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Updated: May 28, 2025
There, everything wore the appearance of a holiday. The people were dressed in their best; the men riding about among the houses, and the women sitting on carpets before the doors. Under the piazza of a pulperia two men were seated, decked out with knots of ribbons and bouquets, and playing the violin and the Spanish guitar.
Don Senor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, Juez de la Paz, weighing twenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the pulperia at the corner of the plaza in order to assuage his matutinal thirst. The first plunge of his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a concealed mine. Don Ildefonso fell like a crumpled cathedral, crying out that he had been fatally bitten by a deadly scorpion.
To prove his courage, this hero goes to a pulperia, with a bottle in one hand and a knife in the other, stands at the door, and turns out all the occupants. One gaucho in the north and another in the south hear of each other's bravery, obtain a meeting, and, after returning compliments, draw out their knives and fight to the death.
On a bitterly cold midwinter day, shortly before noon, I arrived, stiff and tired, at one of those pilgrims' rests on the pampas a wayside pulperia, or public house, where the traveller can procure anything he may require or desire, from a tumbler of Brazilian rum to make glad his heart, to a poncho, or cloak of blue cloth with fluffy scarlet lining, to keep him warm o' nights; and, to speed him on his way, a pair of cast-iron spurs weighing six pounds avoirdupois, with rowels eight inches in diameter, manufactured in this island for the use of barbarous men beyond the sea.
Seven years had passed since I lost sight of them, when it chanced that I was travelling home from the southern frontier, with only two horses to carry me. One gave out, and I was compelled to leave him on the road. I put up that evening at a little wayside pulperia, or public-house, and was hospitably entertained by the landlord, who turned out to be an Englishman.
Twenty miles from the pulpería he draws rein, dismounts, wipes his bloody knife on the grass, and slices off a collop of charque, which he munches composedly for his supper. Very likely this misfortune will make him a Gaucho malo. The Gaucho malo is an outlaw, at home only in the desert, intangible as the wind, sanguinary, remorseless, swift.
The big vulgar shop-keeper and trader, Fitch, is long since dead; Tom Wrightington, who kept the rival pulpería, fell from his horse when drunk, and was found nearly eaten up by coyotes; and I can scarce find a person whom I remember.
The outskirting houses rose out of the plain like isolated beings, without the accompaniment of gardens or courtyards. This is generally the case in the country, and all the houses have, in consequence, an uncomfortable aspect. At night we stopped at a pulperia, or drinking-shop.
Here and there, but sometimes at long distances apart, there is a pulperia on the road. This is always designated by having a white flag flying on the end of a long bamboo. I have observed in some of these wayside inns counters made of turf, built in blocks as bricks would be. Here the natives stop to drink long and deep, and stew their meagre brains in bad spirits.
I was acquainted with a man who owned a horse of which he was very fond This animal bore him one evening to a pulperia some miles distant, and was left tied outside while he imbibed his fill inside. Coming out at length beastly intoxicated, he mounted his horse and proceeded homeward.
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