140 Information respecting Botanical Travellers. 



ning as a hired servant for the Scotch colony of Montegrande in the 

 year twenty-five, then not possessed of a shilling ; now of a cattle farm 

 stocked with about 600 cattle, more than 100 horses, and a large flock 

 of sheep. The farm is about six miles in circumference, its soil as 

 fine a grass land as one could wish to look upon ; all his own free pro- 

 perty, the fruit of his own and his family's industry in that short 

 time. As we quitted his house the next morning, he set out on his 

 usual weekly trip with 107 lbs. of butter, at about 15d. per lb. : he 

 says he sometimes takes more than 200 lbs. He has no hired ser- 

 vants ; though the work of managing the wild cows of this country 

 is incredible to strangers. 



13th. This day we travelled through a fine flat grassy country, 

 well stocked with cattle and sheep : the land is dry, and the roads 

 better than in the vicinity of Buenos Ayres. We passed through the 

 village of San Vincente, a straggling mass of Panchos of straw and 

 peach wood, coarsely patched with mud, the church of the same ma- 

 terials, but better plastered with mud, and white-washed. This village 

 contains a population of about 2000 inhabitants. The country round, 

 though flat, is beautiful, from the thick interspersing of little villas 

 with which it is dotted. These habitations, each surrounded with a 

 small plantation of figs, peach trees and poplars, make the country 

 appear rich and beautiful, although in themselves they are as miser- 

 able as can be conceived. In the rooms there is no furniture, ex- 

 cept a kind of cross-legged bed-frame ; for the clothes of the family 

 are contained in a large box which also serves as a dining table. 

 There are seldom more than three or four slender rush-bottom chairs ; 

 the common seats being the skulls of horses or bullocks : these, with 

 an iron pot, and an iron rod stuck into the floor to serve as a spit 

 for the meat, are all the household furniture. Strangers and inmates 

 of the dwelling have no other bed than a hide spread upon the floor. 

 All travellers must carry their bed-clothes with them, or go without. 

 I observed that this is the mode in all parts of the country. 



At sunset I came to the house of an Irish merchant, who was the 

 first to set the example of sheep-farming in these formerly cattle 

 plains, having introduced a breed of Merinos from Spain about nine 

 years ago. The success which has attended this attempt has been 

 so great, that a taste for this species of farming has been widely dif- 

 fused. Joint- stock companies even among mechanics are formed for 

 this object in Buenos Ayres : it is consequently the rage of the day, 

 heightened by the great demand for wool in the English and North 

 American markets. Here I met an acquaintance who had prepared 



