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.

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