leagues.

He is a strange individual, this Gaucho Juan. Born in a hut built of mud
and maize-stalks somewhere on the superficies of these limitless plains,
he differs little, in the first two years of his existence, from peasant
babies all the world over; but so soon as he can walk, he becomes an
equestrian. By the time he is four years old there is scarcely a colt in
all the Argentine that he will not fearlessly mount; at six, he whirls a
miniature lasso around the horns of every goat or ram he meets. In those
important years when our American youth are shyly beginning to claim the
title of young men, and are spending anxious hours before the mirror in
contemplation of the slowly-coming down upon their lip, young Juan (who
never saw a dozen printed books, and perhaps has only _heard_ of looking-
glasses) is galloping, like a portion of the beast he rides, over a
thousand miles of prairie, lassoing cattle, ostriches, and guanacos,
fighting single-handed with the jaguar, or lying stiff and stark behind
the heels of some plunging colt that he has too carelessly bestrid.

At twenty-one he is in his glory. Then we must look for him in the
_pulperias_, the bar-rooms of the Pampas, whither he repairs on Sundays
and _fiestas_, to get drunk on _aguardiente_ or on Paraguay rum. There you
may see him seated, listening open-mouthed to the _cantor_, or Gaucho
troubadour, as he sings the marvellous deeds of some desert hero,
persecuted, unfortunately, by the myrmidons of justice for the numerous
_misfortunes_ (_Anglice_, murders) upon his head,--or narrates in
impassioned strain, to the accompaniment of his guitar, the circumstances
of one in which he has borne a part himself,--or chants the frightful end
of the Gaucho Attila, Quiroga, and the punishment that overtook his
murderer, the daring Santos Perez. When the song is over, the cards are
dealt. Seated upon a dried bull's-hide, each man with his unsheathed knife
placed ostentatiously at his side, the jolly Gauchos commence their game.
Suddenly Manuel exclaims, that Pedro or Estanislao or Antonio is playing
false. Down fly the cards; up flash the blades; a ring is formed. Manuel,
to tell the truth, has accused his friend Pedro only for the sake of a
little sport; he has never _marked_ a man yet, and thinks it high time
that that honor were attained. So the sparks fly from the flashing blades,
and Pedro's nose has got another gash in it, and Manuel is bleeding in a
dozen places,