THE URUGUAYAN CAMPO Formation of the land--A survey of the country--Features of the soil--Types of wild flowers--A land of hill, valley, and stream--The glamour of the distance--"The purple land"--Breezes of the Campo--An exhilarating country--The dearth of homesteads--The Uruguayan Gaucho--His physique--The product of the blowy uplands--Matters of temperament--His comparative joviality--The Gaucho as worker, player, and fighter--The manipulation of feuds--A comparison between Argentina and Uruguay--Warrior ancestors of the Gaucho--His sense of dignity and honour--Conservative habits and customs--Costume and horse gear--Strenuous _bailes_--Some homeric feats of dancing--Stirring revelry--The Uruguayan land-owner--Foreign elements in the land--Negro inhabitants of the Banda Oriental--The numerical status of the Africans in the north and in the south--Absence of a racial question--The slavery of former days--The employment of black troops in war--Lenient treatment of negro slaves--Harsh measures applied to aboriginal Indians--A lesson in human economy--Testimony of a contemporary writer--Immigrant colonies. The Uruguayan Campo is not to be described without a certain amount of hesitation. It would be simple enough for one who had caught only a distant passing glimpse of the land of the pastures to put down the country without further ado as rolling grass upland watered by many streams. That such is the foundation of the Campo is undeniable. Nevertheless to begin and end with such a phrase would be equivalent to a description of the peacock as a bird who wears coloured feathers. The subtle charms of the Uruguayan Campo are not to be discerned through the medium of the bioscope-like glimpses that so many travellers obtain of it. Very rightly, it refuses to reveal itself fully until a certain amount of familiarity has justified a nearer acquaintance. From an æsthetic point of view it certainly holds far more than might be expected from a country of such comparatively limited attributes. If you desire to watch the moods of this rural Banda Oriental, ride out to mount one of the higher shoulders of the downland, and wait there, either in the saddle or out of it. You will obtain little sympathy in the task. Eccentric to the mind of the estancieros, frankly mad in the eagle eyes of the Gaucho--a calm survey of the Campo is worth all such merely human depreciation!