These vast solitudes are infested by two races of men, perpetually at war with each other: the Indian Bravos, or Pampas, and the Guachos.
The Guachos, a caste peculiar to the Argentine provinces, are not to be met elsewhere.
These men, charged with the supervision of the wild cattle and horses which range at large through the whole extent of these wide plains, are, for the most part, whites by race; but, crossed in blood with the aborigines for many years, they have in time become almost as barbarous as the Indians themselves, from whom they have learnt their cunning and cruelty.
They live on horseback, lie in the bare sun, support themselves on the flesh of their beasts when unlucky in the chase, and only approach the towns and haciendas for the purpose of exchanging their skins, their ñandú (the ostrich of the Pampas) plumes, and furs, for spirits, silver spurs, powder, knifes, and the cloths of gaudy colours with which they delight to adorn their persons.
The true Centaurs of the New World, as rapid as the Tartar riders of the Steppes of Siberia, they transport themselves with prodigious speed from one extremity of the Banda Oriental to the other. They recognise no law beyond the whim of the moment; no master but their will. For the most part, they do not know the proprietor who employs them, and whom they only see at rare intervals.
The Guachos are almost as much to be dreaded as the Indians by travellers, who dare not venture upon the Pampas except in considerable numbers, so as to afford mutual protection against the aggressions to which they are constantly exposed, either from Indians or from the wild beasts.
The caravans are usually composed of fifteen, or even twenty, wagons, or galeras, drawn by six or eight oxen apiece. Their drivers, crouching under the hide covering of the galeras, urge them on with long goads, slung over their heads, with which they can easily reach the leading oxen of the team.
A capataz, or major-domo,—a resolute man, thoroughly acquainted with the Pampas,—commands the caravan, having under his orders some thirty peones, who, like himself, are mounted, and gallop around the convoy, watch the relief cattle, and, in case of attack, defend the travellers of every age whom they escort.
Nothing can be seen at once so picturesque and sad as the aspect the caravans present as they extend themselves in a long serpentine line over the Pampas, advancing at a slow and regular pace along roads full of quagmires, over which the immense galeras roll, groaning on their croaking and massive wheels, tottering with indescribable swayings and joltings along ruts, out of which the oxen, lowing and stretching their smoking nostrils to the ground, can hardly drag them.
Ofttimes these heavy caravans are passed by arrieros (muleteers), whose recua (string of mules) trots gaily on, to the tinkling of a silver bell attached to the neck of the yegua madrina (the leading mule), and to the sound of "Arrea, mulos" (Get on mules), incessantly repeated, in all notes of the gamut, by the arriero chief and his peones who gallop about the mules to prevent their straying to right or left.