with spectators. The players are marvellously adroit, and get up balls which seem quite impossible to return; they are all professionals, for the game is so difficult that it must be learnt in early boyhood. It is scored like racquets up to fifteen points, one side invariably wearing blue "berets" and sashes, the other red. Large red and blue dials mark the points on the end wall as they are scored.

On Sundays and holidays the Plaza Euskara is a wonderful sight, with its thousands of spectators, all worked up to a pitch of intense excitement. The betting is tremendous, and fat wads of dollar bills are produced from the shabbiest of coats, whose owners one would hardly associate with such an amount of portable wealth. The three umpires sit together on a sort of rostrum, each one crowned with the national Basque "beret." Points are being continually referred to their decision, amidst the shouts and yells of the excited partisans. Every time the three umpires stand up, remove their berets, and make low bows to each other; they then confer in whispers, and having reached a decision, they again stand up bareheaded, repeat their bows, and then announce their verdict to the public. Pelota is certainly a most interesting game to watch, owing to the uncanny skill of the players. Invariably in the course of the afternoon there is one match in which the little apprentices take part, either with their masters as partners, or entirely amongst themselves.

I have used the Spanish word "pelota," but it merely means "ball," just as the Russian word "soviet" means nothing in the world but "council." English people who refuse to take the trouble to learn any foreign language, seem to love using these words; they have all the glamour of the unfamiliar and unknown about them. Personally, it always seemed to me very foolish using the term "Kaiser" to describe the ex-Emperor William. Certainly any dictionary will tell one that Kaiser is the German equivalent for Emperor, but as we happen to speak English I fail to see why we should use the German term. Equally, Konig is the German for King, and yet I never recollect any one alluding to the Konig of Saxony. Some people seem to imagine that the title "Kaiser" was a personal attribute of William of Hohenzollern; it was nothing of the sort. Should any one have been entitled to the term, it would have been the Hapsburg Emperor, the lineal descendant of the "Heiliger Romischer Kaiser," and yet one used to read such ridiculous headings as "Kaiser meets Austrian Emperor." What did the writers of this imagine that Franz-Josef was called by his subjects? The meaningless practice only originated in England with William II.'s accession; it was unheard of before. If English people had any idea that "Rey" was the Spanish for King, I am sure that on King Alfonso's next visit to England we should see flaring headlines announcing the "Arrival of the Rey in London," and in the extraordinarily unlikely event of the Queen of Sweden ever wishing to pay a visit to this country, any one with a Swedish dictionary could really compose a brilliant headline, "The Drottning drives despondently down Downing Street," and I confess that neither of them seem one whit more foolish than for English-speaking people to use the term Kaiser. The label may be a convenient one, but it is inaccurate, for there was not one Kaiser but two.

The familiar, when wrapped in all the majesty of a foreign tongue, can be very imposing. Some little time back a brother of mine laid out a new rock-garden at his house in the country. The next year a neighbour wrote saying that he would be very grateful should my brother be able to supply him with any of his superfluous rock-plants. My brother answered, regretting his inability to accede to this request, as, owing to the dry spring, his rock-garden had failed absolutely, in fact the only growth visible in it consisted of several hundred specimens of the showy yellow blooms of the "Leo Elegans." Much impressed with this sonorous appellation, his correspondent begged for a few roots of "Leo Elegans." My brother, in his reply, pointed out that the common dandelion was hardly a sufficient rarity to warrant its being transplanted.

I went out a second time to the Argentine Republic with Patrick Lyon, to whom I have already alluded, in order to place a young relative of his as premium-pupil on an English-owned ranche, or estancia, as it is locally called. We had an extremely unpleasant voyage out, for at Rio Janeiro we were unfortunate enough to get yellow fever into the ship, and we had five deaths on board. I myself was attacked by the fever, but in its very mildest form, and I was the only one to recover; all the other victims of the yellow scourge died, and I attribute my own escape to the heroic remedy administered to me with my own consent by the ship's doctor. Although Buenos Ayres is quite out of the yellow-fever zone, the disease has occasionally been brought there from Brazil, and to Argentines the words "yellow fever" are words of terror, for in the early "seventies" the population of Buenos Ayres was more than decimated by a fearful epidemic of the scourge. Our ship was at once ordered back to Brazil, and was not allowed to discharge one single ounce of her cargo, which must have entailed a very heavy financial loss on the R.M.S.P. Company. We unfortunate passengers had to undergo twenty-one days rigorous quarantine, during which we were allowed no communication whatever with the outside world, and were in addition mulcted of the exorbitant sum of 3 pounds a day for very indifferent board and accommodation.

Having reached the estancia and placed our pupil on it, we liked the place so well that we made arrangements to stay there for six weeks at least, thus getting a very good idea of its daily life. The province of Buenos Ayres is one great featureless, treeless, dead-flat plain, and being all an alluvial deposit, it contains neither a pebble in the soil nor a single spring of water. Water is found everywhere at a depth of six or seven feet, and this great level extends for a thousand miles. Where its undoubted fascination comes in is hard to say, yet I defy any one not to respond to it. It is probably due to the sense of limitless space, and to a feeling of immense freedom, the latter being physical and not political. The only indigenous tree is the ombu, and the ombu makes itself conspicuous by its rarity. Nature must have fashioned this tree with her tongue in cheek, for the wood is a mere pith, and a walking-stick can be driven right into the tree. Not only is the wood useless as timber, but it is equally valueless as fuel, for the pith rots before it can be dried. The leaves are poisonous, and in spite of its being mere pith, it is one of the slowest-growing trees known, so that, take it all round, the solitary indigenous tree of Buenos Ayres is about the most useless arboreal product that could be imagined. The ombu is a handsome tree to the eye, not unlike an English walnut in its habit of growth, and it has the one merit of being a splendid shade-tree. During the last forty years, poplars, willows and eucalyptus have been lavishly planted round the estancia houses, so any green or dusky patch of trees breaking the bare expanse of dun-coloured plain is an unfailing sign of human habitation.

The manager and the premium-pupils on our estancia all breakfasted before six, and then went out to the horse-corral to catch their horses for the day's work. They were obliging enough to catch horses, too, for myself and Lyon, which we duly found tied up to a tree when we made our later appearance. Let us suppose an order for fifty bullocks to have come from Buenos Ayres. The manager with the three pupils and some ten mounted gauchos would ride off to the selected enclosure, and run his eye over the "mob" of cattle. Having selected six beasts, he would point them out to the gauchos, and then pick out two for himself and his younger brother. Shaking his reins, and calling out "_Ico! Ico!_" to his horse, he would ride up to the doomed beast, and endeavour to cut him out from the herd. The horse, who understood and enjoyed the game as well as the man on his back, once he had distinguished the bullock they were riding down, needed no stimulant of whip, but would follow him of his own accord, twisting and doubling like a retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier after a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, the manager would uncoil his lasso, one end of which was made fast to the cinch-ring of his girths, and out flew the looped coil of rope with unerring straightness, catching the bullock round the horns. The intelligent horse, having played the game many times before, steadied himself for the shock which experience had taught him to expect when he would feel the whole weight of the galloping bullock suddenly arrested in his rush for freedom tugging at his cinch-ring. The gauchos had also secured their beasts in the same way, and the process was continued until the fifty bullocks had been securely corralled, blissfully unconscious that this was the first stage of their ultimate transformation into roast beef, or _filets de boeuf a la Bordelaise_.

Though Lyon and I never attempted to use the lasso, we often joined in riding a beast down, and the horses, after they had once identified the particular beast they were to follow, turned and twisted with such unexpected suddenness that they nearly shot us both out of the saddle a dozen times. None of the pupils were yet able to use the lasso with certainty, though they spent hours in practising at a row of bullocks' skulls in the corral. In time a foreigner can learn to throw the lasso with all the skill of a born Argentine, but the use of the "bolas" is an art that must be acquired in childhood. I used to see some of the gauchos' children, little fellows of five or six, practising on the fowls with miniature toy bolas made of string, and they usually hit their mark. The bolas consist of pieces of raw hide shaped like the letter Y; at the extremities are two heavy lead balls, whilst at the base of the Y is a wooden ball which is held in the hand. The operator whirls the bolas round his head, and sends them flying at the objective with unfailing certainty, and the animal "emboladoed" drops as though shot through the head. I have seen these used on "outside camps," but on a well-managed estancia, such as Espartillar, the use of the bolas is strictly prohibited, since it tends to break the animal's leg. The only time I ever saw them employed there, was against a peculiarly aggressive male ostrich, who attacked all intruders into his particular domain with the utmost ferocity. The bird fell like a dead thing, and he assumed a very chastened demeanour after this lesson. The South American ostrich, the Rhea, though smaller and less dangerous than his big African cousin, can be most pugnacious when he is rearing a family of young chicks. I advisedly say "he," for the hen ostrich, once she has hatched her eggs, considers all her domestic obligations fulfilled, and disappears to have a good gossip with her lady friends, leaving to her husband the task of attending to the young brood. The male bird is really dangerous at this time, for his forward kick is terrifically powerful. The ostrich can run faster than any horse, but it is quite easy to circumvent any charging bird. All that is necessary is to turn one's horse quickly at right angles; the ostrich has such way on him that he is unable to pull up, and goes tearing on a hundred yards beyond his objective before he can change his direction. This manoeuvre repeated two or three times leaves the bird discomfited; as they would say in Ireland, "You have him beat." I confess that I have never seen an ostrich bury his head in the sand to blind himself to any impending danger, as he is traditionally supposed to do; I fancy that this is a libel on a fairly sagacious bird, and that in reality the practice is entirely confined to politicians.

The Argentine Republic is peculiar in possessing a venomous toad, equipped like a snake with regular poison-glands and fangs. He is known in the vernacular as escuerzo, and is rather a handsome creature, wearing a green black-striped coat. I am told by learned people that he is not a true toad, that his proper name is _Ceratophrys ornata_, and that he is a cannibal, feeding on harmless frogs and toads which he kills with his poison-fangs. There was a plentiful supply of these creatures at Espartillar, and the pupils, when they found an escuerzo, loved to tease him with a stick. He is probably the worse-tempered and most irritable batrachian known, and when prodded with a stick would puff himself out, and work himself