A rough partition of mud-plastered twigs
divides the Llanero's dwelling into unequal apartments; the lesser being
reserved for the use of the females of the household, while the larger,
furnished with half-a-dozen hides, the skin of a jaguar, and a couple of
benches or stools ingeniously manufactured from bamboo, is the general
reception-room, sleeping-apartment, and workshop for the _hatero_, when
the floods are out, or when he takes a fancy at other times to shelter
his head beneath a roof. A few rods from the dwelling is the _corral_ or
cattle-pen, a large oval inclosure, into which, at irregular intervals,
he drives his herds for purposes of branding or enumeration; and near
the _corral_ two or three impatient horses, shackled with a thong
confining the forelegs, are grazing.
The cattle-farms or _hatos_ of the Plains are owned, for the most part,
by the Creole residents of the cities which dot their outskirts, but are
inhabited only by the semibarbarous _hateros_, who attend to the
few requirements of the stock, and slaughter the annual supply. The
_hatero_, although a descendant, and proud that he is so, of the Spanish
settlers, has much intermixture of Indian and negro blood in his
veins. Few of the Llaneros, indeed, could show a pedigree in which the
Castilian blood was not sorely attenuated and diluted with that of
half-a-dozen Indian or negro progenitors. He is born on the Llanos, as
were his ancestors for many generations; and he has no conception of a
land in which cattle-plains are unknown, and where the carcass of an
animal is of more value than the hide.
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