He glances at us, as he rushes by, and determines to give us a specimen of his only art.  Shaking his long, wild locks, as he rises in the stirrup and presses his horse to its maddest gallop, he snatches from his saddle-bow the loop of a coil of rope, whirls it in his right hand for an instant, then hurls it, singing through the air, a distance of fifty paces.  A jerk and a strain,—­a bellow and a convulsive leap,—­his lasso is fast around the horns of a bull in the galloping herd.  The horseman flashes a murderous knife from his belt, winds himself up to the plunging beast, severs at one swoop the tendon of its hind leg, and buries the point of his weapon in the victim’s spinal marrow.  It falls dead.  The man, my friend, is a Gaucho; and we are standing on the Pampas of the Argentine Republic.

Let us examine this dexterous wielder of the knife and cord. He, Juan de Dios! Come hither, O Centaur of the boundless cattle-plains!  We will not ask you to dismount,—­for that you never do, we know, except to eat and sleep, or when your horse falls dead, or tumbles into a bizcachero; but we want to have a look at your savage self, and the appurtenances thereunto belonging.

And first, you say, the meaning of his name.  The title, Gaucho, is applied to the descendants of the early Spanish colonists, whose homes are on the Pampa, instead of in the town,—­to the rich estanciero, or owner of square leagues of cattle, in common with the savage herdsman whom he employs,—­to Generals and Dictators, as well as to the most ragged Pampa-Cossack in their pay.  Our language is incapable of expressing the idea conveyed by this term; and the Western qualification “backwoodsman” is perhaps the nearest approach to a synonyme that we can attain.

The head of our swarthy friend is covered with a species of Neapolitan cap, (let me confess, in a parenthesis, that my ideas of such head-coverings are derived from the costume of graceful Signor Brignoli in “Masaniello,”) which was once, in all probability, of scarlet hue, but now almost rivals in color the jet-black locks which it confines.  His face—­ well, we will pass that over, and, on our return to civilized life, will refer the curious inquirer for a fac-simile to the first best painting of Salvator, there to select at pleasure the most ferocious bandit countenance that he can find.  And now the remainder of his person.  He wears an open jacket of dirt-crusted serge, covered in front with a gorgeous eruption of plated buttons, and a waistcoat of the same material, adorned with equal profuseness, and showing at the neck a substratum of dubious crimson, supposed to be a flannel shirt.  So far, you may say, there is nothing suspicious or very outlandish about his rig; but turpiter desinit formosus superne,—­there is something highly remarkable a continuacion.  Do you see that blanket which is drawn tightly up, fore and aft, toward his waist, and, there confined