As he approached the arch, in which the ring dangled from a string, his horse, either frightened by the shouting of the crowd or by the arch itself, swerved and plunged violently, carrying its rider through the thickest of the people, who separated like a flock of sheep when a dog runs through it, cursing him volubly. The German came the next, dressed in his Sunday clothes, a slop-made suit of shoddy cloth, riding a horse that all his spurring could not get into full speed. The rider’s round, fair face was burned a brick-dust colour, and as he spurred and plied his whip, made out of solid tapir hide, the sweat ran down in streams upon his coat. So intent was he on flogging, that as he neared the ring he dropped his piece of cane, and his horse, stopping suddenly just underneath the arch, would have unseated him had he not clasped it round the neck. Shouts of delight greeted this feat of horsemanship, and one tall Correntino, taking his cigarette out of his mouth, said to his fellow sitting next to him upon his horse, “The very animals themselves despise the gringos. See how that little white-nosed brute that he was riding knew that he was a ‘maturango,’ and nearly had him off.” Next came Hijinio Rojas, a Paraguayan of the better classes, sallow and Indian looking, dressed in clothes bought in Asuncion, his trousers tucked into his riding-boots. His small black hat, with the brim flattened up against his head by the wind caused by the fury of the gallop of his active little roan with four white feet, was kept upon his head by a black ribbon knotted underneath his chin. As he neared the arch his horse stepped double several times and fly jumped; but that did not disturb him in the least, and, aiming well he touched the ring, making it fly into the air. A shout went up, partly in Spanish, partly in Guarani, from the assembled people, and Rojas, reining in his horse, stopped him in a few bounds, so sharply, that his unshod feet cut up the turf of the green plaza as a skate cuts the ice. He turned and trotted gently to the arch, and then, putting his horse to its top speed, stopped it again beside the other riders, amid the “Vivas” of the crowd. Then came the turn of the four Correntinos, who rode good horses from their native province, had silver horse-gear and huge silver spurs, that dangled from their heels. They were all gauchos, born, as the saying goes, “amongst the animals.” A dun with fiery eyes and a black stripe right down his back, and with black markings on both hocks, a chestnut skewbald, a “doradillo,” and a horse of that strange mealy bay with a fern-coloured muzzle, that the gauchos call a “Pangaré,” carried them just as if their will and that of those who rode them were identical. Without a signal, visible at least to any but themselves, their horses started at full speed, reaching occasionally at the bit, then dropping it again and bridling so easy that one could ride them with a thread drawn from a spider’s web.