each of whom always goes armed and knows how to use his arms, for
there are constant collisions with cattle thieves from across the
Bolivian border, and the ranch has to protect itself. These cowhands,
vaqueiros, were of the type with which we were now familiar: dark-
skinned, lean, hard-faced men, in slouch-hats, worn shirts and
trousers, and fringed leather aprons, with heavy spurs on their bare
feet. They are wonderful riders and ropers, and fear neither man nor
beast. I noticed one Indian vaqueiro standing in exactly the attitude
of a Shilluk of the White Nile, with the sole of one foot against the
other leg, above the knee. This is a region with extraordinary
possibilities of cattle-raising.

At this ranch there was a tannery; a slaughter-house; a cannery; a
church; buildings of various kinds and all degrees of comfort for the
thirty or forty families who made the place their headquarters; and
the handsome, white, two-story big house, standing among lemon-trees
and flamboyants on the river-brink. There were all kinds of pets
around the house. The most fascinating was a wee, spotted fawn which
loved being petted. Half a dozen curassows of different species
strolled through the rooms; there were also parrots of several
different species, and immediately outside the house four or five
herons, with unclipped wings, which would let us come within a few
feet and then fly gracefully off, shortly afterward returning to the
same spot. They included big and little white egrets and also the
mauve and pearl-colored heron, with a partially black head and many-
colored bill, which flies with quick, repeated wing-flappings, instead
of the usual slow heron wing-beats.

In the warehouse were scores of skins of jaguar, puma, ocelot, and
jaguarundi, and one skin of the big, small-toothed red wolf. These