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. Two years more than half a century ago there lived a Creole trader of some wealth in the little town of Araure, in the province of Barinas, upon the outskirts of the Llanos. Don José had a stalwart son, aged about sixteen, whom he had trained to active usefulness amid the monotonous ease of the torrid little municipality. Young Jose Antonio had received, it is true, only a scanty education, but he could sign his name, could verify a calculation, and had a shrewd, quick head for business. The doctors-of-law, tolerably numerous even in little Araure, pronounced him born for a jurist, and he was a godsend to the litigious natives of the Captain-Generalcy. The hide-and-tallow merchants nodded knowingly, as he passed them in the street with a good-humored _Àdios_, and predicted great fortunes for the lad as a future man-of-business. The Cura thought it a pity that he should prefer the society of the dusky beauties of Araure to the more hallowed enjoyments of preparation for a priestly life. And all the while quite other destinies were held in store by Fate. The remissness of a mercantile correspondent of his father altered the current of his life, and mightily influenced, even to the present day, the fortunes of his country.