The sun began to slant a little, and we had still three leagues to drive the horses to the pasture where they had to pass the night for the last time in freedom, before they were entrained. Our horses stood outside of the corral, tied to the posts, some saddled with the “recado,” {190} its heads adorned with silver, some with the English saddle, that out of England has such a strange, unserviceable look, much like a saucepan on a horse’s back. Just as we were about to mount, a man appeared, driving a point of horses, which, he said, “to leave would be a crime against the sacrament.” “These are all pingos,” he exclaimed, “fit for the saddle of the Lord on High, all of them are bitted in the Brazilian style, can turn upon a spread-out saddle-cloth, and all of them can gallop round a bullock’s head upon the ground, so that the rider can keep his hand upon it all the time.” The speaker by his accent was a Brazilian. His face was olive-coloured, his hair had the suspicion of a kink. His horse, a cream-colour, with black tail and mane, was evidently only half-tamed, and snorted loudly as it bounded here and there, making its silver harness jingle and the rider’s poncho flutter in the air. Although time pressed, the man’s address was so persuasive, his appearance so much in character with his great silver spurs just hanging from his heel, his jacket turned up underneath his elbow by the handle of his knife, and, to speak truth, the horses looked so good and in such high condition that we determined to examine them, and told their owner to drive them into a corral. Once again we commenced the work that we had done so many times of mounting and examining. Once more we fought, trying to explain the mysteries of red tape to unsophisticated minds, and once again our “domadores” sprang lightly, barebacked, upon the horses they had never seen before, with varying results. Some of the Brazilian’s horses bucked like antelopes, El Correntino and the others of our men sitting them barebacked as easily as an ordinary man rides over a small fence. To all our queries why they did not saddle up we got one answer, “To ride with the recado is but a pastime only fit for boys.” So they went on, pulling the horses up in three short bounds, nostrils aflame and tails and manes tossed wildly in the air, only a yard or two from the corral. Then, slipping off, gave their opinion that the particular “bayo,” “zaino,” or “gateao” was just the thing to mount a lancer on, and that the speaker thought he could account for a good tale of Boches if he were over there in the Great War. This same great war, which they called “barbarous,” taking a secret pleasure in the fact that it showed Europeans not a whit more civilised than they themselves, appeared to them something in the way of a great pastime from which they were debarred.