round the estancia houses, so any green or dusky patch of trees
breaking the bare expanse of dun-coloured plain is an unfailing sign
of human habitation.

The manager and the premium-pupils on our estancia all breakfasted
before six, and then went out to the horse-corral to catch their
horses for the day's work. They were obliging enough to catch horses,
too, for myself and Lyon, which we duly found tied up to a tree when
we made our later appearance. Let us suppose an order for fifty
bullocks to have come from Buenos Ayres. The manager with the three
pupils and some ten mounted gauchos would ride off to the selected
enclosure, and run his eye over the "mob" of cattle. Having selected
six beasts, he would point them out to the gauchos, and then pick out
two for himself and his younger brother. Shaking his reins, and
calling out "_Ico! Ico!_" to his horse, he would ride up to the
doomed beast, and endeavour to cut him out from the herd. The horse,
who understood and enjoyed the game as well as the man on his back,
once he had distinguished the bullock they were riding down, needed no
stimulant of whip, but would follow him of his own accord, twisting
and doubling like a retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier after
a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, the manager would
uncoil his lasso, one end of which was made fast to the cinch-ring of
his girths, and out flew the looped coil of rope with unerring
straightness, catching the bullock round the horns. The intelligent
horse, having played the game many times before, steadied himself for
the shock which experience had taught him to expect when he would feel
the whole weight of the galloping bullock suddenly arrested in his
rush for freedom tugging at his cinch-ring. The gauchos had also
secured their beasts in the same way, and the process was continued
until the fifty bullocks had been securely corralled, blissfully