The Chili saddle is even more queer and complicated than the bridle. First, six or seven sheepskins are placed upon the horse’s back, one on top of the other; a leather strap is passed around them and firmly secured; a skeleton saddle, or rather a piece of wood cut in the shape of a saddle-tree, with a cantle at each end, comes next, and on top of this any number of sheepskins; or, if the owner is rich, rare furs furnish a seat, which is called the _montura_. The four corners are fastened down by broad leather straps, ornamented with silver or brass buckles, to enable the rider to wedge himself in, and the whole is bound around the horse’s belly with a broad band of leather or canvas. Sometimes aristocratic and wealthy riders have a high pommel like that of the Mexican saddle, which is covered with silver, and stamped on the top with his family coat of arms. The amount of silver on a man’s riding equipment is understood to indicate his wealth and station in life, and there is a great deal of competition in this direction among the swell caballeros. The stirrups of the ordinary citizen are made of two huge pieces of wood, with a hole cut through for the foot, while those of the aristocrat are brass or silver slippers. The wooden affair, the poor man’s stirrup, is rudely cut out of oak, or other hard wood, by hand, and usually weighs as much as four or five pounds. The brass one is quite as heavy, but much more ornamental. [Illustration: A SOLID SILVER SPUR.] When the rider is seated in the saddle his legs are entirely concealed by the furs and sheepskins, which add to his warmth, and on his back he wears the _poncho_ of the country, which is the most comfortable and convenient garment that human ingenuity has ever produced. It is about the size of the rubber poncho used in the United States, but is woven of vicuña hair or lamb’s-wool, and keeps the wearer cool by day, as the rays of the sun cannot penetrate it, and warm by night. It answers as well for an umbrella as for an overcoat, and sheds the rain better than rubber, for the oil is not extracted from the wool of which it is made. The vicuña is the mountain-goat of the Andes, but is becoming scarce, and nowadays a vicuña poncho is as rare and expensive as a camel’s-hair shawl, which it very much resembles, being worth from one hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars. A fully equipped saddle-horse of a caballero, or gentleman, with vicuña poncho and spurs of silver, with saddle and bridle mounted with the same metal, often represents an investment of four or five thousand dollars. Very often the stirrup is made of solid silver, beautifully chased, and those used by ladies are generally so. The English manufacturers are able to produce the ornaments and stirrups so much cheaper than the native workmen, who have no labor-saving machinery, that nearly all are now imported, and they have succeeded in imitating the poncho very well too. But among the