INDIANS. 



277 



and cutting their bodies in pieces. The young 

 women and children whom they find are then 

 taken up behind, on their horses, and gal- 

 loped into slavery ; and it is said that some of 

 the women have, at last, preferred the new ties 

 formed among their wild captors, and refused 

 to abandon them when retaken. They live 

 under a cacique, and have no fixed abode, but 

 are determined in their migratory movements 

 by the fineness and quantity of pasture for their 

 horses, or by some scheme for robbing the huts 

 of the gauchos, and stealing the contents of their 

 corals. They eat mare's flesh, — keeping their 

 horses only for riding ; and they consider it a 

 great luxury (and it is their only one that 

 approaches to cleanliness) to bathe their hair in 

 mare's blood. 



They believe in good and evil spirits, and if 

 an Indian dies before his time by any natural 



