“Daughter of Don Manuel” by Frederico Gana

 

Rounding the bend in the road, I came suddenly upon a group of men on horseback. It was a funeral party which had stopped for a little rest. I recognized some of the tenant farmers from the neighboring haciendas. Silent and motionless, they sat on their lean, perspiring horses. On their faces, tanned by the sun, half concealed under blue cotton caps and wide brimmed sombreros, there lingered an expression of somewhat conventional sadness, I might almost say of smiling drowsiness.

Frederico Gana is a new author for me. He wrote of the Chilean countryside and its peoples in the early 20^th century.

This brief tale is melancholic, wise in observation and tinged with cynicism.

It reminds me of a Guy Maupassant writing of the West.

Based on this taste I shall seek more.