was released and rose and charged once more, with greater fury than
ever, the men, shouting with laughter, would leap up the sides of the
heavy stockade.

We stayed at the ranch until a couple of days before Christmas.
Hitherto the weather had been lovely. The night before we left there
was a torrential tropic downpour. It was not unexpected, for we had
been told that the rainy season was overdue. The following forenoon
the baggage started, in a couple of two-wheeled ox-carts, for the
landing where the steamboat awaited us. Each cart was drawn by eight
oxen. The huge wheels were over seven feet high. Early in the
afternoon we followed on horseback, and overtook the carts as darkness
fell, just before we reached the landing on the river's bank. The last
few miles, after the final reaches of higher, tree-clad ground had
been passed, were across a level plain of low ground on which the
water stood, sometimes only up to the ankles of a man on foot,
sometimes as high as his waist. Directly in front of us, many leagues
distant, rose the bold mountains that lie west of Corumba. Behind them
the sun was setting and kindled the overcast heavens with lurid
splendor. Then the last rose tints faded from the sky; the horses
plodded wearily through the water; on every side stretched the marsh,
vast, lonely, desolate in the gray of the half-light. We overtook the
ox-carts. The cattle strained in the yokes; the drivers wading
alongside cracked their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts
rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and
water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry
land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was
moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to
graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry
ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ox-drivers and horse-
herders slung their hammocks; and close by they lit a fire and
roasted, or scorched, slabs and legs of mutton, spitted on sticks and
propped above the smouldering flame.

Next morning, with real regret, we waved good-by to our dusky
attendants, as they stood on the bank, grouped around a little fire,
beside the big, empty ox-carts. A dozen miles down-stream a rowboat
fitted for a sprit-sail put off from the bank. The owner, a countryman
from a small ranch, asked for a tow to Corumba, which we gave. He had
with him in the boat his comely brown wife--who wa