Hunting In Many Lands 



He had, too, a lingering remnant of tlie 

 distrust of horses and mules that his ancer- 

 tors must have felt in Spanish times, and when 

 his pack-mule got a stone in her hoof, he 

 observed it with anxiety from a distance, but 

 could not summon resolution to meddle with 

 so serious a matter. 



Moreover his measure of distance was prim- 

 itive. I would ask, for instance, how many 

 miles it was to our next stop. He might say 

 three miles for an all-day journey of six times 

 that length, or he might tell you that we were 

 nine miles from a spot which we reached in 

 half an hour. 



I then substituted leagues for miles, think- 

 ing that the Mexican usage would be more 

 familiar to him ; but at last Anastasio said, 

 rather impatiently, that all this business of 

 leagues and miles was rather confusing and 

 outside of his experience. We would reach 

 the next water shortly before sunset, and that 

 was all the calculation he was accustomed to, 

 and quite close enough. 



Aside from his knowledge of Spanish, Anas- 

 tasio was indeed a fine representative of the 

 best of the stone age, and as we journeyed on, 



one got an excellent idea of the life of the sav- 



66 



