Aside from the extreme interest of seeing the ranch itself, the twenty-mile ride was most enjoyable. The country was like our own plains near the foothills of the Rockies, except that there was more water and a greater variety of timber. The most striking trees were the occasional peculiar flat-top pines, and there were also other and very beautiful pines through which the wind sang mournfully; and there were many flowers. In one place we saw a small prairie deer, and in galloping we had to keep a lookout for armadillo burrows, just as we keep a lookout for prairie-dog holes in the West. The birds were strange and interesting, some of them with beautiful voices. Out on the plains were screamers, noisy birds, as big as African bustards. One sparrow sang loudly, at midday, round the corrals where we dismounted for lunch. He was a confiding, pretty little fellow, with head markings somewhat like those of our white-crowned and white-throated sparrows. He sang better than the former, and not as well as the latter.
The horses were good, and we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon canter back to the home ranch, when the shadows had begun to lengthen. We loped across the rolling grass-land and by the groves of strange trees, through the brilliant weather. Under us the horses thrilled with life; it was a country of vast horizons; we felt the promise of the future of the land across which we rode.
CHAPTER V
A CHILEAN RONDEO
On November 21, 1913, we crossed the Andes into Chile by rail. The railway led up the pass which, used from time immemorial by the Indians, afterward marked the course of traffic for their Spanish successors, and was traversed by the army of San Martin in the hazardous march that enabled him to strike the decisive blows in the war for South American independence. The valleys were gray and barren, the sides of the towering mountains were bare, the landscape was one of desolate grandeur. To the north the stupendous peak of Aconquija rose in its snows.
On the Chilean side, as we descended, we passed a lovely lake, and went through wonderful narrow gorges; and farther down were trees, and huge cactus, and flowers of many colors. Then we reached the lower valleys and the plains; and the change was like magic. Suddenly we were in a rich fairy-land of teeming plenty and beauty, a land of fertile fields and shady groves, a land of grain and, above all, of many kinds of luscious fruits.
As in the Argentine and Brazil, every courtesy and hospitality was shown us in Chile. We enjoyed every experience throughout our stay. One of the pleasantest and most interesting days we passed was at a great ranch, a great cattle-farm and country place twenty-five or thirty miles from Santiago. It was some fifteen miles from the railway station. The road led through a rich, fertile country largely under tillage, but also largely consisting of great fenced pastures.
The owners of the ranch, our kind and courteous hosts, had summoned all the riders of the neighborhood to attend the rondeo (round-up and sports), and several hundred, perhaps a thousand, came. With the growth of cultivation of the soil and the introduction of improved methods of stock-breeding in Chile, the old rude life of the wild cow-herders is passing rapidly away. But in many places it remains in modified form, and the country folk whose business is pastoral form a striking and distinctive class. These countrymen live their lives in the saddle. All these men, whose industries are connected with cattle, are known as huasos. They are kin to the Argentine gauchos, and more remotely to our own cowboys.