Horse and Man, 
355 
developed a marvellous sensitiveness, is sufficient 
to guide liiin. The gauclio labours to give his 
horse a silken mouth,” as he aptly calls it ; the 
Indian’s horse has it from birth. Occasionally the 
gaucho sleeps in the saddle ; the Indian can die 
on his horse. During frontier Avarfare one bears 
at times of a dead warrior being found and removed 
with difficulty from the horse that carried him out 
of the fight, and about whose neck his rigid fingers 
were clasped in death. Even in the gaucho 
country, however, where, I grieve to confess, the 
horse is not deservedly esteemed, there are very 
remarkable instances of equine attachment and 
fidelity to man, and of a fellowship between horse 
and rider of the closest kind. One only I Avill 
relate. 
When Rosas, that man of blood and iron,” Avas 
Dictator of the Argentine country — a position which 
he held for a quarter of a century — deserters from 
the army Avere inexorably shot when caught, as they 
generally Avere. But where my boyhood was spent 
there was a deserter, a man named Santa Anna, 
who for seA^en years, without ever leaving the neigh- 
bourhood of his home, succeeded in eluding his pur- 
suers by means of the marvellous sagacity and 
watchful care exercised by his horse. When taking 
his rest on the plain — for he seldom slept under a 
roof — his faithful horse kept guard. At the first 
sight of mounted men on the horizon he would fly 
to his master, and, seizing his cloak between his 
teeth, rouse him Avith a vigorous shake. The hunted 
man would start up, and in a moment man and 
horse Avould vanish into one of the dense reed-beds 
A a 2 
