But see! a cloud arises in the South. Swiftly it rolls towards us; behind
it there is tumult and alarm. The ground trembles at its approach; the air
is shaken by the bellowing that it covers. Quick! let us stand aside! for,
as the haze is lifted, we can see the hurrying forms of a thousand cattle,
speeding with lowered horns and fiery eyes across the plain. Fortunately,
they do not observe our presence; were it otherwise, we should be trampled
or gored to death in the twinkling of an eye. Onward they rush; at last
the hindmost animals have passed; and see, behind them all there scours a
man!

He glances at us, as he rushes by, and determines to give us a specimen of
his only art. Shaking his long, wild locks, as he rises in the stirrup and
presses his horse to its maddest gallop, he snatches from his saddle-bow
the loop of a coil of rope, whirls it in his right hand for an instant,
then hurls it, singing through the air, a distance of fifty paces. A jerk
and a strain,--a bellow and a convulsive leap,--his lasso is fast around
the horns of a bull in the galloping herd. The horseman flashes a
murderous knife from his belt, winds himself up to the plunging beast,
severs at one swoop the tendon of its hind leg, and buries the point of
his weapon in the victim's spinal marrow. It falls dead. The man, my
friend, is a Gaucho; and we are standing on the Pampas of the Argentine
Republic.

Let us examine this dexterous wielder of the knife and cord. _He, Juan de
Dios!_ Come hither, O Centaur of the boundless cattle-plains! We will not
ask you to dismount,--for that you never do, we know, except to eat and
sleep, or when your horse falls dead, or tumbles into a _bizcachero_; but
we want to have a look at your savage self, and the appurtenances
thereunto belonging.