THE LIFE AND KNIFE OF THE ARGENTINE GAUCHO contains a selection of excerpts from textbooks and journals published in the 19th and early 2oth centuries. These accounts represent the candid observations of British and American researchers, journalists, and travelers to South America, and their first hand impressions of the Gauchos of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. The accounts paint a vivid picture of these somber and solitary riders who roamed the Pampas, and of the large knife-the facon-that was every Gaucho's faithful companion. The Gaucho was an exotic cowboy of mythical proportions, one who spoke a foreign language but who shared the cowboy's love of self-reliance, rugged independence, and autonomous freedom. Although today the Argentine Gaucho has followed the American cowboy into the setting sun, we still have a record of their deeds-whether real or fanciful-to fuel the desire for independence and freedom in future generations of rugged individualists.