Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
All hands, even the saturnine Guapo, laughed loudly at the counterfeit, and the vaquero himself was heard to chuckle through the long wool upon the breast. He did not lose time, however, but instantly prepared to set off. He needed no other preparation than to get hold of his bolas, that was his favourite weapon. Before going farther, I shall tell you what sort of weapon it is.
Like other tribes of the Pampas, they have become expert horsemen, and with bolas capture huanacus and ostriches. Besides the huanacus, a deer of considerable size ranges in small herds throughout the Pampas and northern Patagonia, and is very abundant. It possesses an overpoweringly strong and offensive odour at some periods of the year, which is perceptible at a great distance.
The Indians are well supplied with horses, the descendants of those brought to South America by Spanish explorers. They are wonderful riders and excel in the use of a peculiar lasso called the bolas. It consists usually of three balls of stone or metal covered with rawhide and attached to one another by twisted thongs of the same material.
Upon finding out we did not catch our animals with the lazo, they cried out, "Ah, then, you use nothing but the bolas:" the idea of an enclosed country was quite new to them. The captain at last said, he had one question to ask me, which he should be very much obliged if I would answer with all truth.
Pierre The Empress Josephine A transplanted brogue Vampires Lost in a virgin forest Dictator-Presidents Castro and Rosas The mentality of a South American "The Liberator" The Basques and their national game Love of English people for foreign words Yellow fever Life on an Argentine estancia How cattle are worked The lasso and the "bolas" Ostriches Venomous toads The youthful rough-rider His methods Fuel difficulties The vast plains The wonderful bird-life.
That finished, the dead ostrich would get up and place himself among the hunters, while the boy who had captured him with his bolas would then play ostrich, and the chase would begin anew. When this game was played I was always chosen as first ostrich, as at that time I could easily outrun and out-jump any of my gauche playmates, even those who were three or four years older than myself.
The moment, therefore, that Thalcave got to a right distance, he flung his BOLAS with such a powerful hand, and so skillfully, that he caught the bird round the legs and paralyzed his efforts at once. In a few seconds it lay flat on the ground. The Indian had not made his capture for the mere pleasure and glory of such a novel chase.
It is the bolas, an innocent-looking thing, but in reality a missile weapon as deadly in practised hands as a grenade or bomb-shell. That the giant savages intend casting them is clear. Their gestures leave no room for doubting it; they are only waiting until the boat is near enough. The fugitives are well-nigh despairing, for she is almost near enough now.
My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his pursuer. "I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife."
The weapon which the gaucho hands to him differs from the ordinary bolas, in having a longer stretch of cord between the balls; but Cypriano is himself as well acquainted with this kind as with the other, and can cast them as skilfully.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking