[Illustration: A HERD OF WILD HORSES IN NORTH AMERICA.]
Where there is such a profusion of horses, the people cannot fail to be all riders; and such they are, bold and expert beyond all comparison with other nations. The Indians of the Pampas and the Prairies, whose forefathers fled in horror and dismay from the fatal apparition of the Spanish horses, are now literally ‘incorpsed and demi-natured with the brave beast.’ Many of the tribes, from being constantly on horseback from their infancy, can scarcely walk. Their legs have become too weak, from long disuse, for that kind of progression, and they loathe and despise it. The proudest attitude of the human figure, as they declare, is when a man, bending over his horse, lance in hand, is riding at his enemy. The occupation of their lives is war, especially against “the Christians,” and they pursue it for two objects,—to steal cattle, and for the pleasure of murdering the people; and they will even leave the cattle to massacre and torture their enemies, such is their ferocity, and their hereditary hatred to the descendants of the cruel oppressors of their fathers. The Gauchos, who themselves ride so beautifully, declare that it is impossible to vie with a mounted Indian; for that the Indians’ horses are better than their own, and also that they have such a way of urging them on by their cries, and by a peculiar motion of their bodies, that even if they were to change horses, the Indians would beat them. Mr. Darwin related a case in which this fact was proved.
At Cholechel, Bahia-Blanca, General Rosas’ troops encountered a tribe of Indians, of whom they killed twenty or thirty. The cacique escaped in a manner which surprised every one: the chief Indians have always one or two picked horses, which they keep ready for any urgent occasion. On one of these, an old white horse, the cacique sprung, taking with him his little son: the horse had neither saddle nor bridle. To avoid the shots the Indian rode in the peculiar method of his nation, namely, with an arm round the horse’s neck, and one leg only on its back. Thus hanging on one side he was seen patting the horse’s head, and talking to him. The pursuers urged every effort in the chase; the commandant three times changed his horse, but all in vain; the old Indian father and his son escaped, and were free. What a fine picture one can form in one’s mind: the naked bronze-like figure of the old man with his little boy, riding like a Mazeppa on the white horse, thus leaving far behind him the host of his pursuers!