m to take care of us, and bring us along
with him, as he was marching with the chief part of his army to the
northward. I must say that our captors were not bad-tempered fellows,
and we soon got into their good graces by talking and laughing, though
they could not understand much more of what we said than we could of
their language. They got us each a horse, which was much pleasanter
than riding behind them, and at night we lay down to sleep with a
horse-rug over us, and our saddles for pillows. We asked them to teach
us how to use the lasso whenever there was a halt, and they were
surprised to find how well we soon learnt to use it, though of course we
could not equal them.

"Whenever we encamped, they and a good many others used to go out
foraging in all directions, and as there was game of all sorts we never
came back without a supply.

"Their mode of catching partridges is very curious. Each man supplies
himself with a long thin stick, at the end of which a loop is attached;
he rides on till he sees a covey of birds on the ground, and then,
instead of darting at them, he circles round and round, the birds not
attempting to fly, do nothing but run along the ground; the gaucho keeps
narrowing his circle till he gets within reach of a bird, when he drops
the loop over its head and whips it up a prisoner on his saddle. They
used to catch a number of birds in this way, and in an hour or so a
fellow would have a dozen or more hanging to his saddle. We imitated
them, and after a little practice we also managed to catch a good many,
though we did not equal them, of course. From the first we determined
to make our escape, and we agreed that if we could catch birds in this
way we might supply ourselves with food. In the wilder places we found
a number of animals very much like rabbits, only with longer tails and
larger teeth, which live in burrows close together. Before camping in
an evening we saw hundreds of the creatures, sitting on their haunches
in front of their burrows; they would look at us for some time, as if
wondering who we were, and would then scamper off and pitch down head
foremost into their holes, giving a curious flourish with their hind
legs and tails before they disappeared. They are much more difficult to
catch than the partridges, though we still hoped to get hold of some of
them, should we be hard pressed for food.

"When the day's march was over the gauchos amused themselves by
horse-racin