182 NEIGHBORS WITH OLA WS AND HOOFS. 



by the usual conflagrations, mingled with the dust and 

 rose in dense columns, which from afar might have been 

 mistaken for the dreaded simoom. In the mean while the 

 distracted mothers ran from side to side, lowing piteously 

 for their missing young. Here and there fierce duellos 

 among rival bulls took place. Butting their huge fronts 

 together, and goring each other with their sharp-pointed 

 horns, they fought with the courage and skill of accom- 

 plished gladiators, turning up the earth in wild fury, and 

 filling the air with their deep, savage bellowing. 



8. These sounds, with the yells and deafening shouts 

 of the men galloping about the plain, waving their 

 ponchos and rattling their garrochas, combined to give 

 the scene more the appearance of a fiendish melodrama 

 than a purely pastoral assemblage of men and cattle. The 

 confusion having at length subsided, four of the ablest 

 horsemen, penetrating the living mass, which, as they ad- 

 vanced, surged on either side like the waves of the sea, 

 commenced the difficult task of separating the animals in- 

 tended for the brand, and those belonging to our neigh- 

 bors. This occasioned a series of evolutions which only 

 men trained to such exercises could have accomplished 

 successfully. 



9. At all cattle-ranches it is usual to cut a notch or two 

 in the animals' ears at the time they are branded, for the 

 purpose of recognizing them more readily from a distance, 

 a precaution which is particularly serviceable on occasions 

 like that just described, it being impossible to read the 

 brand when the creatures are crowded into a herd. Al- 

 though most of the calves have not the notch, they belong 

 by right to the owner of the mother, even if they are 

 found with the herds of another party. 



10. The separation of the cattle they accomplished in the 

 most expeditious manner, by riding boldly at the animals 



