A GRAZING HACIENDA. 



393 



immense plain, studded with trees in groups and in 

 forest. The ocean was not visible, but we could see 

 the opposite coast of the Gulf of Nicoya, and the point 

 of the port of Colubre, the finest on the Pacific, only- 

 three and a half leagues distant. The hacienda con- 

 tained a thousand mares and four hundred horses, 

 more than a hundred of which were in sight from 

 the door. It was grand enough to give the owner 

 ideas of empire. Toward evening I counted from the 

 door of the house seventeen deer, and Don Manuel 

 told me that he had a contract for furnishing two 

 thousand skins. In the season a good hunter gets 

 twenty-five a day. Even the workmen will not eat 

 them, and they are only shot for the hide and horns. 

 He had forty workmen, and an ox was killed every 

 day. Near the house was an artificial lake, more than 

 a mile in circumference, built as a drinking-place for 

 cattle. And yet the proprietors of these haciendas are 

 not rich ; the ground is worth absolutely nothing. The 

 whole value is in the stock ; and allowing ten dollars a 

 head for the horses and mares would probably give the 

 full value of this apparently magnificent estate. 



Here, too, I could have passed a week with great sat- 

 isfaction, but the next morning I resumed my journey. 

 Though early in the dry season, the ground was parch- 

 ed and the streams were dried up. We carried a large 

 calabash with water, and stopping under the shade of 

 a tree, turned our mules out on the plain and break- 

 fasted. I was riding in advance, with my poncha flying 

 in the wind, when I saw a drove of cattle stop and look 

 wildly at me, and then rush furiously toward me. I at- 

 tempted to run, but, remembering the bullfights at 

 Guatimala, I tore off" my poncha, and had just time to 

 get behind a high rock as the whole herd darted by at 



Vol.— I. 3 D 



