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A Buffalo Hunt in Northern Mexico. 



A GROUP OF VAQUEROS. 



pot, the final preparations were made was like a charge of untrained 

 cavalry ; nor might one have said which were most excited, the 

 horses or the men. For a mile or more, after the exit, there was 

 furious racing through a dense cloud of dust. When at last we 

 drew together and halted to let the guide front, we found the party, 

 about twenty in number, all Mexicans but the colonel and myself. 

 Mr. Roth had declined the sport. 



"Who are these people ? " I asked. 



Don Miguel glanced over the motley crowd. 



" Quien sabe, senorf' n ("Who knows, sir?") 



I called Santos and asked him the question. The good fellow 

 immediately rode here and there amongst them, and returned with 

 this answer : 



"Hay rancheros — todos." ("They are all rancheros.") 



A ranchero is an independent son of the Mexican soil, generally 

 a renter of lands, always owner of a horse, on which he may be said 

 to live and have his being. To-day a cattle-herder (vaquero), to- 

 morrow a soldier, this week a gambler, next week a robber : with 

 all his sins, and they are as his hairs in number, he has one supreme 



