There is also the life of the Pampa, of which the principal feature is the Gaucho.[81] This picturesque person has probably more Indian than Spanish blood in his veins, but he is a staunch son of Argentina and supplies his country with excellent cavalry. With a complexion of a light coffee colour, wearing a soft hat, a blanket slit to admit his head, white breeches, and brightly coloured shoes, he has been called by a French writer the Gascon of South America. He will not work in the cities or cultivate the land; he is a horseman and stock-rider. His favourite food is carne cum cuero--meat cooked with the hide--and his delight is in that life of the open plain under the open sky, of which Darwin felt the charm. He, indeed, has given an excellent description of the Gaucho. The Gaucho has played an important part in the building up of Argentina, though he himself cares little for politics and constitutions. Before the Revolution he created the cattle industry, which has always been a main source of wealth to the country, and in the revolutionary wars he shared in the triumphs of the Creoles. Though rather too fond of brawling and gambling, he belongs to that singularly attractive type which is being rapidly pushed into the background with the growth of town industries. He has his own rude poetry and loves to sing his Pampa ballads to the accompaniment of the guitar. He seems to have absorbed the poetry of his surroundings, as was occasionally the case with Australian stock-riders, and in the Pampa the _payador_--a kind of troubador--is held in great honour. He figures at the fêtes as an improviser, and he and his fellows are, in approved Sicilian fashion, "_cantare pares et respondere parati_." Many of the ballads are, of course, unwritten, but some _payadors_ leave the Pampas and become authors, and thus a certain number of the wild songs have been translated into print, but it can hardly be said that the cultured _payadors_ have been as successful in their work as Sir Walter Scott was with Border minstrelsy. José Hernandez long ago published an interesting little collection of this kind--"El Gaucho Martin Fierro." [Illustration: THE PAMPAS.]