm swept toward us, and perhaps before it reached us we could see the farther valleys over which it had passed lightening again.

We managed to cover a great deal of ground during that week, and were rewarded by seeing a fair amount of game--four caribou, of which one was a bull, a bull and three cow moose, and six does and one buck deer. I had but one shot, and that was at a buck deer. We wanted meat very much, and Bill said that he didn’t think one shot would disturb the moose and caribou. He was a very large buck, in prime condition; I never tasted better venison. Had our luck been a little better, I would have had a shot at a moose and a caribou; we saw the latter from some distance, and made a long and successful stalk until Wirre, on his way from the main camp with some fresh supplies, frightened our quarry away.

On these trips between camps, Wirre several times saw moose and caribou within range.

After a week we all foregathered at the main camp. Clarke had shot a fine bear and Jamieson brought in a good moose head. They started down-river with their trophies, and Thompson and I set out for new hunting-grounds. As Bill had gone with Jamieson, I took his son Willie, a sturdy, pony-built fellow of just my age. We crossed the river and camped some two miles beyond it and about a mile from the lake we intended to hunt. We put up a lean-to, and in front of it built a great fire of old pine logs, for the nights were cold.

My blankets were warm, and it was only after a great deal of wavering hesitation that I could pluck up courage to roll out of them in the penetrating cold of early morning. On the second morning, as we made our way through dew-soaked underbrush to the lake, we came out upon a little glade, at the farther end of which stood a caribou. He sprang away as he saw us, but halted behind a bush to reconnoitre--the victim of a fatal curiosity, for it gave me my opportunity and I brought him down. Although he was large in body, he had a very poor head. I spent a busy morning preparing the skin, but in the afternoon we were again at the lake watching for moose. We spent several fruitless days there.

One afternoon a yearling bull moose appeared: he had apparently lost his mother, for he wandered aimlessly around for several hours, bewailing his fate. This watching would have been pleasant enough as a rest-cure, but since I was hunting and very anxious to get my game, it became a rather irksome affair. However, I could only follow Saint Augustine’s advice, “when in Rome, fast on Saturdays,” and I resigned myself to adopting Willie’s plan of waiting for the game to come to us instead of pursuing my own inclination and setting out to find the game. Luckily, I had some books with me, and passed the days pleasantly enough reading Voltaire and Boileau. There was a beaver-house at one end of the lake, and between four and five the beaver would come out and swim around. I missed a shot at one. Red squirrels were very plentiful and would chatter excitedly at us from a distance of a few feet. There was one particularly persistent little chap who did everything in his power to attract attention. He would sit in the conventional squirrel attitude upon a branch, and chirp loudly, bouncing stiffly forward at each chirp, precisely as if he were an automaton.

When we decided that it was useless to hunt this lake any longer, we went back to the river to put in a few days hunting up and down it. I got back to the camp in the evening and found Thompson there. He had had no luck and intended to leave for the settlement in the morning. Accordingly, the next day he started downstream and we went up. We hadn’t been gone long before we heard what we took to be two shots, though, for all we knew, they might have been a beaver striking the water with his tail. That night, when we got back to camp, we found that, on going round a bend in the river about a mile below camp, Thompson had come upon a bull and a cow moose, and had bagged the bull.

The next morning it was raining as if it were the first storm after a long drought, and as we felt sure that no sensible moose would wander around much amid such a frozen downpour, we determined to put in a day after beaver. In one of my long tramps with Bill we had come across a large beaver-pond, and at the time Bill had remarked how easy it would be to break the dam and shoot the beaver. I had carefully noted the location of this pond, so managed successfully to pilot Willie to it, and we set to work to let the water out. This breaking the dam was not the easy matter I had imagined. It was a big pond, and the dam that was stretched across its lower end was from eight to ten feet high. To look at its solid structure and the size of the logs that formed it, it seemed inconceivable that an animal the size of a beaver could have built it. The water was above our heads, and there was a crust of ice around the edges. We had to get in and work waist-deep in the water to enlarge our break in the dam, and the very remembrance of that cold morning’s work, trying to pry out logs with frozen fingers, makes me shiver. It was even worse when we had to stop work and wait and watch for the beavers to come out. They finally did, and I shot two. They were fine large specimens; the male was just two inches less than four feet and the female only one inch shorter. Shivering and frozen, we headed back for camp. My hunting costume had caused a good deal of comment among the guides; it consisted of a sleeveless cotton undershirt, a many-pocketed coat, a pair of short khaki trousers reaching to just above my knees, and then a pair of sneakers or of high boots--I used the former when I wished to walk quietly. My knees were always bare and were quite as impervious to cold as my hands, but the guides could never understand why I didn’t freeze. I used to hear them solemnly discussing it in their broken French.

I had at first hoped to get my moose by fair stalking, without the help of calling, but I had long since abandoned that hope; and Willie, who was an excellent caller, had been doing his best, but with no result. We saw several cow moose, and once Willie called out a young bull, but his horns could not have had a spread of more than thirty-five inches, and he would have been quite useless as a museum specimen. Another time, when we were crawling up to a lake not far from the river, we found ourselves face to face with a two-year-old bull. He was very close to us, but as he hadn’t got our wind, he was merely curious to find out what we were, for Willie kept grunting through his birch-bark horn. Once he came up to within twenty feet of us and stood gazing. Finally he got our wind and crashed off through the lakeside alders.

As a rule, moose answer a call better at night, and almost every night we could hear them calling around our camp; generally they were cows that we heard, and once Willie had a duel with a cow as to which should have a young bull that we could hear in an alder thicket, smashing the bushes with his horns. Willie finally triumphed, and the bull headed toward us with a most disconcerting rush; next morning we found his tracks at the edge of the clearing not more than twenty yards from where we had been standing; at that point the camp smoke and smells had proved more convincing than Willie’s calling-horn.

Late one afternoon I had a good opportunity to watch some beaver at work. We had crawled cautiously up to a small lake in the vain hope of finding a moose, when we came upon some beaver close to the shore. Their house was twenty or thirty yards away, and they were bringing out a supply of wood, chiefly poplar, for winter food. To and fro they swam, pushing the wood in front of them. Occasionally one would feel hungry, and then he would stop and start eating the bark from the log he was pushing. It made me shiver to watch them lying lazily in that icy water.

I had already stayed longer than I intended, and the day was rapidly approaching when I should have to start down-river. Even the cheerful Willie was getting discouraged, and instead of accounts of the miraculous bags hunters made at the end of their trips, I began to be told of people who were unfortunate enough to go out without anything. I made up my mind to put in the last few days hunting from the Popple Cabin, so one rainy noon, after a morning’s hunt along the river, we shouldered our packs and tramped off to the little cabin from which Bill and I had hunted. Wirre was with us, and we left him to dry out the cabin while we went off to try a late afternoon’s hunt. As we were climbing the hill from which Bill and I used to watch the little pond, Willie caught sight of a moose on the side of a hill a mile away. One look through our field-glasses convinced us it was a good bull. A deep wooded valley intervened, and down into it we started at headlong speed, and up the other side we panted. As we neared where we believed the moose to be, I slowed down in order to get my wind in case I had to do some quick shooting. I soon picked up the moose and managed to signal Willie to stop. The moose was walking along at the edge of the woods somewhat over two hundred yards to our left. The wind was favorable, so I decided to try to get nearer before shooting. It was a mistake, for which I came close to paying dearly; suddenly, and without any warning, the great animal swung into the woods and disappeared before I could get ready to shoot.

Willie had his birch-bark horn with him and he tried calling, but instead of coming toward us, we could hear the moose moving off in the other direction. The woods were dense, and all chance seemed to have gone. With a really good tracker, such as are to be found among some of the African tribes, the task would have been quite simple, but neither Willie nor I was good enough. We had given up hope when we heard the moose grunt on the hillside above us. Hurrying toward the sound, we soon came into more open country. I saw him in a little glade to our right; he looked most impressive as he stood there, nearly nineteen hands at the withers, shaking his antlers and staring at us; I dropped to my knee and shot, and that was the first that Willie knew of our quarry’s presence. He didn’t go far after my first shot, but several more were necessary before he fell. We hurried up to examine him; he was not yet dead, and when we were half a dozen yards away, he staggered to his feet and started for us, but he fell before he could reach us. Had I shot him the first day I might have had some compunction at having put an end to such a huge, handsome animal, but as it was I had no such feelings. We had hunted long and hard, and luck had been consistently against us.

Our chase had led us back in a quartering direction toward camp, which was now not more than a mile away; so Willie went to get Wirre, while I set to work to take the measurements and start on the skinning. Taking off a whole moose hide is no light task, and it was well after dark before we got it off. We estimated the weight of the green hide as well over a hundred and fifty pounds, but probably less than two hundred. We bundled it up as well as we could in some pack-straps, and as I seemed best suited to the task, I fastened it on my back.

The sun had gone down, and that mile back to camp, crawling over dead falls and tripping on stones, was one of the longest I have ever walked. The final descent down the almost perpendicular hillside was the worst. When I fell, the skin was so heavy and such a clumsy affair that I couldn’t get up alone unless I could find a tree to help me; but generally Willie would start me off again. When I reached the cabin, in spite of the cold night-air, my clothes were as wet as if I had been in swimming. After they had taken the skin off my shoulders, I felt as if I had nothing to hold me down to earth, and might at any moment go soaring into the air.

Next morning I packed the skin down to the main camp, about three miles, but I found it a much easier task in the daylight. After working for a while on the skin, I set off to look for a cow moose, but, as is always the case, where they had abounded before, there was none to be found now that we wanted one.

The next day we spent tramping over the barren hillsides after caribou. Willie caught a glimpse of one, but it disappeared into a pine forest before we could come up with it. On the way back to camp I shot a deer for meat on our way down the river.

I had determined to have one more try for a cow moose, and next morning was just going off to hunt some lakes when we caught sight of an old cow standing on the opposite bank of the river about half a mile above us. We crossed and hurried up along the bank, but when we reached the bog where she had been standing she had disappeared. There was a lake not far from the river-bank, and we thought that she might have gone to it, for we felt sure we had not frightened her. As we reached the lake we saw her standing at the edge of the woods on the other side, half hidden in the trees. I fired and missed, but as she turned to make off I broke her hind quarter. After going a little distance she circled back to the lake and went out to stand in the water. We portaged a canoe from the river and took some pictures before finishing the cow. At the point where she fell the banks of the lake were so steep that we had to give up the attempt to haul the carcass out. I therefore set to work to get the skin off where the cow lay in the water. It was a slow, cold task, but finally I finished and we set off downstream, Wirre in one canoe and Willie and myself in the other. According to custom, the moose head was laid in the bow of our canoe, with the horns curving out on either side.

We had been in the woods for almost a month, and in that time we had seen the glorious changes from summer to fall and fall to early winter, for the trees were leafless and bare. Robinson’s lines kept running through my head as we sped downstream through the frosty autumn day:

“Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead
black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland, and a wailing through the
woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that
love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of
autumn
Put off the summer’s languor, with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot
follow,
To the slopes of other valleys, and the sounds of other shores.”

V

Two Book-Hunters in South America

V

TWO BOOK-HUNTERS IN SOUTH AMERICA

_In Collaboration with Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt_

The true bibliophile will always find time to exercise his calling, no matter where he happens to be, or in what manner he is engaged in making his daily bread. In some South American cities, more particularly in Buenos Ayres, there is so little to do outside of one’s office that were there more old bookstores it would be what Eugene Field would have called a bibliomaniac’s paradise. To us wanderers on the face of the earth serendipity in its more direct application to book-collecting is a most satisfactory pursuit; for it requires but little capital, and in our annual flittings to “somewhere else” our purchases necessitate but the minimum of travelling space. There are two classes of bibliophiles--those to whom the financial side is of little or no consequence, and those who, like the clerk of the East India House, must count their pennies, and save, and go without other things to counterbalance an extravagance in the purchase of a coveted edition. To the former class these notes may seem overworldly in their frequent allusion to prices; but to its authors the financial side must assume its relative importance.

Among the South American republics, Brazil undeniably takes precedence from a literary standpoint. Most Brazilians, from Lauro Muller, the minister of foreign affairs, to the postmaster of the little frontier town, have at some period in their lives published, or at all events written, a volume of prose or verse. It comes to them from their natural surroundings, and by inheritance, for once you except Cervantes, the Portuguese have a greater literature than the Spaniards. There is therefore in Brazil an excellent and widely read native literature, and in almost every home there are to be found the works of such poets as Gonçalves Diaz and Castro Alves, and historians, novelists, and essayists like Taunay, Couto de Magalhãens, Alencar, and Coelho Netto. Taunay’s most famous novel, _Innocencia_, a tale of life in the frontier state of Matto Grosso--“the great wilderness”--has been translated into seven languages, including the Japanese and Polish. The literature of the mother country is also generally known; Camões is read in the schools, and a quotation from the Lusiads is readily capped by a casual acquaintance in the remotest wilderness town. Portuguese poets and playwrights like Almeda Garret, Bocage, Quental and Guerra Junquera; and historians and novelists such as Herculano, Eça de Queiroz, or Castello Branco are widely read.

In Brazil, as throughout South America, French is almost universally read; cheap editions of the classics are found in most homes, and bookstores are filled with modern French writers of prose or verse--sometimes in translation, and as frequently in the original. Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo abound in old bookstores, which are to be found in fewer numbers in others of the larger towns, such as Manaos, Para, Pernambuco, Bahia, Curytiba, or Porto Alegre. In the smaller towns of the interior one runs across only new books, although occasionally those who possess the “flaire” may chance upon some battered treasure.

The line which is of most interest, and in South America presents the greatest latitude, is undoubtedly that of early voyages and discoveries. Probably it was because they were in a greater or less degree voyagers or explorers themselves that the Americans and English who came to South America seventy or eighty years ago brought with them books of exploration and travel, both contemporary and ancient. Many of these volumes, now rare in the mother country, are to be picked up for a song in the old bookstores of the New World.

The accounts of the Conquistadores and early explorers, now in the main inaccessible except in great private collections or museums, have frequently been reprinted, and if written in a foreign tongue, translated, in the country which they describe. Thus the account of Père Yveux was translated and printed in Maranhão in 1878, and this translation is now itself rare. We picked up a copy for fifty cents in a junk-store in Bahia, but in São Paulo had to pay the market price for the less rare translation of Hans Stade’s captivity. Ulrich Schmidel’s entertaining account of the twenty years of his life spent in the first half of the sixteenth century in what is now Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, has been excellently translated into Spanish by an Argentine of French descent, Lafoyne Quevedo, the head of the La Plata museum. We had never seen the book until one day at the judicial auction held by the heirs of a prominent Argentine lawyer. Books published in Buenos Ayres are as a whole abominably printed, but this was really beautiful, so we determined to get it. The books were being sold in ill-assorted lots, and this one was with three other volumes; one was an odd volume of Italian poetry, one a religious treatise, and the third a medical book. Bidding had been low, and save for standard legal books, the lots had been going at two or three dollars apiece. Our lot quickly went to five dollars. There was soon only one man bidding against us. We could not understand what he wanted, but thought that perhaps the Schmidel was worth more than we had imagined. Our blood was up and we began trying to frighten our opponent by substantial raises; at fourteen he dropped out. The dealers in common with every one else were much intrigued at the high bidding, and clearly felt that something had escaped them. The mystery was solved when our opponent hurried over to ask what we wanted for the odd volume of Italian verse--it belonged to him and he had loaned it to the defunct lawyer shortly before his death. We halved the expenses and the lot, and, as a curious sequel, later found that the medical book which had quite accidentally fallen to our share was worth between fifteen and twenty dollars.

Prices in Brazil seemed very high in comparison with those of Portugal and Spain, but low when compared with Argentina. On the west coast we found books slightly less expensive than in Brazil, where, however, the prices have remained the same as before the war, though the drop in exchange has given the foreigner the benefit of a twenty-five per cent reduction. There are a fair number of auctions, and old books are also sold through priced lists, published in the daily papers. We obtained our best results by search in the bookshops. It was in this way that we got for three dollars the first edition of Castelleux’s _Voyage dans la Partie Septentrionale de l’Amerique_, in perfect condition, and for one dollar Jordan’s _Guerra do Paraguay_, for which a bookseller in Buenos Ayres had asked, as a tremendous bargain, twelve dollars.

In São Paulo after much searching we found Santos Saraiva’s paraphrase of the Psalms, a famous translation, quite as beautiful as our own English version. The translator was born in Lisbon. His father was a Jewish rabbi, but he entered the Catholic Church, became a priest, and went to an inland parish in southern Brazil. After some years he left the Church and settled down with a Brazilian woman in a small, out-of-the-way fazenda, where he translated the Psalms, and also composed a Greek lexicon that is regarded as a masterpiece. He later became instructor in Greek in Mackenzie College in São Paulo, confining his versatile powers to that institution until he died.

The dearth of native literature in Buenos Ayres is not surprising, for nature has done little to stimulate it, and in its fertility much to create the commercialism that reigns supreme. The country is in large part rolling prairie-land, and although there is an attraction about it in its wild state, which has called forth a gaucho literature that chiefly takes form in long and crude ballads, the magic of the prairie-land is soon destroyed by houses, factories, dump-heaps, and tin cans. At first sight it would appear hopeless ground for a bibliophile, but with time and patience we found a fair number of old bookstores; and there rarely passes a week without a book auction, or at any rate an auction where some books are put up.

Among the pleasantest memories of our life in Buenos Ayres are those of motoring in to a sale from our house in Belgrano, along the famous Avenida Alvear, on starlit nights, with the Southern Cross high and brilliant. Occasionally when the books we were interested in were far between, we would slip out of the smoke-laden room for a cup of unrivalled coffee at the Café Paulista, or to watch Charlie Chaplin as “Carlitos” amuse the Argentine public.

The great percentage of the books one sees at auctions or in bookstores are strictly utilitarian; generally either on law or medicine. In the old bookstores there are, as in Boston, rows of religious books, on which the dust lies undisturbed. In Argentine literature there are two or three famous novels; most famous of these is probably Marmol’s _Amalia_, a bloodthirsty and badly written story of the reign of Rosas--the gaucho Nero. Bunge’s _Novela de la Sangre_ is an excellently given but equally lurid account of the same period. _La Gloria de Don Ramiro_, by Rodriguez Larreta, is a well-written tale of the days of Philip the Second. The author, the present Argentine minister in Paris, spent some two years in Spain studying the local setting of his romance. Most Argentines, if they have not read these novels, at least know the general plots and the more important characters. The literature of the mother country is little read and as a rule looked down upon by the Argentines, who are more apt to read French or even English. _La Nacion_, which is one of the two great morning papers, and owned by a son of Bartholomé Mitre, publishes a cheap uniform edition, which is formed of some Argentine reprints and originals, but chiefly of French and English translations. The latest publication is advertised on the front page of the newspaper, and one often runs across “old friends” whose “new faces” cause a momentary check to the memory; such as _La Feria de Vanidades_, the identity of which is clear when one reads that the author is Thackeray. This “Biblioteca de la Nacion” is poorly got up and printed on wretched paper, but seems fairly widely read, and will doubtless stimulate the scarcely existent literary side of the Argentine, and in due time bear fruit. Translations of Nick Carter and the “penny dreadfuls” are rife, but a native writer, Gutierrez, who wrote in the seventies and eighties, created a national hero, Juan Moreira, who was a benevolent Billy the Kid. Gutierrez wrote many “dramas policiales,” which are well worth reading for the light they throw in their side touches on “gaucho” life of those days.

Argentines are justifiably proud of Bartholomé Mitre, their historian soldier, who was twice president; and of Sarmiento, essayist and orator, who was also president, and who introduced the educational reforms whose application he had studied in the United States. At an auction in New York we secured a presentation copy of his _Vida de Lincoln_, written and published in this country in 1866. Mitre first published his history of General Belgrano, of revolutionary fame, in two volumes in 1859. It has run through many editions; the much-enlarged one in four volumes is probably more universally seen in private houses than any other Argentine book. The first edition is now very rare and worth between forty and fifty dollars; but in a cheap Italian stationery-store we found a copy in excellent condition and paid for it only four dollars and fifty cents. The edition of 1887 brings anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars. Many copies were offered at sales, but we delayed in hopes of a better bargain, and one night our patience was rewarded. It was at the fag end of a private auction of endless rooms of cheap and tawdry furniture that the voluble auctioneer at length reached the contents of the solitary bookcase. Our coveted copy was knocked down to us at eight dollars.

In native houses one very rarely finds what we would even dignify by the name of library. Generally a fair-sized bookcase of ill-assorted volumes is regarded as such. There are, however, excellent legal and medical collections to be seen, and Doctor Moreno’s colonial quinta, with its well-filled shelves, chiefly volumes of South American exploration and development from the earliest times, forms a marked exception--an oasis in the desert. We once went to stay in the country with some Argentines, who seeing us arrive with books in our hands, proudly offered the use of their library, to which we had often heard their friends make reference. For some time we were greatly puzzled as to the location of this much-talked-of collection, and were fairly staggered on having a medium-sized bookcase, half of which was taken up by a set of excerpts from the “world’s great thinkers and speakers,” in French, pointed out as “the library.”

As a rule the first thing a family will part with is its books. There are two sorts of auctions--judicial and booksellers’. The latter class are held by dealers who are having bad times and hope to liquidate some of their stock, but there are always cappers in the crowd who keep bidding until a book is as high and often higher than its market price. The majority of the books are generally legal or medical; and there is always a good number of young students who hope to get reference books cheaply. Most of the books are in Spanish, but there is a sprinkling of French, and often a number of English, German, and Portuguese, though these last are no more common in Argentina than are Spanish books in Brazil. At one auction there were a number of Portuguese lots which went for far more than they would have brought in Rio or São Paulo. Translations from the Portuguese are infrequent; the only ones we can recall were of Camões and Eça de Queiroz. In Brazil the only translation from Spanish we met with was of _Don Quixote_.

English books generally go reasonably at auctions. We got a copy of Page’s _Paraguay and the River Plate_ for twenty-five cents, but on another occasion had some very sharp bidding for Wilcox’s _History of Our Colony in the River Plate_, London, 1807, written during the brief period when Buenos Ayres was an English possession. It was finally knocked down to us at twelve dollars; and after the auction our opponent offered us twice what he had let us have it for; we don’t yet know what it is worth. The question of values is a difficult one, for there is little or no data to go upon; in consequence, the element of chance is very considerable. From several sources in the book world, we heard a wild and most improbable tale of how Quaritch and several other London houses had many years ago sent a consignment of books to be auctioned in the Argentine; and that the night of the auction was so cold and disagreeable that the exceedingly problematical buyers were still further reduced. The auction was held in spite of conditions, and rare incunabula are reported to have gone at a dollar apiece.

There was one judicial auction that lasted for the best part of a week--the entire stock of a large bookstore that had failed. They were mostly new books, and such old ones as were of any interest were interspersed in lots of ten or more of no value. The attendance was large and bidding was high. To get the few books we wanted we had also to buy a lot of waste material; but when we took this to a small and heretofore barren bookstore to exchange, we found a first edition of the three first volumes of _Kosmos_, for which, with a number of Portuguese and Spanish books thrown in, we made the exchange. We searched long and without success for the fourth volume, but as the volumes were published at long intervals, it is probable that the former owner had only possessed the three.

Our best finds were made not at auctions but in bookstores--often in little combination book, cigar, and stationery shops. We happened upon one of these latter one Saturday noon on our way to lunch at a little Italian restaurant, where you watched your chicken being most deliciously roasted on a spit before you. Chickens were forgotten, and during two hours’ breathless hunting we found many good things, among them a battered old copy of Byron’s poems, which had long since lost its binding. Pasted in it was the following original letter of Byron’s, which as far as we know has never before been published:[3]

A MONSIEUR,
MONSIEUR GALIGNANI,
18 Rue Vivienne,
Paris.

SIR: In various numbers of your journal I have seen mentioned
a work entitled _The Vampire_, with the addition of my name as
that of the author. I am not the author, and never heard of the
work in question until now. In a more recent paper I perceive a
formal annunciation of _The Vampire_, with the addition of an
account of my “residence in the Island of Mitylane,” an island
which I have occasionally sailed by in the course of travelling
some years ago through the Levant--and where I should have no
objection to reside--but where I have never yet resided. Neither
of these performances are mine--and I presume that it is neither
unjust nor ungracious to request that you will favour me by
contradicting the advertisement to which I allude. If the book is
clever, it would be base to deprive the real writer--whoever he
may be--of his honours--and if stupid I desire the responsibility
of nobody’s dulness but my own. You will excuse the trouble I give
you--the imputation is of no great importance--and as long as it
was confined to surmises and reports--I should have received it
as I have received many others--in silence. But the formality of
a public advertisement of a book I never wrote, and a residence
where I never resided--is a little too much--particularly as I
have no notion of the contents of the one--nor the incidents of
the other. I have besides a personal dislike to “vampires,” and
the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce
me to divulge their secrets. You did me a much less injury by your
paragraphs about “my devotion” and “abandonment of society for the
sake of religion”--which appeared in your _Messenger_ during last
Lent--all of which are not founded on fact--but you see I do not
contradict them, because they are merely personal, whereas the
others in some degree concern the reader....

You will oblige me by complying with my request for contradiction.
I assure you that I know nothing of the work or works in
question--and have the honour to be (as the correspondents to
magazines say) “your constant reader” and very

obedt
humble Servt,
BYRON.

To the editor of _Galignani’s Messenger_. Etc., etc., etc. Venice,
April 27, 1819.

Curiously enough, the book itself had been published by Galignani in 1828. The cost of our total purchases, a goodly heap, amounted to but five dollars.