Morning (19th) came to us very grey with a pallid sun, and ushered in the first day of the new system. We found it necessary to use sixteen horses as cargueros or pack-horses. In the early dawn we caught the chosen animals, and tied them up to the smashed waggon. It is one of the inconveniences of pampa travel that bushes strong enough to hold a horse which is at all restive are few and far between. In that particular spot there was absolutely nothing in the way of a bush, however small, which could by any chance have borne the strain.
READY TO BE CARGOED
So we tied them up to the waggon and they immediately proceeded to tie themselves and their headropes into still more complicated knots: they made cats' cradles, reef-knots, sliding nooses, a dozen knots one knew and a dozen one had never dreamed of. Of the sixteen horses, half had never had a cargo on their backs until that day; we had meant to break them in, but the waggon succumbed too soon to the hardships of the way, and before we had had time to carry out our intentions.
During the three days we remained in camp among the strong-scented yellow flowers where the waggon lay, all hands had been hard at work sewing up stores into the skins of guanacos, which I had killed for food on the march. The proper arranging of packs for horses is a very difficult matter; shape, size and weight have all to be considered. Each cargo should be divided into three portions, the balance of the two sides being carefully adjusted, and the centre piece, that which surmounts the pack-saddle, should not be more than twelve inches high. There should be at least two rugs and a sheepskin underneath the saddle. As we had not enough sheepskins, the pelts of guanaco were in some cases made to serve our purpose. Several different forms of pack-saddle have each of them points to recommend them, but to my mind the form used on the cattle-plains of North America is preferable to any other, and is more easily loaded, as the horse can be led between the two side-packs, which are hung along upon hooks attached to the wooden frame of the saddle. The whole cargo is best kept in place by means of a couple of cinches or girths. This form of pack is, however, but little used in the Argentine Republic. With such pack-saddles Hähansen and I, at a later date, travelled one hundred and fifty miles, during which it was not necessary to stop more than once or twice to readjust the cargoes.
During the whole of our subsequent wanderings, the horses entered so much into our lives that some descriptive remarks having regard to the peculiarities of each will perhaps not be out of place. Any one who has been thrown very much into a close association with horses can hardly have failed to notice the extraordinary friendships which these animals not infrequently form between themselves.
Among our troop there was a pale bronze-coloured horse to which the Spanish language assigns the term Gateado. This creature's whole life was spent in close attendance upon the largest horse in the tropilla, a piebald, called by us the Big Overo. The Big Overo was a buck-jumper, and when we wanted to catch him, he and the Gateado, his intimate, were wont to evade us together. If we could catch the Big Overo by craft, the Gateado was as good as captured also; but if, unluckily, our first attempt upon the Big Overo failed, both animals made a point of charging about the camp and frightening all the other horses. On one occasion, when it was judged well to give the Big Overo a lesson, Hughes bolassed him and after a gallop of a couple of hundred yards he came to the ground in an inextricable tangle.[5] The Gateado remained by his side and allowed himself to be caught without any struggle. After a time the intimacy between these horses grew to such a pitch that we gradually dispensed with a rope for the Gateado, knowing that if the Big Overo was once tied up his friend would stand beside him and allow us to put on his cargo quietly. This odd friendship finally reached such an extreme that when the Big Overo was sogaed out for the night, the Gateado was in the habit of giving up his hours of feeding in order to satisfy the claims of friendship. The feeling was mutual, for the Big Overo manifested almost as many proofs of his preference.
