In the towns one meets men in various employments, such as the police, who have served in the army, and still retain some sort of soldierly appearance, but once get into the country, and it is vain to look for any evidence of military service amongst the rural population.

The country-folk are a patient lot; most of them ruminants, like their own oxen.  Sleepy always, and slow in their movements, they are often devoted to the farm, or quinta, on which they work, and are, perhaps, slightly more honest than their fellows in the towns.  They are frugal enough, and enjoy their huge junks of dark bread, washed down with water, at their midday meal, and a sound sleep under the shade of an orange tree or a eucalyptus, or a bit of a wall, until it is necessary to begin work again.  The peasant costumes are not inviting; they are simply squalid.  Costumes in the towns are much better.  Still, on festal days the village women deck themselves out with bright-hued shawls, and the men wind brighter scarfs round their waists to keep up their patchwork trousers, and thus relieve what would otherwise be the intolerable dinginess of the whole scene.  The farmer himself, mounted on his mule, with high-peaked saddle and enormous wooden stirrups decorated with brass, his cloak, with the bright scarlet or blue lining folded outwards, strapped on in front, with his short jacket and broad-brimmed hat, offers a smart and typical figure.

In town or country, the beautiful oxen are worthy of admiration.  They are the most satisfactory of all the rural animals.  Horses, shabby and attenuated, little sheep of a colour from black to dirty grey, showing affinity to goats, and having neither the grace of the latter nor the sleepy comeliness of our own sheep, black and white cows whose points would not be much thought of by judges at an agricultural show, goats of all sorts of breeds, and finally pigs of a most lanky and uninviting appearance, form the stock of the farms.  Heaps of chickens of all sorts run about everywhere, and enjoy fine dust-baths by the side of the road.

The aspect of the country varies much between north and south.  In the former, one sees real grass and hedges, and the bright flowers that are common everywhere look all the better for their green background.  The commonest hedge in the south, and occasionally in the north, is made of a few layers of stones loosely laid together with a row of aloe plants on the top.  These grow formidable in time, with huge sharp-pointed leaves, and they present a curious appearance when at intervals in such a row plants send up their huge flowering stems from nine to twelve feet high, looking at a little distance like telegraph poles.