Stand with him at
midnight on the Pampa,--let the track be lost,--no moon or stars; the
_vaqueano_ quietly dismounts, examines the foliage of the trees, if any
are near, and if there are none, plucks from the ground a handful of
roots, chews them, smells and tastes the soil, and tells
you that so many hours' travel due north or south will bring you to your
destination. Do not doubt him; he is infallible.
A mere _vaqueano_ was General Rivera of Uruguay,--but he knew every tree,
every hillock, every dell, in a region extending over more than 70,000
square miles! Without his aid, Brazil would have been powerless in the
Banda Oriental; without his aid, the Argentinians would never have
triumphed over Brazil. As a smuggler in 1804, as a custom-house officer a
few years later, as a patriot, a freebooter, a Brazilian general, an
Argentinian commander, as President of Uruguay against Lavalleja, as an
outlaw against General Oribe, and finally against Rosas, allied with
Oribe, as champion of the Banda Oriental del Uruguay, Rivera had certainly
ample opportunities for perfecting himself in that study of which he was
the ardent devotee.
Cooper has told us how and by what signs, in years that have forever
faded, the Huron tracked his flying foe through the forests of the North;
we read of Cuban bloodhounds, and of their frightful baying on the scent
of the wretched maroon; we know how the Bedouin follows his tribe over
pathless sands;--and yet all these are bunglers, in comparison with the
_Gaucho rastreador_!
In the interior of the Argentine every Gaucho is a trailer or
_rastreador_.
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