Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1891 — THE HUASO OF THE PAMPAS. [ARTICLE]

THE HUASO OF THE PAMPAS.

How the Cow boy of Chili Rides and Ilis Odd Outfit. The Huaso is a centaur. He rides as other men eat. The horse is as much a necessary of existence to him as the halfquartern loaf to the English agriculturist. Under Providence lie will dispel, on a mind not above the reception of impressions, the innate insular notion that no people knowhow to rightly handle that animal save ourselves. Yet he rides Chilian fashion, which is not that of Captain Robert Weir. He and his horse are both suited aud equipped for the work they have tq do. If absurd in European eyes, it is the outcome of experience. He has to pass day after day in the saddle, so his saddle is short,deep and high-peaked, giving support before and behind. The rider should tit into it like a foot into a boot. Hence he chooses it with care. A huaso will lend his horse, and even at pinch his pacing mule, but draws the line at his saddle, sauf force majeure. He has often to camp out at night. Hence under the saddle six, eight or ten layers of sheepskins, cut square, are packed so that he sits almost on a level with his horse's head. These serve as bed aud coverlet. He has to crush iu and out of herds of cattle and scattered timber, and to skirt walls of rock and palisades of tree-trunks at full gallop. Hence he protects bis feet with stirrups that are hollowed out blocks of wood. His massive bit will check his mount at the edge of a precipice or jerk it out of the line of charge of an angry bull. His reins of plaited leather or twisted horsehair, with silver ornaments, terminate in a kind of long bell-pull, serving to tether his horse or to urge it to speed when brought down with a smack across its quarter. They are slack, save when needed to check the animal or to turn it by a touch ou the neck. His spurs, with rowels four inches across, are less cruel than they look. The blunt points serve rather to guide than wound, for he rides as much with his legs as with his bridle. “He has no hands for that,” sneers the Englishman. But his hands are wanted for the lasso, coiled up aud slung behind his right thigh. He really guides his mount by his will. The horse is at one with its rider. It knows exactly what he wants it to do, like a welt broken dog in the field. “It will not jump,” is another English complaint. It is not wanted to, for there is nothing for it to jump over. But it will go on till it drops, without rest, food or water, and will scramble up and down precipices as if it had claws in its hoofs. The rider will find his way from point to point without a compass, and lift a trail like a bloodhound, and is full of odd lore and half Indian superstitious concerning every work of nature arouul him.—[Saturday R ;view.