The Gaucho with his horse is at home anywhere. When on a journey he will stop for the evening meal beside the dry bones of some dead animal. With these and grass he will make a fire and cook the meat he carries hanging behind him on the saddle. I have known an animal killed and the meat cooked with its own bones, but this is not usual. Dry bones burn better, and thistle-stalks better still. He will then lie down on mother earth with the horse-cloth under him and the saddle for a pillow. When travelling with these men I have known them, without any comment, stretch themselves on the ground, even though the rain was falling, and soon be in dreamland. After having passed a wretched night myself, I have asked them, "How did you sleep?" _"Muy Bien, Senor"_ (Very good, sir), has been the invariable answer. They would often growl much, however, over the wet saddle-cloths, for these soon cause a horse's back to become sore. Here and there, but sometimes at long distances apart, there is a _pulperia_ on the road. This is always designated by having a white flag flying on the end of a long bamboo. At these places cheap spirits of wine and very bad rum can be bought, along with tobacco, hard ship-biscuits (very often full of maggots, as I know only too well), and a few other more necessary things. I have observed in some of these wayside inns counters made of turf, built in blocks as bricks would be. Here the natives stop to drink long and deep, and stew their meagre brains in bad spirits. These draughts result in quarrels and sometimes in murder. The Gaucho, like the Indian, cannot drink liquor without becoming maddened by it. He will then do things which in his sober moments he would not dream of. I was acquainted with a man who owned a horse of which he was very fond This animal bore him one evening to a pulperia some miles distant, and was left tied outside while he imbibed his fill inside. Coming out at length beastly intoxicated, he mounted his horse and proceeded homeward. Arriving at a fork in the path, the faithful horse took the one leading home, but the rider, thinking in his stupor that the other way was the right one, turned the horse's head. As the poor creature wanted to get home and have the saddle taken off, it turned again. This affront was too much for the Gaucho, who is a man of volcanic passions, so drawing his knife, he stabbed it in the neck, and they dropped to the ground together. When he realized that he had killed his favorite horse he cried like a child. I passed this dead animal several times afterwards and saw the vultures clean its bones. It served me as a witness to the results of ungoverned passion.