Sackbuts and psalteries and shawms were there, with serpents, gigantic clarionets, and curiously twisted oboes, and drums, whose canvas all hung slack and gave a muffled sound when they were beaten, and little fifes, ear-piercing and devilish, were represented in that band. It banged and crashed “La Palomita,” that tune of evil-sounding omen, for to its strains prisoners were always ushered out to execution in the times of Lopez, and as it played the players slowly walked down the steps. Behind them followed the alcalde, an aged Indian, dressed in long cotton drawers, that at the knees were split into a fringe that hung down to his ankles, a spotless shirt much pleated, and a red cloak of fine merino cloth. In his right hand he carried a long cane with a silver head—his badge of office. Walking up to the door of his own house, by which was set a table covered with glasses and with homemade cakes, he gave the signal for the running at the ring. The Correntino gauchos, two or three Paraguayans, and a German married to a Paraguayan wife, were all who entered for the sport. The band struck up, and a young Paraguayan started the first course. Gripping his stirrups tightly between his naked toes, and seated on an old “recao,” surmounted by a sheepskin, he spurred his horse, a wall-eyed skewbald, with his great iron spurs, tied to his bare insteps with thin strips of hide. The skewbald, only half-tamed, reared once or twice and bounded off, switching its ragged tail, which had been half-eaten off by cows. The people yelled, a “mosqueador!”—that is, a “fly-flapper,” a grave fault in a horse in the eyes of Spanish Americans—as the Paraguayan steered the skewbald with the reins held high in his left hand, carrying the other just above the level of his eyes, armed with a piece of cane about a foot in length.