A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open

I was bent on going northward into the vast wilderness of tropical South America. I had no time to halt in the grazing coun

ntury ago. The main difference is that the great cow country, the plains country, of North America was peopled only by savages when the white pioneers entered it in the nineteenth century; whereas throughout temperate South America there were here and there oases of thin settlement, including even small, stagnant cities, already

banner of the dictator, who tyrannized over them, but who nevertheless represented in their eyes the nation. This old general had served in many Indian wars, both in Patagonia and in the Grand Chaco, and had seen desperate fighting in the civil wars. He wore medals commemorating his services in the Paraguayan and Indian campaigns, but he would not wear any medals commemorating his services in the civil wars. Yet the only time he was wounded was in one of the battles in one of these civil wars. He was then shot twice and received a bayonet thrust, and was also stabbed with a lance. If he had not possessed a constitution of iron he would never have survived. Our people in the United States often speak of these South American wars with the same ignorant lack of appreciation that used to be shown by European military men in speaking of our own Civil War and other contests. This attitude is as foolish on our part in the one case as it was foolish on the part of the Europeans in question in the other case. The South American Indian fighting was of the same hazardous ch

n the southern Andes of what was once Patagonia are unexplored only in the sense that the Rockies of Alberta are not yet completely explored. Much of the former ranch country is now wheatland, where the workmen of foreign, especially Italian, origin far outnumber the men of old Hispano-Indian stock. Great cattle-ranches remain; but they are handled substantially like great modern ranches in our own Southwest, and the blooded horses and high-grade cattle are kept in large, fenced pastures. In most places the gaucho has changed as our own cowboy has changed. He is as bold and goo

will of course go down; for the real question is encouraging the fit, and discouraging the unfit, to survive. When the ordinary decent man does not understand that to marry the woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all goals, the most successful of all forms of life entitled to be called really successful; when the ordinary woman does not understand that all other forms of life are but makeshift and starveling substitutes for the life of the happy wife, the mother of a fair-sized family of healthy children; then the state is rotten at heart. The loss of a healthy, vigorous, natural sexual instinct is fatal; and just as much so if the loss is by disuse and atrophy as if it is by abuse and perversion. Whether the man, in the exercise of one form of selfishness, leads a life of easy self-indulgence and celibate profligacy; or whether in the exercise of a colder but no less repulsive selfishness, he sacrifices what is highest to some form of mere material achievement in accord with the base proverb that "he travels farthest who travels alone"; or whether the sacrifice is made in the name of the warped and diseased conscience of asceticism; the result is equally evil. So, likewise, with the woman. In many modern novels there is portrayed a type of cold, selfish, sexless woman who plumes herself on being "respectable," but who is really a rather less desirable member of society than a prostitute. Unfortunately the portrayal is true to life. The woman who shrinks from motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the professional pacificist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his

s, Argentina much resembles our own country. Brazil is travelling a similar path, although much more slowly; and although its climate is not so good, its natural resources are vaster and will in the present century undergo an extraordinary development. Very much of the Brazilian country from S?o Paulo to the Uruguayan fronti

Germans, Italians, and Catholic, Orthodox, or Uniate Slavs, were important, and sometimes preponderant, elements of the population. There were German Lutheran church

te America-which remains in either temperate zone open to white settlement on a large scale; the last great s

nd I allude to it elsewhere in this book. Here I am sp

Louisiana and Texas. There was no more sickness than in the early days in the West. The general effect in the forest country, while of course the species of plants are entirely different, reminds the observer of the Louisiana and Mississippi cane-brake lands and the country

tin Chuzzlewit." Dickens represented the numerous men who foolishly hope to enjoy pioneer triumphs and yet escape pioneer risks and hardships and the unlovely and wearing toil which is the essential prerequisite to the triumph; and every one should remember that in a new country, which opens a chance of success to the settler, there always goes with this the chance of heart-breaking failure. Brazil offers remarkable openings for settlers who have the toughness of the born pioneer, and for certain business men and engineers w

re certain to fail badly in a new country than anywhere else. During the whole period of the marvellous growth of the United States there has been a constant and uninterrupted stream of failure going side by side with the l

ere, and other queer ancient tropical plants, the landscape looked as if it had come out of the carboniferous period-at least as the carboniferous period was represented in the attractive popular geologies of my youth. There were flowers in the woods, of brilliant and varied hue, although we saw but few orchids; and in the glades or spots of open prairie there were immense patches of lilac and blue blossoms. The flowering trees were wonderful. On some the blooms were blue, on others yellow. The most beautiful of all flamed brilliant scarlet. The trees that bore them, when scattered over hillsides that sloped steeply to the brink of some rushing river, made splashes

rn cow country, was an old friend of mine. During my term as President he was, on the whole, the most influential of the Western cattle-growers. He was a leader of the far-seeing and enlightened element. He was a most powerful supporter of the government in t

West," in the days when I knew it as a cattle country. We were given a most delicious and purely American lunch, including all the fresh milk we could drink; and the foreman himself piloted us over the immense stretches of rolling country, and in every action showed himself the born cattleman, the born and trained sto

an, and somewhat under the influence of the priests, they are otherwise entirely outside of governmental control. At first Mackenz

untry, for the heat is not as extreme as during summer in the southern part of our country, and the winters are mild, with only occasional touches of frost. Much care has to be shown in dealing with t

very distinctly better than the old Texan cattle-the native Mexican cattle. The Durham and Hereford bulls introduced from the States will in a very few years completely change the character of the herds. Good cows are kept in sufficient numbers to insure a constant supply of the breeding bulls. In the same way Berks

beautiful pines through which the wind sang mournfully; and there were many flowers. In one place we saw a small prairie deer, and in galloping we had to keep a lookout for armadillo burrows, just as we keep a lookout for prairie-dog holes in the West. The birds were strange and interesting, some of them with beautiful voices. Out on the

then. We loped across the rolling grass-land and by the groves of strange trees, through the brilliant weather. Under us the ho