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Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a cast-iron jaw, suggesting the type of a cattle-herd horseman from the great Llanos of the South.
The scattered population of the Llanos being accumulated on certain points, principally around towns, Calabozo reckons already five villages or missions in its environs. It is computed, that 98,000 head of cattle wander in the pastures nearest to the town. It is very difficult to form an exact idea of the herds contained in the Llanos of Caracas, Barcelona, Cumana, and Spanish Guiana.
We passed on our route clumps of cacti, and thickets of creosote bushes, that emitted their foul odours as we crushed through them. On the fourth evening we camped at a spring, the Ojo de Vaca, lying on the eastern borders of the Llanos. Over the western section of this great prairie passes the Apache war-trail, running southward into Sonora.
Boas are killed, and immersed in the streams, to obtain, by means of putrefaction, the tendinous parts of the dorsal muscles, of which excellent guitar-strings are made at Calabozo, preferable to those furnished by the intestines of the alouate monkeys. The drought and heat of the Llanos act like cold upon animals and plants. Beyond the tropics the trees lose their leaves in a very dry air.
The cessation of the breezes, the setting-in of the rainy season, and the frequency of electric explosions, are phenomena which are found to be connected together by immutable laws. On entering the Llanos of Nueva Barcelona, we met with a Frenchman, at whose house we passed the first night, and who received us with the kindest hospitality.
"Yes, yes; that is the best way, captain." "We will have a longer journey, but with advantages. We will find the wild cattle or the buffaloes upon the Llanos. Moreover, we will make sure of our time, as we can `cache' in the Pinon Hills that overlook the Apache war-trail, and see our enemies pass out. When they have gone south, we can cross the Gila, and keep up the Azul or Prieto.
Southward it was more open, and a score of miles away merged into the llanos. "We are in good time; the moon is only just rising, and I don't think there is anybody before us," said Guzman, as we neared the old sugar-mill, a dilapidated wooden building, shaded by cebia-trees and sombrero palms. "But there is somebody behind us," I said, looking back. "A squadron of cavalry at the least."
"I don't think you will easily find a customer for a ruby ring on the llanos. However, I'll tell you what. An old friend of mine, a certain Señor Morillones, has a large estate at a place called Naparima on the Apure. Let us go there to begin with. Morillones will supply us with mules, and we may possibly persuade some of his people to accompany us.
All these movements are executed more promptly, and with readier success, by horses born in the Llanos, and which have long enjoyed their liberty, than by those that come from the coast, and descend from domestic horses.
The second historical event connected with the name of Valencia is the great incursion made by the Caribs of the Orinoco in 1578 and 1580. That cannibal horde went up the banks of the Guarico, crossing the plains or llanos. They were happily repulsed by the valour of Garcia Gonzales, one of the captains whose names are still most revered in those provinces.
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