these are elements of exquisite enjoyment to the unsophisticated Rarey of the Plains.  His great delight, on such occasions, is to display his skill in lassoing an untamed colt, or in performing the feat called to colear a bull.  He selects from the suspicious herd some fine young three-year old, grazing somewhat apart from the main body, and creeps silently towards it.  Suddenly the lasso flies in snaky coils over the head of the beast, and is drawn with strangulating tightness about its neck.  At the first plunge, a brother hatero lassoes the animal’s hind legs, and it is permitted to rear and kick as frantically as it can, until it drops to the ground exhausted and strangled.  The Llanero immediately approaches the prostrate colt, and deliberately beats its head with a heavy bludgeon until it becomes quite senseless.  He then places his saddle upon its back, adjusts a murderous bit in its clammy mouth, and seats himself firmly in the saddle at the moment when the animal recovers strength enough to rise.  The fearful plunges, the wild bounds, the vicious attempts at biting, which ensue, are all in vain; in a couple of days he subsides into a mere high-spirited trotter, whom one can ride with ease after once effecting a mount.

The pastime of “tailing” a bull is somewhat singular.  Two or three horsemen single out an animal upon which to practise it, and secure a lasso about its horns.  Another lasso, deftly thrown about its hind legs, is fastened to a tree, and the strongest of the party then seizes the bellowing beast by its tail, which he twists until his victim falls over on its side and is dispatched.  The greatest dexterity is required in this manoeuvre by all practising it, as the slacking of either lasso enables the bull to turn upon his caudal persecutor, who is certain to be gored to death.  This, indeed, not unfrequently happens.  But a Llanero cares little for death.  He faces it daily in his lonely converse with thousands of intractable beasts, in his bath in the river swarming with alligators,—­in the swamp teeming with serpents, against whose poison there is no antidote, and whose bite will destroy the life of a man in a single hour.  Content with the wild excitement of his daily round of duty and recreation, with his meal of dried beef and cassava-cake, washed down, it is likely, with a gourdful of guarapo, a species of rum, in comparison with which the New England beverage is innocent and weak, and with the occasional recurrence of some such turbulent festival as that of the branding, he cares nothing for the future, and bestows no thought upon the past.  The Llanero may be called a happy man.

II.

EL ARAUSENSE.