FREDERICK BARCKHAUSEN
By the way, when you fire at a guanaco they will sway their heads downwards with an odd sort of ducking motion. Not one individual but a whole herd will do this at any unaccustomed sound. The effect is most curious.
While at Bahia Camerones our party was completed. We took with us five Gauchos, who are active, handy men as a rule. The population of the country is largely composed of Gauchos; in fact, they form the foundation of Patagonian life.
They live by the horse, and the horse lives by them. They drive mobs of cattle or of horses for owners across three degrees of latitude to sell them. They have been born in the camp, live in the camp, and will very likely die there also. In Patagonia they treat their horses in a method very different to that which we employ in our crowded country. There nature gives grass, water, and the horse; man tames the animal as little as possible from his wild state, and forces an alliance with nature. At night the mares are hobbled and the horses turned loose; while the Gauchos light their camp-fire and drink maté through the bombilla.
At the first light next morning they take it in turn to bring in the troop, which they do with an astonishing swiftness. Sometimes, of course, the horses "clear," and then it is that the Gauchos in charge find them by tracking.
In a country intersected by deep cañadones, which offer a secure hiding-place in their many hollows, this is a difficult matter. The tracks perhaps run easily through a belt of soft marsh, and then are invisible upon a pampa of shingle and thorn.
A true Gaucho must be able to do a number of things—to back an untamed colt, to lassoo, to use the boleadores, which are heavy stones attached together by a hide rope, and are to the Patagonian what the boomerang is to the Australian aborigine. He must be able to cook, to make horse-gear from the pelts of beasts, to find his way without a compass from point to point, by instinct as it were.
The Gaucho shares with the poet the honour of being born, not made. This proves that Gaucho work is Art, with a big A. Take, for instance, the power of driving single-handed a big mob of wild horses and keeping them compact. No one who has not tried it can imagine what heartbreaking work it is to a beginner. One learns to do it after a fashion in time, but never like the man who has been bred to the craft.
CHAPTER III
THE BATTLE OF THE HORSES
Leave Bahia Camerones—Horses wild—Decide on taking one waggon—Bell-mare—Names of horses—Breaking-in of horses—German peones—Horses stray—Gaucho trick—Watching troop at night—Four languages—Signalling by smokes—Searching for horses—Favourite words and phrases—Nag of the baleful eye—Cañadon of the dry river—Bad ground—Flies—Ostrich eggs—Shooting guanaco—River Chico of Chubut—Puma's visit at night—Condor—Lady killed—Singing in camp—Stormy night—Breakdown of waggon—Guanaco on stony ground—Long chase—Guanaco's death.