workmen, the herders or gauchos, were noteworthy. The dark-skinned men
were obviously mainly of Indian and negro descent, although some of
them also showed a strong strain of white blood. They wore the usual
shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, with jim-crow hats. Their
bare feet must have been literally as tough as horn; for when one of
them roped a big bull he would brace himself, bending back until he
was almost sitting down and digging his heels into the ground, and the
galloping beast would be stopped short and whirled completely round
when the rope tautened. The maddened bulls, and an occasional steer or
cow, charged again and again with furious wrath; but two or three
ropes would settle on the doomed beast, and down it would go; and when
it was released and rose and charged once more, with greater fury than
ever, the men, shouting with laughter, would leap up the sides of the
heavy stockade.

We stayed at the ranch until a couple of days before Christmas.
Hitherto the weather had been lovely. The night before we left there
was a torrential tropic downpour. It was not unexpected, for we had
been told that the rainy season was overdue. The following forenoon
the baggage started, in a couple of two-wheeled ox-carts, for the
landing where the steamboat awaited us. Each cart was drawn by eight
oxen. The huge wheels were over seven feet high. Early in the
afternoon we followed on horseback, and overtook the carts as darkness
fell, just before we reached the landing on the river's bank. The last
few miles, after the final reaches of higher, tree-clad ground had
been passed, were across a level plain of low ground on which the
water stood, sometimes only up to the ankles of a man on foot,
sometimes as high as his waist. Directly in front of us, many leagues
distant, rose the bold mountains that lie west of Corumba. Behind them
the sun was setting and kindled the overcast heavens with lurid