On November 21, 1913, we crossed the
Andes into Chile by rail. The railway led up
the pass which, used from time immemorial by the Indians,
afterward marked the course of traffic for their Spanish
successors, and was traversed by the army of San Martin
in the hazardous march that enabled him to strike
the decisive blows in the war for South American independence.
The valleys were gray and barren, the sides of the
towering mountains were bare, the landscape was one
of desolate grandeur. To the north the stupendous
peak of Aconquija rose in its snows.
On the Chilean side, as we descended,
we passed a lovely lake, and went through wonderful
narrow gorges; and farther down were trees, and huge
cactus, and flowers of many colors. Then we reached
the lower valleys and the plains; and the change was
like magic. Suddenly we were in a rich fairy-land
of teeming plenty and beauty, a land of fertile fields
and shady groves, a land of grain and, above all, of
many kinds of luscious fruits.
As in the Argentine and Brazil, every
courtesy and hospitality was shown us in Chile.
We enjoyed every experience throughout our stay.
One of the pleasantest and most interesting days we
passed was at a great ranch, a great cattle-farm and
country place twenty-five or thirty miles from Santiago.
It was some fifteen miles from the railway station.
The road led through a rich, fertile country largely
under tillage, but also largely consisting of great
fenced pastures.
The owners of the ranch, our kind
and courteous hosts, had summoned all the riders of
the neighborhood to attend the rondeo (round-up
and sports), and several hundred, perhaps a thousand,
came. With the growth of cultivation of the soil
and the introduction of improved methods of stock-breeding
in Chile, the old rude life of the wild cow-herders
is passing rapidly away. But in many places it
remains in modified form, and the country folk whose
business is pastoral form a striking and distinctive
class. These countrymen live their lives in the
saddle. All these men, whose industries are connected
with cattle, are known as huasos. They
are kin to the Argentine gauchos, and more remotely
to our own cowboys.
As we neared the ranch, slipping down
broad, dusty, tree-bordered roads beside which irrigation
streams ran, we began to come across the huasos
gathering for the sports. They rode singly and
by twos and threes, or in parties of fifteen or twenty.
They were on native Chilean horses stocky,
well-built beasts, hardy and enduring, and on the whole
docile. Almost all the men wore the light manta,
less heavy than the serapi, but like it in
shape, the head of the rider being thrust through
a hole in the middle. It would seem as though
it might interfere with the free use of their arms,
but it does not, and at the subsequent cattle sports
many of the participants never took off their mantas.
The riders wore straw hats of various types, but none
of them with the sugar-loaf cones of the Mexicans.
Their long spurs bore huge rowels. The mantas
were not only picturesque, but gave the company a look
of diversified and gaudy brilliancy, for they were
of all possible colors, green, red, brown, and blue,
solid and patterned. The saddles were far forward,
and the shoe-shaped wooden stirrups were elaborately
carved.
The men were fine-looking fellows,
some with smooth faces or mustaches, some with beards,
some of them light, most of them dark. They rode
their horses with the utter ease found only in those
who are born to the saddle. Now and then there
were family parties, mother and children, all, down
to the smallest, riding their own horses or perhaps
all going in a wagon. Once or twice we passed
horsemen who were coming out of the yards of their
tumble-down houses, women and children crowding round.
Generally the women had something in the dress that
reminded one more or less of our Southwestern semicivilized
Indians, and the strain of Indian blood in both men
and women was evident. Some of the men were poorly
clad, others had paid much attention to their get-up
and looked like very efficient dandies; but in its
essentials the dress was always the same.
When we reached the ranch we first
drove to a mass of buildings, which included the barns,
branding-pens, corrals, and the like. It was here
that the horsemen had gathered, and one of the pens
was filled with an uneasy mass of cattle. Not
far from this pen was a big hitching rail or bar,
very stout, consisting of tree trunks at least a foot
in diameter, the total length of the rail being forty
or fifty feet. Beside it was a very large and
stout corral. The inside of this corral was well
padded with poles, making a somewhat springy wall,
a feature I have never seen in any corrals in our
own ranch country, but essential where the horses
are trained to jam the cattle against the corral side.
Most of the sports took place inside
this big corral. Gates led into it from opposite
ends. Some thirty or forty feet in front of one
of the gates, and just about that distance from the
middle of the corral, was a short, crescent-shaped
fence which served to keep the stock that had yet
to be worked separate from those that had been worked.
Proceedings were begun by some thirty riders and a
mob of cattle coming through one of the doors of the
corral. A glance at the cattle was enough to show
that the old days of the wild ranches had passed.
These were not longhorns, staring, vicious creatures,
shy and fleet as deer; they were graded stock, domestic
in their ways, and rather reluctant to run. Among
the riders, however, there was not the slightest falling
off from the old dash and skill, and their very air,
as they rode quietly in, and the way they sat every
sudden, quick move of their horses showed their complete
ease and self-confidence.
In addition to the huasos,
the peasants-on-horseback, the riders included several
of the gentry, the great landed proprietors. These
took part in the sports, precisely as in our own land
men of the corresponding class follow the hounds or
play polo. Two of the most skilful and daring
riders, who always worked together, were a wealthy
neighboring ranchman and his son.
The first feat began by two of the
horsemen, acting together, cutting out an animal from
the bunch. This was done with skill and precision,
but differed in no way from the work I used formerly
to see and take part in on the Little Missouri.
What followed, however, was totally different.
The animal was raced by the two men out from the herd
and from behind the little semicircular fence, and
was taken at full speed round the edge of the great
corral past the closed gate on the other side, and
almost back to the starting-point. One horseman
rode behind the animal, a little on its inner side.
The other rode outside it, the horse’s head
abreast of the steer’s flank. As they galloped
the riders uttered strange, long-drawn cries, evidently
of Indian origin. Round the corral rushed the
steer, and, after it passed the door on the opposite-side
and began to return toward its starting-point and saw
the other cattle ahead, it put on speed. Then
the outside rider raced forward and at the same moment
wheeled inward, pinning the steer behind the horns
and either by the neck or shoulder against the rough,
yielding boughs with which the corral was lined.
Instantly the other horseman pressed the steer’s
hind quarters outward, so that it found itself not
only checked, but turned in the opposite direction.
Again it was urged into a gallop, the calling horsemen
following and repeating their performance. The
steer was thus turned three times. After the third
turning the gate which it had passed was opened and
it trotted out.
A dozen times different pairs of riders
performed the feat with different steers. It
was a fine exhibition of daring prowess and of good
training in both the horses and the riders. Of
course, if it had not been for the lining of the inner
fence with limber poles the steer would have been
killed or crippled we saw one of them injured,
as it was. The horse, which entered heartily
into the spirit of the chase, had to crash straight
into the fence, nailing the steer and bringing it to
a standstill in the midst of its headlong gallop.
Once or twice at the critical moment the rider was
not able to charge quickly enough; and when the steer
was caught too far back it usually made its escape
and rejoined the huddle of cattle from which it had
been cut out. The men were riders of such skill
that shaking them in their seats was impossible, no
matter how quickly the horse turned or how violent
the shocks were; nor was a single horse hurt in the
rough play. It was a wild scene, and an exhibition
of prowess well worth witnessing.
Other exhibitions of horsemanship
followed, including the old feat of riding a bull.
The bull, a vicious one, was left alone in the ring,
and his temper soon showed signs of extreme shortness
as he pawed the dirt, tossing it above his shoulders.
Watching the chance when the bull’s attention
was fixed elsewhere, a man ran in and got to the little
fence before the bull could charge him. Then,
while the bull was still angrily endeavoring to get
at the man, the corral gate opposite was thrown open
and six or eight horsemen entered, riding with quiet
unconcern. The bull was obviously not in the
least afraid of the footman, whereas he had a certain
feeling of respect for the horsemen. Two of the
latter approached him. One got his rope over
the bull’s horns, and the other then dexterously
roped the hind legs. The footman rushed in and
seized the tail, and the bull was speedily on his
side. Then a lean, slab-sided, rather frowzy-looking
man, outwardly differing in no essential respect from
the professional bronco-buster of the Southwest, slipped
from the spectators’ seats into the ring.
A saddle was girthed tight on the bull, and a rope
ring placed round his broad chest so as to give the
rider something by which to hang. The lassos
upon him were cast loose, and he rose, snorting with
rage and terror. If he had thrown the man, the
horsemen would have had to work with instantaneous
swiftness to save his life. But all the bull’s
furious bucking and jumping could not unseat the rider.
The horsemen began to tease the animal, flapping red
blankets in his face, and luring him to charges which
they easily evaded. Finally they threw him again,
took off his saddle and turned him loose, and at the
same time some steers were driven into the corral to
serve as company for him. A couple of the horsemen
took him out of the bunch and raced him round the
corral, turning him when they wished by pressing him
against the pole corral lining, thus repeating the
game that had already been played with so many of
the steers. In his case it was, of course, more
dangerous. But they showed complete mastery, and
the horses had not the slightest fear, nailing him
flat against the wall with their chests, and spinning
him round when they struck him on occasions when he
was trying to make up his mind to resist.
Meanwhile the bull-rider passed his
hat among the spectators, who tossed silver pieces
into it thus marking the fundamental difference
between the life we were witnessing and our own Western
ranch life. In Chile, with its aristocratic social
structure, there is a wide gulf between the gentry
and the ranch-hands; whereas in the democratic life
of our own cow country the ranch-owner has, more often
than not, at one time been himself a ranch-hand.
After the sports in the corral were
finished eight or ten of the huasos appeared
on big horses at the bar of which I have spoken, and
took part in a sport which was entirely new to me.
Two champions would appear side by side or half-facing
each other, at the bar. Each would turn his horse’s
head until it hung over the bar as they half-fronted
each other, on the same side of the bar. The object
was for each man to try to push his opponent away
from the bar and then shove past him, usually carrying
his opponent with him. Sometimes it was a contest
of man against man. Sometimes each would have
two or three backers. No one could touch any
other man’s horse, and each drove his animal
right against his opponent. The two men fronting
each other at the bar kept their horses head-on against
the bar; the others strove each to get his horse’s
head between the body of one of his opponents and the
head of that opponent’s horse. They then
remained in a knot for some minutes, the riders cheering
the horses with their strange, wild, Indian-like cries,
while the horses pushed and strained. Usually
there was almost no progress on either side at first.
It would look as though not an inch was gained.
Gradually, however, the horses on one side or the other
got an inch or two or three inches advantage of position
by straining and shoving. Suddenly the right
vantage-point was attained. There was an outburst
of furious shouting from the riders. The horses
of one side with straining quarters thrust their way
through the press, whirling round or half upsetting
their opponents, and rushed down alongside the bar.
Why the men’s legs were not broken I could not
say. On this occasion all the men were good-natured.
But it was a rough sport, and I could well credit
the statement that, if there were bad blood to gratify,
the chances were excellent for a fight.
After the sports we motored down to
a great pasture on one side of a lake, beyond which
rose lofty mountains. Then we returned to the
ranch-house itself a huge, white, single-storied
house with a great courtyard in the middle and wings
extending toward the stable, the saddle-rooms, and
the like. It was a house of charm and distinction;
the low building or rather group of buildings,
with galleries and colonnades connecting them being
in the old native style, an outgrowth of the life
and the land. After a siesta our hosts led us
out across a wide garden brilliant and fragrant with
flowers, to the deep, cool shade of a row of lofty
trees, where stood a long table spread with white
linen and laden with silver and glass; and here, we
were served with a delicious and elaborate breakfast the
Chilean breakfast, that of Latin Europe, for in most
ways the life of South America is a development of
that of Latin Europe, and much more closely kin to
it than it is to the life of the English-speaking
peoples north of the Rio Grande.
In the afternoon we drove back to
the railroad. At one point of our drive we were
joined by a rider who had taken part in the morning’s
sports. He galloped at full speed beside the rushing
motor-car, waving his hat to us and shouting good-by.
He was a tall, powerfully built, middle-aged man,
with fine, clean-cut features; his brightly colored
mantle streamed in the wind, and he sat in the saddle
with utter ease while his horse tore over the ground
alongside us. He was a noble figure, and his
farewell to us was our last glimpse of the wild, old-time
huaso life.