102 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



fighting men, who fought as they hved, on the 

 backs of their horses, have vanished as utterly 

 as our own Far West of the days of Kit Carson. 

 The Argentine country hfe has changed as com- 

 pletely as the Argentine city life. They are 

 gone, those long years during which the gaucho 

 rode over unfenced plains after gaunt cattle, 

 and warred against the scarcely wilder Indians 

 with whom he vied in horsemanship and plains- 

 craft and hardihood and from whom he bor- 

 rowed that strange weapon, the bolas. Even 

 the southern Andes of what was once Patagonia 

 are unexplored only in the sense that the Rockies 

 of Alberta are not yet completely explored. 

 Much of the former ranch country is now wheat- 

 land, where the workmen of foreign, especially 

 Italian, origin far outnumber the men of old 

 Plispano-Indian stock. Great cattle-ranches re- 

 main; but they are handled substantially like 

 great modern ranches in our own Southwest, 

 and the blooded horses and high-grade cattle are 

 kept in large, fenced pastures. In most places 

 the gaucho has changed as our own cowboy has 

 changed. He is as bold and good a horseman as 

 ever; but it is only in out-of-the-way places that 

 he retains all his old-time wild and individual 

 picturesqueness. Elsewhere he is now merely 

 an unusually capable ranch -hand. His em- 



