m bamboo, is the general
reception-room, sleeping-apartment, and workshop for the _hatero_, when
the floods are out, or when he takes a fancy at other times to shelter
his head beneath a roof. A few rods from the dwelling is the _corral_ or
cattle-pen, a large oval inclosure, into which, at irregular intervals,
he drives his herds for purposes of branding or enumeration; and near
the _corral_ two or three impatient horses, shackled with a thong
confining the forelegs, are grazing.

The cattle-farms or _hatos_ of the Plains are owned, for the most part,
by the Creole residents of the cities which dot their outskirts, but are
inhabited only by the semibarbarous _hateros_, who attend to the
few requirements of the stock, and slaughter the annual supply. The
_hatero_, although a descendant, and proud that he is so, of the Spanish
settlers, has much intermixture of Indian and negro blood in his
veins. Few of the Llaneros, indeed, could show a pedigree in which the
Castilian blood was not sorely attenuated and diluted with that of
half-a-dozen Indian or negro progenitors. He is born on the Llanos, as
were his ancestors for many generations; and he has no conception of a
land in which cattle-plains are unknown, and where the carcass of an
animal is of more value than the hide. His ideas are restricted to
his occupation, and his religious notions limited to the traditional
instruction handed down from the days when his forefathers lived amid
civilized men, or to the casual teaching of some fervent missionary, who
devotes himself to the spiritual welfare of these lonely dwellers on the
Plains. Eight or ten persons at the utmost form a _hato_, and suffice
for all the requirements of thousands of cattle. The women are as much
accustomed to solitude as the men, and spend their time in domestic
occupations, or in cultivating the little patch of ground upon which
their supply of maize and cassava is grown. The occasion of their
marriage is perhaps the only one of their visit to a town,--perhaps
their only opportunity of seeing a printed book. Men and women alike are
a simple, healthy, ignorant race, borrowing manners, dress, and dialect
rather from the Indian than from the Spanish stock.

Such as he is, nevertheless, and for the purposes which his existence
subserves, the true Llanero is indeed well placed in his peculiar
region. A man of middle stature, usually of broad and powerful build,
short-necked, with square head and narrow