the same manner. While the more serious business was going on, a parcel of mischievous boys had perched themselves on a pile of firewood close to the corral; and being each armed in his way, with a lasso made of a small strip of hide, or of whipcord, got the first chance to noose the animals as they rushed out. They seldom failed to throw successfully, but their slender cords broke like cobwebs. One wicked urchin, indeed, more bold than the rest, mounted himself on a donkey that happened to be on the spot; and taking the lasso which belonged to it—for no description of animal that is ever mounted is without this essential equipment—and placing himself so as not to be detected by the men, he threw it gallantly over the first bullock’s neck. As soon as it became tight, away flew the astonished donkey and his rider: the terrified boy soon tumbled off; but poor Neddy was dragged along the ground, till a more efficient force was made to co-operate with his unavailing resistance.” The immense abundance of horses in South-America cannot be more strongly exemplified than by the following statement:— “I have still in my possession,” says Mr. Robertson, “a contract which I made in Goya, with an estanciero, for twenty thousand wild horses, to be taken on his estate at the price of a _medio_ each; that is to say _threepence_ for each horse or mare! The slaughter of them cost threepence a-head more; the staking and cleaning of the hides, once more, threepence; and lastly, a like sum for the carting to Goya: making the whole not one shilling for each skin. Of this contract ten thousand animals were delivered; the skins were packed in bales and sold in Buenos Ayres at six reals, or three shillings each, and they sold ultimately in England for seven or eight shillings, that is, for about twenty-eight or thirty times the first cost of the horse from which the skin was taken. Such is the accumulative value sometimes of the produce which is taken from the hands of the grower in one country before it gets into the hands of the consumer in another.” [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text that was bold by “equal” signs (=bold=). End of Project Gutenberg's The Horse and His Rider, by Rollo Springfield