April 27th.—Mules and men need rest; breakfast over.
‘Now, Cap’en,’ says mine host, as I was debating whether it would be wiser to remain quietly at home, and enjoy a thoroughly idle day, or join the hunters, I calkilate we’ve got to worry out this day somehow. S’pose we take a ride over to the Tuscan Springs. It’s a mighty strange place, you bet your life; they say it’s right over the devil’s kitchen, and when he’s tarnation hot, he comes up and pops out his head to get a taste of fresh air. The very water comes risin’ up a-bilin’, and the pools flash into flame like powder, if you put fire near ‘um.’
‘Why, Major,’ I replied, ‘it is the place of all others I should enjoy seeing. How far is it?’
‘Waal, it ain’t over ten mile, but a mighty bad road at that.—Here, Joe, saddle up, and bring round two mustangs.’
The mustangs are small compact horses, seldom exceeding fourteen-and-a-half hands in height, descended from Spanish stock, originally brought into Mexico on its conquest by the Spaniards. They run wild in large herds on the grassy prairies in California and Texas, and are just lassoed when needed. I may perhaps mention, en passant, that a lasso is from thirty to forty feet long, and made of strips of raw hide plaited together. When a mustang is to be caught, an experienced hand always keeps the herd to windward of him; sufficiently near he circles the lasso round his head, and with unerring certainty flings it over the neck of the horse he has selected.
The end of a lasso being made fast to a ring in the saddle, as soon as the horse is captured, the rider turns his steed sharp round, and gallops off, dragging the terrified and choking animal after him. The terrible noose becomes tighter and tighter, pressing on the windpipe, until, unable to offer further resistance, the panic-stricken beast rolls in agony, half suffocated, on the prairie. Never after this does the horse forget the lasso—the sight of it makes him tremble in every limb. I have seen the most wild and vicious horses rendered gentle and docile in a minute, by simply laying the lasso on the neck behind the ears.
The breaking-in is a very simple affair: while the animal is down the eyes are bandaged, and a powerful Spanish bit placed in the mouth. This accomplished, he is allowed to get up, and the saddle is firmly ‘synched.’ The saddles commonly used in California differ very little from those used in Mexico. The stirrups are cut out from a block of wood, allowing only the point of the toe to be inserted; they are set far back, and oblige the rider to stand rather than sit in the saddle. One girth only is used, styled a ‘synch,’ made of horsehair, and extremly wide; no buckles or stitching is used, but all is fastened with strips of raw hide. Everything being complete, the rider fixes himself firmly in the saddle, and leaning forward jerks off the blind; it is now an open question who is to have the best of it. If the man succeeds in sitting on the mustang until he can spur him into a gallop, his wildness is soon taken out of him, and one or two more lessons complete the breaking.
Joe by this time had made his appearance with the mustangs. Mounting, away we went at a raking gallop! I know no exercise half as exhilarating and exciting as the ‘lope,’ a kind of long canter, the travelling pace of a mustang; there is no jarring or jolting. All one has to do is to sit firmly in the saddle; the horse, obeying the slightest turn of the wrist or check of the rein, swings along for hours at a stretch, without any show of weariness.
Having crossed the Sacramento in a ‘scow,’ a kind of rough ferry-boat, our road lay over broad plains and through scattered belts of timber. The grass was completely burnt up, and the series of gravelly arroyos, in and out of which we continually plunged and scrambled, marked clearly the course of the winter streams.
The air felt hot and sultry, but fragrant with the perfume of the mountain cudweed. Not a cloud was visible in the lurid sky, and the distant mountains, thinly dotted with timber, seemed softened and subdued as seen through the blue haze. We entered a valley leading through a pile of volcanic hills that one could easily have imagined had been once the habitat of civilised man. The wooded glades had all the appearance of lawns and parks planted with exquisite taste; the trees, in nothing resembling the wild growth of the forest, were grouped in every variety of graceful outline.