which left them free to gutter on the dancers’ heads. The men lounged at the door, booted and spurred, and now and then one walked up to the girls, selected one, and silently began to dance a Spanish valse, slowly and scarcely moving from the place, the hands stretched out in front, and the girl with her head upon his shoulder, eyes fast closed and looking like a person in a trance. And as they danced the musicians broke into a harsh, wild song, the dancers’ spurs rattled and jingled on the floor, and through the unglazed and open windows a shrill fierce neigh floated into the room from the wild horses shut in the corral. “Dulces,” that is, those sweetmeats made from the yolk of eggs, from almonds, and from p. 17nuts, and flavoured with cinnamon and caraways brought by the Moors to Spain, and taken by the Spaniards to the Indies, with sticky cakes, and vino seco circulated amongst the female guests. The men drank gin, ate bread (a delicacy in the far-off “camp”), or sipped their maté, which, in its little gourds and silver tube, gave them the appearance of smoking some strange kind of pipe.

p. 17

“Que bailen los Ingleses,” and we had to acquit ourselves as best we could, dancing a “pericon,” as we imagined it, waving our handkerchiefs about to the delight of all the lookers-on. Fashion decreed that, the dance over, the “cavalier” presented his handkerchief to the girl with whom he danced. I having a bad cold saw with regret my new silk handkerchief pass to the hand of a mulatto girl, and having asked her for her own as a remembrance of her beauty and herself, received a home-made cotton cloth, stiff as a piece of leather, and with meshes like a sack.

Leaving the dance, as Braulio Islas said, as more “conformable” to Gauchos than to serious men we started bargaining. After much talking we agreed to take the horses for three dollars each, upon condition that in the morning Islas and all his men should help us drive a league or two upon the road. This settled, and the money duly paid, we went to bed, that is, lay down upon our saddles under the “galpon.” To early morning the guitars went on, and rising just about day-break we found p. 18the revellers saddling their horses to depart in peace. We learned with pleasure there had been no fight, and then after a maté walked down to the corral. Knowing it was impossible to drive the horses singly, after much labour we coupled them in twos. I mounted one of them, and to my surprise, he did not buck, but after three or four plunges went quietly, and we let the others out. The bars were scarcely down when they all scattered, and made off into the woods. Luckily all 

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