116 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



URUGUAY. ~ 



Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a 

 cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves in the 

 position of the latter. What a cheerless picture, with not 

 even a hope of change ! Picture to yourself the chance, ever 

 hanging over you, of your wife and little children being torn 

 from you and sold to the highest bidder! And these deeds 

 are done and excused by men who profess to love their neigh- 

 bors as themselves who believe in God, and pray that his 

 will be done on earth ! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart 

 tremble, to think that we Englishmen, and our American de- 

 scendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and 

 are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect that we, at 

 least, have made a greater sacrifice than was ever made by 

 any nation to expiate our sin.* 



THE GATJCHO. 



AT Las Minas we stopped overnight at a pulperia, or 

 drinking-shop. During the evening a great number of Gau- 

 chos came in to drink spirits and smoke cigars. Their ap- 

 pearance is very striking: they are generally tall and hand- 

 some, but with a proud and dissolute expression of counte- 

 nance. They often wear their mustaches, and long black 

 hair curling down their backs. With their bright -colored 

 garments, great spurs clanking about their heels, and knives 

 stuck as daggers (and often so used) at their waists, they 



* Slavery was finally abolished in the British West Indies in 1834-1838; 

 in the United States by the civil war of 1861-1865. 



