Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/95

 THEATRES, FESTIVALS, SPORTS 71 bridle's rosette. Women oiled their tresses, shook out their gayest silks, and their shawls with the long wisps of fine-knotted fringe; from their chests they chose the heaviest chains, and ear-rings of coral and pearl. When they were arrived at the hacienda where they were to be guests for several days, they found a platform already built for dancing and for viewing the feats of equestrian prowess. Each guest brought his own cowboys his vaqueros and a string of mustangs for the games and the " drive." On the morning of the round-up the cattle on a thousand hills were sought and driven in to the ranch corral, and while the barbecue stones were heating in the pits and great haunches were being laid on willow frames and banked with earth and left thus to roast, while maidens were giving a last touch to the mantilla or pasting most effectively the artful beauty-patch, in the corral among the sweating men and animals the young calves were being thrown and branded on their fawn-like thighs with the ranch-mark of the host. The barbecue over, the tests of horsemanship began. One writer describes the loosing of a bull in the pen, the roping of its legs and the equally fearless un-roping; the casting of nimble riatas, the struggle, the charge and downfall of the be- fuddled beast. . . . Bear and bull fights they