"We would rather hear the bird sing than the mouse squeak," is a common saying of that most interesting class of men in South America known to the world as gauchos, and it is the saying which, better than all others originating with them, gives an insight into their character as a class. To this may be added the book definition of their name. Gaucho, in the Spanish-English lexicon, is a term in architecture "applied to uneven superficies." The gaucho is the cowboy, the shepherd, and the plainsman of the prairies and deserts that extend from the Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil to the Andes and from the Grand Chaco forests of the Argentine to the Strait of Magellan. He is an out-of-doors citizen of somewhat "uneven superficies." My first view of a gaucho was had on Flores Island, the quarantine station of Uruguay, a place where nearly all the passengers bound on the English steamers for the River Plate, during the yellow fever season, are obliged to stop for disinfection and observation. We had been on the island a little over a day when a steer was butchered to renew the fresh meat supply. Nearly all the passengers went to see the beast suffer, among the rest a Brazilian naval officer, en route to a station in the Missiones. After a little time he came to my room, asked why I had not been at the killing, and added: [Illustration: GAUCHOS AT HOME.] "It is now the best time to go. The killing was nothing--a gaucho put his knife into his throat and it bled to death--but now the gauchos will have an _asado_. Did you ever in your life see an _asado_? It is of the finest of meat. They will roast the ribs of the cow by the fire." Near the buildings set aside for the use of the third-class passengers from Brazil we found a number of gauchos preparing to roast the ribs of beef over a small open fire--a fire so small that the coals and ashes occupied no more space on the ground than the ribs would have covered. The rib piece was threaded, so to speak, on a slender but stiff bar of steel five feet long. The bar was thrust into the ground so that the beef was inclined like a shelter tent above the blazing fire, and there it remained for about two hours, being turned occasionally by the gauchos.