Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of spearheads of an army of the middle ages. The only animals that seem to thrive in some
sections of this semi-desert are goats, which roam about in large herds.
As a railroad crosses this region I had sent small bundles of hay to some of the stations,
and was fortunate in obtaining good water, which is brought for the station-masters by train
from the Andes. This water is kept in concrete wells which are always padlocked to prevent
other people from helping themselves too freely.
The few huts I came across were very miserable, and the people of darkish hue, showing a
fair strain of Indian blood. How they are able to exist on the few goats they raise is a mystery
to me. Naked children can be seen playing outside in the sand, and living skeletons of dogs
nose around in search of some bone among the rubbish that is thrown out of the huts.
A few more journeys and we were in the midst of the worst parts of the region where the
horses raised thick clouds of fine dust, so dense at times that it was difficult to see the way,
especially if a slight wind happened to be blowing from behind us. In some places the ground
looked as if it were covered with snow, saltpetre giving it this strange effect. The very shrub-
bery and thick, coarse grass that grew here and there had a strong, salty taste, but the only
plants that seem to thrive there are cacti, some of which grow to enormous heights.
Wetravelledwholedayswithoutpassingahutormeetingalivingbeingexcepting
cuises
(a
kind of guinea pig) or some snake that glided away, probably frightened by the heavy tramp-
ling of the horses' hoofs. Again I would see some brightly-coloured lizard who looked at us
asifwonderingwhatweweredoingthere.Strangetosay,foxesaboundinthisneighbourhood
and I am still wondering what they live on, unless they hunt lizards or little bright-green par-
rots which fly about screeching in flocks.
The few habitations one finds scattered far apart from each other are of the most primitive
kind imaginable, and the same applies to the people who live in them. Near the hut there is
usually a hollow, filled with dirty, yellow water that has a strong taste of salt. To prevent the
animals from drinking more than their allowance to keep them alive, thorn branches are piled
up around this only drinking-place, forming an impenetrable barrier, and the corrals are con-
structed in a similar manner. People obtain their water out of this same ditch, but sometimes
the liquid is filtered through a dirty cloth. I was prepared for such situations, and mixed my
water with bicarbonate of soda, doing the same for the horses, to prevent them from getting
colic. I had brought a folding canvas bucket of the kind one uses to fill radiators of cars. For
myownuseIusuallymixedafewdropsofiodineinabottlebeforedrinkingthecontents,and
although it did not exactly help to improve the already repulsive taste of the water it disinfec-
ted it.
He who is delicate in the food line does well to keep out of Santiago del Estero, for dried
goats'meatistheorderoftheday,butonlyifoneisluckyenoughtofindahutwheretheyare
willing to let one have a little of their reduced supply. The making of this
charqui
, as the dry
meat is called, is not very appetising, to say the least, and when one sees the dirty hands that
