AGRICULTURE. 223 
ness, and some of their exploits in the way of travelling are un- , 
surpassed in the annals of the turf. A number of instances are © 
on record where Californian horses have carried a rider one 
hundred miles in a day, and that with no food save grass. 
Sixty miles a day is not an uncommon ride, nor is it considered 
a severe one. Fremont, on one occasion, rode four hundred 
miles in four days, riding different horses, hut driving them 
before him from the beginning to the end of the journey. 
More than half of the brood-mares of the state are wild 
Spanish; that is, they live entirely in the open plain, are un- 
broken, and many of them have never been touched save when 
they were to be branded. They are in bands called manadas, 
numbering from thirty to sixty mares, which are tinder the 
guidance of one stallion or garafion. He knows every one of 
his band, keeps them together, conducts them to what he 
considers the best pastures, and drives away geldings, stallions, 
mules, and whatever animals he may dislike. When avaquero 
tries to drive the manada into a corral for the purpose of catch- 
ing some of the band, the garafion will frequently divide them 
and scatter them about, and render it impossible for the vaquero 
to get them together; for while he drives in one place, the 
stallion is equally busy at another, and the mares fear his teeth 
and heels as much as the swinging reata of the horseman. The 
garafion is usually from five to nine years of age. He guards 
his manada with the most jealous care. It sometimes hap- 
pens that one garafion tries to take away a mare from the 
band of another, and then a fight ensues, in which the weaker 
has to suffer a severe biting and kicking, and then lose the ob- 
ject of the battle too. The manada keeps together for year 
after year, but when it gets too large, the vaquero will divide 
it and give a portion to the charge of another garafion. All the 
mares foal before they are three years old, whereas in the 
Atlantic States they seldom foal until a year later. They also 
breed more regularly than elsewhere, for when mares are kept 
in stables, they frequently pass seasons without breeding. 
The foals are branded at the age of three or four months, and 
