He Will Then
Lie Down On Mother Earth With The Horse-Cloth Under Him And The
Saddle For A Pillow.
When travelling with these men I have known
them, without any comment, stretch themselves on the ground, even
though the rain was falling, and soon be in dreamland.
After having
passed a wretched night myself, I have asked them, "How did you
sleep?" "Muy Bien, Senor" (Very good, sir), has been the invariable
answer. They would often growl much, however, over the wet saddle-
cloths, for these soon cause a horse's back to become sore.
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. At these places cheap
spirits of wine and very bad rum can be bought, along with tobacco,
hard ship-biscuits (very often full of maggots, as I know only too
well), and a few other more necessary things. 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. These draughts result in
quarrels and sometimes in murder.
The Gaucho, like the Indian, cannot drink liquor without becoming
maddened by it. He will then do things which in his sober moments he
would not dream of. 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. Arriving at a fork in the path, the
faithful horse took the one leading home, but the rider, thinking in
his stupor that the other way was the right one, turned the horse's
head. As the poor creature wanted to get home and have the saddle
taken off, it turned again. This affront was too much for the Gaucho,
who is a man of volcanic passions, so drawing his knife, he stabbed
it in the neck, and they dropped to the ground together. When he
realized that he had killed his favorite horse he cried like a child.
I passed this dead animal several times afterwards and saw the
vultures clean its bones. It served me as a witness to the results of
ungoverned passion.
The Gaucho does not, and would not under any consideration, ride a
mare; consequently, for work she is practically valueless. Strain,
who rode across the pampas, says: "In a single year ten million hides
were exported." For one or two dollars each the buyer may purchase
any number; indeed, of such little worth are the mares that they are
very often killed for their hide, or to serve as food for swine. At
one estancia I visited I was informed that one was killed each day
for pig feed. The mare can be driven long distances, even a hundred
miles a day, for several successive days, The Argentine army must
surely be the most mobile of any in the world, for its soldiers, when
on the march, get nothing but mare's flesh and the custom gives them
great facility of movement. The horse has, more or less, its standard
value, and costs four or five times the price of the mare.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN GAUCHO DRESS.]
Sometimes it happens that the native finds a colt which is positively
untamable. On the cheek of such an animal the Gaucho will burn a
cross and then allow it to go free, like the scape-goat mentioned in
the book of Leviticus.
The native horse is rather small, but very wiry and wild. I was once
compelled, through sickness, to make a journey of ninety-seven miles,
being in the saddle for seventeen consecutive hours, and yet my poor
horse was unable to get one mouthful of food on the journey, and the
saddle was not taken off his back for a moment. He was very wild, yet
one evening between five and eight o'clock, he bore me safely a
distance of thirty-six miles, and returned the same distance with me
on the following morning. He had not eaten or drunk anything during
the night, for the locusts had devoured all pasturage and no rain had
fallen for a space of five months.
The horse is not indigenous to America, although Darwin tells us that
South America had a native horse, which lived and disappeared ages
ago. Spanish history informs us that they were first landed in Buenos
Ayres in 1537. We are further told that the Indians flew away in
terror at the sight of a man on horseback, which they took to be one
animal of a strange, two-headed shape. When the colony was for a time
deserted these horses were suffered to run wild. Those animals so
multiplied and spread over such a vast area that they were found,
forty-three years later, even down to the Straits of Magellan, a
distance of eleven hundred miles. With good pasture and a limitless
expanse to roam over, they soon turned from the dozens to thousands,
and may now be counted by millions. The Patagonian "foot" Indians
quickly turned into "horse" Indians, for on those wide prairie lands
a man without a horse is almost comparable to a man without legs. In
former years, thousands of wild horses roamed over these extensive
plains, but the struggle of mankind in the battle of life turned
men's attention to them, and they were captured and branded by
whomsoever had the power and cared to take the trouble. In the more
isolated districts, there may still be found numbers which are born
and die without ever feeling the touch of saddle or bridle. Far away
from the crowded busses and perpetually moving hansoms of the city,
they feel not the driver's whip nor the strain of the wagon, as, with
tail trailing on the ground and head erect, they gallop in freedom of
life.
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