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Updated: May 7, 2025
Having returned to the ford for their horses, and led them up to the chosen ground, they are proceeding to strip the animals of their respective caparisons, when, lo! the alparejas, and other things, which were attached to the croup of Ludwig's saddle, and should still be on it, are not there!
Meanwhile, Gaspar has been engaged getting ready several other things for the change of costume intended; one of these being a silk handkerchief of a bright scarlet colour, also taken out of the inexhaustible alparejas. This he ties about Cypriano's neck, not as an ordinary cravat, but loosely folded, so as to expose a breadth of several inches all round.
By Caspar's foresight, there is a packet of it in Ludwig's alparejas, where all the other provisions are stowed; and a piece cut from one of the strips, about the length of a Bologna sausage, makes breakfast for all three. Of the Paraguay tea they have a good store, the yerba being a commodity which packs in small space.
Around this were groups of arrieros, in their red leathern garments, securing their charge for the night, and laying out their alparejas in long rows by the wall. Over the opposite roofs for our position was elevated we could see the bright fields and forest, and far beyond, the Cofre de Perote and the undulating outlines of the Andes.
After the service rendered me by a coat of that colour, you may trust this gaucho never to go on any expedition over the pampas without a cake of brown paint stowed away in some corner of his alparejas. For the poncho, it won't be out of place.
Saying this, I moved forward with the men, the major keeping in the rear. In one corner was a house, constructed of upright poles, with a thatch of palm-leaves. This contained the lazos, alparejas, saddles, etcetera, of the vaqueros; and in the door of this house stood a decrepit old zambo, the only human thing about the place.
Soon beside it, he is again seen to plunge his hand into the alparejas, and grope about, just as when searching for the stump of candle. And now he draws forth something very similar a packet with a skin covering, tied with a bit of string.
It requires no great effort of culinary skill; since the more substantial portion of it has been already cooked, and is now presented in the shape of a cold shoulder of mutton, with a cake of corn bread, extracted from a pair of alparejas, or saddle-bags.
Along the roads we meet numerous atajos, in charge of their arrieros. We observe the mules, small, smooth, light-limbed, and vicious. We glance at the heavy alparejas and bright worsted apishamores.
Plunging his hand into his ample alparejas, and rummaging about for a short while, he gets hold of the bit of unburnt candle souvenir of a melancholy ceremony, which, however, he had long ceased to mourn over, since his mother has been dead for many years.
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