Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BATTLE OF THE HORSES Leave Bahia Camerones—Horses wild—Decide on taking one waggon—Bell- mare—Names of horses—Breaking-in of horses—German peones—Horses stray—Gaucho trick—Watching troop at night—Four languages—Signalling by smokes—Searching for horses— Favourite words and phrases—Nag of the baleful eye—Caiiadon of the dry river—Bad ground—Flies—Ostrich eggs— Shooting guanaco—River Chico of Chubut—Puma's visit at night—Condor— Lady killed—Singing in camp— Stormy night—Breakdown of waggon— Guanaco on stony ground—Long chase—Guanaco's death. I Will not bore my readers with all the technicalities of our preparations for the real start. Suffice it to say that our total belongings were stowed upon a waggon and on the backs of four pack-horses. We had in all sixty horses, and eight men. About forty of these horses had been running wild upon the pampa for eight months previous to our acquiring them. During that time they had been lost and had only been recaptured shortly before our arrival in Trelew. The purchase of them was, however, the best speculation I could make under the circumstances, since all the animals were good and sound. Had I bought by small instalments in Trelew, not only would every man within journeying distance have very naturally attempted to palm off upon me the worst and most vicious animals he possessed, but the horses, not being used to one another's company, would have been impossible to keep together at night upon the pampas, as the various sections composing such a tropilla would inevitably have scattered to the four points of the compass. Patagonian horses, which are descended from those brought over by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, are never stabled, but are turned out rain and snow in their troops. These troops or tro...