THE HORSE AND HIS EIDER. 205 



drowned, being too much exhausted to crawl up the 

 muddy banks. The beds of many streams in the 

 Pampas are paved with a breccia of bones thus depo- 

 sited. The periodical swellings of the rivers are no 

 less fatal to them. The mares may be seen, during 

 the season of high water, swimming about followed by 

 their colts, and feeding on the tall grass, of which the 

 .tops alone wave above the waters. Thus they lead 

 for some time an amphibious life, surrounded by alli- 

 gators, water serpents, and other carnivorous reptiles, 

 the marks of whose teeth are often printed on their 

 thighs. The impetuous rush of a herd of wild horses 

 impelled either by some panic or by raging thirst, is 

 called a stampedo : one of them is, thus described in 

 Murray's Travels in North- America : 



" About an hour," he says, " after the usual time 

 to secure the horses for the night, an indistinct sound 

 arose like the muttering of distant thunder ; as it ap- 

 proached it became mixed with the howling of all the 

 dogs in the encampment, and with the shouts and 

 yells of the Indians ; in coming nearer, it rose high 

 above all these accompaniments, and resembled the 

 lashing of a heavy surf upon a beach. On and on it 

 rolled towards us, and, partly from my own hearing, 

 partly from the hurried words and actions of the 

 tenants of our lodge, I gathered it must be the fierce 



R 



