King of Camargue

by Jean Aicard

These journeys are made at night. As they pass through the villages, the people rush to their windows. The young men are on the watch for the “cattle” and try to drive them out of the circle of drovers, who lose their temper, and swear and strike: that sport is called the abrivade. In Arles, if the bulls happen to arrive by daylight, the drovers have a hard task, for all the young men in the city do their utmost to break the line of horsemen, in order to cut out one bull, or several, if possible, and then drive them through the city. The city assumes a posture of defence. Overturned carts barricade the ends of the streets. Shops are closed. The bull, in a frenzy, rushes here and there, stands musing for a moment at the corners, decides to take a certain direction, rushes at a passer-by, knocks him down, and generally selects the shop of a dealer in crockery and glassware in which to make merry, amid the shouts of an excited populace.

The drovers are a free, fearless, savage race, a little contemptuous of cities, devoted to their desert.

A drover is at home alike in sun and rain, in the wind from the land, and the wind from the sea.

A drover knows how to deal blows and to receive them; he pursues a bull at the gallop, and with a blow of the spear upon his flank, judiciously selecting his time, “fells” him unerringly.

He knows the trick of pursuing a wild bull making for the open country. His well-trained horse bites the furious beast on the hind-quarters, and he turns. The drover, spear in rest, pricks the bull in the nose as he rushes upon him, and checks him.

Sometimes a drover, on foot and alone, pursued by a cow with calf, and apparently in imminent danger from the furious beast, will suddenly turn about, and—with arm outstretched, as if he held his spear—point his three fingers at the animal, separated so as to represent the three points of the trident. In face of the motionless man, the cow, seized with terror, recoils, pawing up the earth, with lowered head and threatening horns; and, as soon as she thinks she is well out of the man’s reach, she turns and flies.

A common performance of the drover, when he is in good spirits, is this: pursuing the bull, he passes beyond him some twenty or thirty yards, then stops short and leaps down from his horse; the bull, taken by surprise, rushes at the man, who has one knee on the ground. The bull comes rushing on with lowered horns. Three sharp hand-claps: the bull has stopped! His hot breath strikes the face of his subduer, who has already seized him with both hands by the horns. The man, springing instantly to his feet, struggles to throw the beast over to the right. The bull, resisting, throws himself in the opposite direction. The two forces neutralize each other for an instant, almost equal, the result uncertain; then the man suddenly yields, and the beast, unexpectedly impelled in the direction of his own efforts, falls upon his side. Skill is seconded by the creature’s whole strength in its struggle for victory.

This is the method adopted at the ferrades, or brandings, where the sport consists in branding the young animals with a red-hot iron.

For a drover, to seize a colt by the nose, and mount him bareback; to roll with his steed at the bottom of a ditch and emerge firmly seated in the saddle; to subdue stallions by fatigue, and, if dismounted and wounded by a kick, to dress the wound as tranquilly as the cork-cutter dresses the scratch made by his knife,—all this is mere child’s-play.

A drover, caught between two horns—luckily well separated—and tossed into the air, has but one thought when he picks himself up after falling to the ground—a thought so surprising as not to be ridiculous: to rearrange his breeches and readjust his belt.