“How many leagues long? Do you intend it to last all the way to Montevideo? The longer it is the sooner you ought to begin it.” “There are things easy to say, and there are other things not so easy,” returned Santos. “But as to saying anything on horseback, who could do that?” “Why not?” “The question!” said he. “Have you not observed that when liquor is drawn from a cask--wine, or bitter orange-juice to make orangeade, or even rum, which is by nature white and clear--that it runs thick when the cask is shaken? It is the same with us, señor; our brain is the cask out of which we draw all the things we say.” “And the spigot--” “That is so,” he struck in, pleased with my ready intelligence; “the mouth is the spigot.” “I should have thought the nose more like the spigot,” I replied. “No,” he gravely returned. “You can make a loud noise with the nose when you snore or blow it in a handkerchief; but it has no door of communication with the brain. The things that are in the brain flow out by the mouth.” “Very well,” said I, getting impatient, “call the mouth spigot, bung-hole, or what you like, and the nose merely an ornament on the cask. The thing is this: Doña Demetria has entrusted you with some liquor to pass on to me; now pass it, thick or clear.” “Not thick,” he answered stubbornly. “Very well; clear then,” I shouted. “To give it to you clear I must give it off and not on my horse, sitting still and not moving.” Anxious to have it over without more beating about the bush, I reined up my horse, jumped off, and sat down on the grass without another word. He followed my example, and, after seating himself in a comfortable position, deliberately drew out his tobacco-pouch and began making a cigarette. I could not quarrel with him for this further delay, for without the soothing, stimulating cigarette an Oriental finds it difficult to collect his thoughts. Leaving him to carry out his instructions in his own laborious fashion, I vented my irritation on the grass, plucking it up by handfuls. “Why do you do that?” he asked, with a grin. “Pluck grass? What a question! When a person sits down on the grass, what is the first thing he does?” “Makes a cigarette,” he returned. “In my country he begins plucking up the grass,” I said. “In the Banda Orientál we leave the grass for the cattle to eat,” said he. I at once gave up pulling the grass, for it evidently distracted his mind, and, lighting a cigarette, began smoking as placidly as I could. At length he began: “There is not in all the Banda Orientál a worse person to express things than myself.” “You are speaking the truth,” I said.