Many other estancias similarly organised lay scattered about the Pampa, within a day's gallop of the Estancia de Las Barrancas. The limits of these different estancias were ill defined, their title-deeds being merely a grant of some certain number of leagues of land from the Viceregal Government of Buenos Aires or of Peru. There was yet much land not allotted at all, so that any of these freemen who worked on the estancias, who could get together a few cows and horses, and wished to settle down quietly, could easily find land on which to build himself a rancho and to pasture his animals. These freemen were of a roving nature, seldom working more than a few months at a time on one estancia; but hundreds of them had thus made homes for themselves; to some of them at times government gave grants of the land on which they had settled, and they became proprietors. They were a hardy, simple race of yeomen, who held the dwellers in cities in great contempt, and considered that man's first necessity in life was a good horse. Their amusements consisted of feats of horsemanship, in which horse-racing naturally held a prominent place, in hunting deer and ostrich with their boleadores, or in listening to the long monotonous songs of some "cantor" of their own class, who generally invented his songs for himself, and not unfrequently improvised a fresh one when some incident of the day provided him with a subject. Government was to them a mysterious power, which gave grants of land and imposed taxes. Religion to them consisted in the baptism of children, and in the burial of the dead in consecrated ground; yet they had an unwritten law among them which they observed most strictly, and they had a sort of natural religion, which told them that there was a God and a life beyond the grave. Among these men, peons or small proprietors, Don Gregorio Lopez proposed to raise a squadron of cavalry, and Marcelino Ponce de Leon proposed to help him in his work by instilling into them the first principles of patriotism. Don Gregorio met with very fair success, his recruits being left at liberty all the week and meeting every Sunday at the Estancia de Las Barrancas for drill, which to them was a novel amusement. Their chief did not purpose to embody them permanently until the near approach of the English should render their services necessary, but contented himself for the present with selecting his officers and instructing them in their duties, in all which he showed considerable skill. But his nephew instead of being any assistance to him was rather a hindrance.