Saturday afternoon is a gala-day here, and the broad road
was so thronged with brilliant equestrians, that I thought we should
be ridden over by the reckless laughing rout. There were hundreds
of native horsemen and horsewomen, many of them doubtless on the
dejected quadrupeds I saw at the wharf, but a judicious application
of long rowelled Mexican spurs, and a degree of emulation, caused
these animals to tear along at full gallop. The women seemed
perfectly at home in their gay, brass-bossed, high peaked saddles,
flying along astride, barefooted, with their orange and scarlet
riding dresses streaming on each side beyond their horses' tails, a
bright kaleidoscopic flash of bright eyes, white teeth, shining
hair, garlands of flowers and many-coloured dresses; while the men
were hardly less gay, with fresh flowers round their jaunty hats,
and the vermilion-coloured blossoms of the Ohia round their brown
throats. Sometimes a troop of twenty of these free-and-easy female
riders went by at a time, a graceful and exciting spectacle, with a
running accompaniment of vociferation and laughter. Among these we
met several of the Nevada's officers, riding in the stiff, wooden
style which Anglo-Saxons love, and a horde of jolly British sailors
from H.
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