The Headwaters of the Paraguay 107 



were adapted only for the tips of boots with long, 

 pointed toes, and were impossible for our feet; our 

 hosts' stirrups were long, narrow silver slippers. The 

 camaradas, on the other hand, had jim-crow saddles and 

 bridles, and rusty little iron stirrups into which they 

 thrust their naked toes. But all, gentry and commonalty 

 alike, rode equally well and with the same skill and fear- 

 lessness. To see our hosts gallop at headlong speed over 

 any kind of country toward the sound of the dogs with 

 their quarry at bay, or to see them handle their horses 

 in a morass, was a pleasure. It was equally a pleasure 

 to see a camarada carrying his heavy spear, leading a 

 hound in a leash, and using his machete to cut his way 

 through the tangled vine-ropes of a jungle, all at the 

 same time and all without the slightest reference to the 

 plunges, and the odd and exceedingly jerky behavior, 

 of his wild, half-broken horse — for on such a ranch most 

 of the horses are apt to come in the categories of half- 

 broken or else of broken-down. One dusky tatterdema- 

 lion wore a pair of boots from which he had removed 

 the soles, his bare, spur-clad feet projecting from beneath 

 the uppers. He was on a little devil of a stallion, which 

 he rode blindfold for a couple of miles, and there was a 

 regular circus when he removed the bandage; but evi- 

 dently it never occurred to him that the animal was 

 hardly a comfortable riding-horse for a man going out 

 hunting and encumbered with a spear, a machete, and 

 other belongings. 



The eight hours that we were out we spent chiefly in , 

 splashing across the marshes, with excursions now and 

 then into vine-tangled belts and clumps of timber. Some 



