The operator whirls thebolas 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 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.
Iron bolas are the favorites, because being smaller for the weight they have a longer range, and because, too, they are more easily seen and recovered after a cast across the dull-colored desert than pebbles are.
In the chase they depend on bows and arrows and the bolas chiefly.
Other things likely to please the tourist are ostrich feathers and eggs; the bolas and lassos used by the plainsmen of all kinds when hunting; bows and arrows and spears of the Indians, and boots made of the skin of a colt's hind legs.
They have lassoes and bolas as the Yankee boys have skates and baseballs.
While we lay in Rio Gallegos he rode out on the table-land one day with a man living there and killed three guanacos, using the bolas Indian fashion to bring them down.
The sportsman must loose the bolas from his waist, and, swinging them with whizzing speed around his head, launch them forth at the right moment to tangle the feet of the bird before it can dodge the blow.
With the Ona Indians the bow and the bolas were used with great success in killing the fleet-footed guanaco.
To use the bolas, grasp this big knot and one of the bolas, and then after whirling the free bola or bolas about the head to give them speed, hurl the whole outfit at any target handy.
A race of a few hundred yards with a desert horse uses him up, and he falls a victim to the well-nigh unerring bolas of the plainsmen.
Now the Yahgan, as said, found the guanaco in his own proper country as well as when he went visiting the Onas on the borderland, and he must have fully appreciated all that the Onas could do with their bolas and bows.
Now and then the bolas is hurled at him, but his lithe limbs, though sometimes entangled, are not fettered by it, and his prowess is hardly diminished.
When within twenty or thirty yards, he jerks thebolas from his girdle, and, whirling it violently above his head, lets fly.
Sulivan for the purpose of seeing his gauchos use the lasso and bolas in catching some cattle required for the ship.
These bandits, with their sabres and bolas in their hands, dashed at the Argentines, who slipped into the open doors of the abandoned houses, in a narrow street, where the gauchos could not manoeuvre their horses.
About fifteen yards behind the game, still galloping and digging their spurs into their horses' flanks, they bent forward, whirling round their heads the terrible bolas and hurling them with all their strength at the animals.
The bolas consist of three balls--hence the name--of lead or stone, two of them heavier than the third.
That would have done well enough if he could only get near them; but the condors were sufficiently shy not to let any man within reach either with bolas or guns.
He had been swinging the bolas around his head for more than forty years!
The saddle was adapted to the two hunting weapons in common use on the Argentine plains--the BOLAS and the LAZO.
The moment, therefore, that Thalcave got to a right distance, he flung his BOLAS with such a powerful hand, and so skillfully, that he caught the bird round the legs and paralyzed his efforts at once.
This mild and gentle savage also sold Moncrieff some dozen of excellent lassoes and bolas as well.
These bolas are waved round the heads of the horsemen hunters when chasing ostriches, or even pumas.
Under the tuition of Yambo, our capataz, and the other Gauchos, we became adepts in the use of both bolas and lasso.
On the pampas, these balls are as often as not simply stones tied up in bits of skin; but the bolas now bought by Moncrieff were composed of shining metal, to prevent their being lost on the pampas.
Bolas may be briefly described as three long leather thongs tied together at one end, and having a ball at the free end of each.
At intervals the bolas would come whirling through the air, and he would dodge or avoid them by a quick turn, but eventually he would be hit and the thong would wind itself about his legs and down he would come.
That finished, the dead ostrich would get up and place himself among the hunters, while the boy who had captured him with his bolas would then play ostrich, and the chase would begin anew.
Everywhere the bolas whizzed through the air, and soon the turf was strewed with forms sprawling and kicking.
The main difficulty in using either lazo or bolas is to ride so well as to be able at full speed, and while suddenly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim: on foot any person would soon learn the art.
My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his pursuer.
The bolas consists of a number of rawhide thongs fastened to a central thong and with an iron ball at each of the ends.
He is possibly the most expert lassoer in the world; and when in pursuit of animal or bird he hurls the deadly bolas with unerring skill.
Armed with the deadly bolas he is a terrible foe to either bird, beast, or man.
Bolas have been used for centuries in the South American pampas and even the forest regions of the Rio Grande.
If you hit him, the bolas tangle him up and down he comes.
The scene opens (thus to put it in dramatic form) on an evening towards the end of June, 1789, when a stranger knocked at the door of Farmer Hoggins at Great Bolas in Shropshire, and begged shelter for the night.
Meanwhile he had purchased land in the village, and built a house which he called “Bolas Villa.
The church of Great Bolas is a grim-looking brick building of the eighteenth century, when many of the Shropshire churches in that district were rebuilt.
The attraction which brought him back to Great Bolas was evidently Sarah Hoggins, the farmer’s daughter, at that time a girl of sixteen, having been born in June, 1773.
One who has never thrown thebolas will be amazed, the first time he tries it, to find how difficult it is to do a trick that looks so easy.
The bolas are handled very dexterously, and well trained Indians are said to be able to bring down an ostrich at a range of two or three hundred yards.
They caught those animals with their bolas and lassoes, and often supplied the colonists with fresh meat when they had no means of their own of obtaining it.
I fully expected to wake up the next morning and find that he had lost his whole troop; but he was not so unfortunate, and when they finally left off playing he was only a pair of bolas to the bad.
It is not an uncommon thing for a 'plunger' to risk all his horses and his saddle-gear, knife and bolas to boot, on the chances of a single game.
Taken by surprise, Isidoro had hardly time to loosen his bolas when the furious brute was upon him, and for a moment I thought it was a bad case.
When hunting, the belt and bolas are strapped outside the capa, so that the upper part of the latter may fly loose whenever any exertion requires that the arms should be free, as when lassoing or throwing the bolas.
A bolas is a rope with a stone, a metal ball, or a lump of hard clay fastened to each end.
The hunter swings one end of the bolas round and round his head, and then hurls it with great force at the ostrich.
A curious story is told to the effect that the corpse of Bolas was taken down from the gibbet by some of his companions and thrown into the river Tern, but that it would not sink.
Robert and William Bolas were gibbeted on Uckington Heath, near Shrewsbury, in 1723.
Its origin is referred back to the time the body of Robert Bolas was hanging in chains.
When Robert Bolas was awaiting his trial he believed that it would result in an acquittal, and that he would thus be permitted to go home for the corn harvest and get his barley.
When he came into the rectory from visiting he was always asking, "Has that man Bolas from Hailsham called?
Bolas in his ignorance no doubt thought the books were a cheap charity of cast-off lumber.
It then becomes so sluggish, that they can without difficulty throw their bolas round its neck and legs.
Like other tribes of the Pampas, they have become expert horsemen, and with bolas capture huanacus and ostriches.
Immediately the hunter's companions, rushing forward, throw their bolas over the bird, and make it captive.
The bolas is carried knotted up in a pouch slung round the neck, a native frequently carrying several sets.
The bolas are unknown among all the Eskimo east of the Anderson River, and the only evidence that we have of their use at this point is an entry in the Museum catalogue, to which I have been unable to find a corresponding specimen.
Many ducks are taken with guns and bolas in these flights.
A duck is occasionally left with sufficient freedom of motion to escape with the bolas hanging to him.
He selected Bolas Magna, a charming little place, nestling among apple orchards and green lanes.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "bolas" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
