They were about fifty in number, well mounted, and armed to the teeth with long lances, sabres, poignards, and blunderbusses. These horsemen were evidently Spaniards. Their features, bronzed by the sun and the air of the desert, indicated intelligence and bravery; there was in them something of the haughty and determined bearing of the first Spanish conquerors, from whom they descended in a direct line, without degenerating. Still masters of a great part of the American territory, they did not admit that they could ever be chased from it by the independent party, notwithstanding the victories gained by the latter. Although riding at a gallop, they advanced in good order; their chests covered with a cuirass of buffalo skin, intended to shield them from the Indian arrows, the lance fixed in the stirrup, the blunderbuss in the bow, the turned sabre in the scabbard, knocking against the spur with a metallic sound. At ten paces in advance of the troop came a young man of haughty mien, of proud and noble features, with a full black eye, a sarcastic mouth, shaded by a fine black moustache, coquettishly oiled and turned up at the ends. This young man bore the insignia of a captain, and commanded the troop which followed him. He was about twenty-five years of age; while galloping, he played, with a charming air, with his horse, a magnificent specimen of the untamed coursers of the pampa, who, while spoken to and handled with the nervous delicacy of a woman, curvetted, leaped on one side, and sometimes brought a frown and an ill-humoured grimace to the bronzed and battered countenance of an old sergeant, who was galloping in the rear of the right of the company. Meanwhile, the distance between the two troops rapidly diminished, and the travellers found themselves, so to speak, the common centre of them. The two Frenchmen, without saying a word, but as by common consent, had put themselves in the saddle, and in the middle of the track waited, calm and dignified, but their hands on their weapons, and doubtless inwardly uneasy, although they did not wish to appear so. The second troop, of which we have not yet spoken, was composed of some thirty horsemen at the most, all wearing the characteristic and picturesque costume of the gauchos of the pampa. In the midst they led a dozen mules, loaded with baggage. Arrived at fifteen paces from the travellers, the two troops halted, appearing to measure one another with their eyes, and mutually preparing for the combat. To an indifferent spectator, certainly it would have been a strange spectacle offered by these three groups of men, thus boldly camped in the midst of the desert plain, looking defiantly at each other, and, nevertheless, stationary, and appearing to hesitate to charge. Some minutes passed by.