Horses churning butter! A novel sort of thing it is to see a bag made of hides, into which the milk is put when it is turned sufficiently sour; this bag, fastened to a long strip of rope-hide, is attached at the other end to the leather girth which is round the horse’s body; the latter is then mounted by a gaucho, and ridden at a hard pace over the camp for a sufficient length of time to secure the making of the butter, by bumping the milk-bag against the ground.
A gaucho without his steed is an impracticability. To move his furniture, consisting of beds, chairs, tables, crockery, or hardware, the horse’s back is fitted to the burden. Coffins are conveyed to the burying-ground by being strapped transversely on a horse’s loins; and one would scarcely be surprised to hear of a specimen of the semi-centaur under consideration going asleep or cooking his dinner on horseback, more especially with the picture before us of a dentist operating on a poor fellow’s grinders, the patient and his physician being both mounted.
No crusader of olden time could have borne himself more proudly at the head of a gallant regiment bound to the Holy Land than does the gaucho, who guides a troop of twenty to thirty carretas, each drawn by six bullocks, across the Pampas to Cordova or Mendoza. On his saddle, chiefly made of untanned horse-hide and sheep-skin, he sits with the consciousness that he is the horse’s master. Indeed, it is rarely that the real gaucho puts his foot in a stirrup,—for practical purposes of riding never,—as it is only on state occasions that he uses them. Stirrups made in this country are of a triangular form, of iron or silver, with the base fabricated after the fashion of a filigree cruet-stand, though on a diminutive scale. At the museum in Buenos Ayres I saw some of these triangular stirrups that were described as having been brought from Paraguay, made from hard wood, so large, clumsy, and heavy as to constitute in themselves a load for a horse. With such heavy stirrups it may be imagined what a weight the gaucho’s horse has to bear, when we consider the component parts of the saddle or recado.
[This saddle is a very complex affair, made up of layers of sheep-skin, carpet, cow-hide, woollen cloth, etc., too intricate to be here described. It consists in all of twelve separate parts.]
The skill and endurance of the gaucho in the management of horses is very remarkable. One of these men is reported to have stood on the transverse bar, which crosses over the gate of the corral, and dropped down upon the back of a horse, while the animal, in company with several others, without bridle or saddle, was at full gallop out of the enclosure. What made the feat more adroit was the fact of his having permitted a looker-on to select the horse for him to bestride before the whole lot were driven out. The endurance of the gaucho is also striking; and I have been told of a man, well known at Buenos Ayres, having ridden a distance of seventy leagues—that is to say, two hundred and ten miles—in one day to that city.
Señor Don Carlos Hurtado, of Buenos Ayres, informs me that the great gaucho game, in which the famous Rosas was most proficient, was what is called el pialar,—that is, catching horses by lassoing their feet (the ordinary mode of doing this round the neck is called enlaser). Two lines of horsemen, each from ten to twenty in number, are placed at distances so far apart as to allow a mounted gaucho to pass between them. This man is to gallop as fast as he can from one end to the other,—in fact, to run the gauntlet. Every horseman in the lines between which he passes is furnished with a lasso. As he gallops up to the end of the line the first lasso is thrown; should it miss him, the second is cast, and so on. The dexterity evidenced by the watchfulness of men able to throw in such rapid succession after a horse which is galloping, whilst they are standing, is truly expert. At length the horse is pinned, and down he falls as if he were shot. And now the activity of the gaucho is displayed, for he comes on his feet without any injury, smoking his cigarette as coolly as when he lighted it at the starting-post.
The original popularity of Rosas was founded on his gaucho dexterity.
The game of el pato is performed by sewing a cooked duck into a piece of hide, leaving a leather point at each end for the hand to grasp. This play having been in former times limited in its carousal to the feast of St. John (or San Juan), a gaucho took it up. Whoever is the smartest secures the duck, and gallops away to any house where he knows a woman residing who bears the name of Juana,—Joan I suppose she would be called in English. It is an established rule that the lady of this name should give a four-real piece (i.e., one shilling and sixpence), either with the original duck returned or another equally complete. Then away he gallops to another house where lives a maiden of the name of Leonora, followed by a troop of his gaucho colleagues, trying to snap the duck-bag out of his hand. With it, of course, must be delivered up the four-real piece in the best of good humor. Falls and broken legs have often been the result of this game.
Juégo de la sortija is a class of sport played by having a small finger-ring fastened under a gibbet, beneath which a gaucho gallops, and tries to tilt off the ring with a skewer which he holds in his hand. This is done for a prize.
The salutation between two gauchos—even though they be the best of friends—who have not met for a long time is prefixed by a pass of arms with their knives. The conduct of these men is in general marked by sobriety, but when the “patron” pays them their wages they often buy a dozen of brandy or of gin, and this is all drunk, or spilled in drinking, by one man at a single sitting.