and nothing interested us but that “el Pangare” was lame; “el Gargantillo” looked a little thin, or that “el Zaino de la hacinda” was missing in the morning from the troop. Rivers we passed, the Paso de los Toros, where the horses grouped together on a little beach of stones refused to face the stream. Then sending out a yoke of oxen to swim first, we pressed on them, and made them plunge, and kept dead silence, whilst a naked man upon the other bank called to them and whistled in a minor key; for horses swimming, so the Gauchos say, see nothing, and head straight for a voice if it calls soothingly. And whilst they swam, men in canoes lay down the stream to stop them p. 24drifting, and others swimming by their side splashed water in their faces if they tried to turn. The sun beat on the waste calling out the scent of flowers; kingfishers fluttered on the water’s edge, herons stood motionless, great vultures circled overhead, and all went well till, at the middle of the stream, a favourite grey roan mare put up her head and snorted, beat the water with her feet, and then sank slowly, standing quite upright as she disappeared.

p. 24

Mountains and plains we passed, and rivers fringed with thick, hard thorny woods; we sweltered in the sun, sat shivering on our horses during the watches of the night, slept fitfully by turns at the camp fire, ate “charqui” and drank maté, and by degrees passing the Paso de los Novillos, San Fructuoso, and the foot-hills of Haedo and the Cuchilla de Peralta with its twin pulperias, we emerged on to the plain, which, broken here and there by rivers, slopes toward the southern frontier of Brazil. But as we had been short-handed from the first, our “caballada” had got into bad ways. A nothing startled them, and the malign example of the group of wildlings brought from Braulio Islas, led them astray, and once or twice they separated and gave us hours of work to bring them back. Now as a “caballada” which has once bolted is in the future easily disposed to run, we gave strict orders no one was to get off, though for a moment, without hobbling his horse.

p. 25Camped one cold morning on a river, not far from Brazil, and huddled round a fire, cooking some sausages, flavoured with Chile pepper, over a fire of leaves, one of our men who had been on horseback watching all the night, drew near the fire, and getting off, fastened his reins to a heavy-handled whip, and squatted on them, as he tried to warm his hands. My horse, unsaddled, was fastened by a lasso to a heavy stone, and luckily my partner and the rest all had their horses well secured, for a “coati” dived with a splash after a fish 

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