438 



the same amount of fat, nor is the fat so thoroughly distributed through the 

 lean portions of the carcass, but it is euflSciently fat to meet the demand of any 

 delicate and well-educated palate. The tissues are so fine as to render the flesh 

 peculiarly tender, and, when cooked, it has a flavor akin to that which distin- 

 guishes the flesh of the wild duck from that of the flock which is hatched in the 

 jjoultry house, and reared in the barn-yard. It is also very easily digested. 

 A feeble, dyspeptic stomach may take as much as the appetite of a hungry man 

 will ever crave and not be oppressed by the indulgence. Pampa beef, as well 

 as pampa air, might safely be prescribed for all invalids suffering from dyspepsia, 

 and assailed by its veteran ranks of horrors and blue devils. 



" An establishment for preparing jerked beef is called a * saladero' — literally, 

 salting tub. The mode of slaughtering the cattle and preparing the beef is very 

 simple. As in the case of 'marking,' the herd is driven into a large pen. A 

 man or boy, with a lasso attached to his saddle girth, throws the noose around 

 the horns of the animal. The lasso traverses a pulley, suspended from a cross- 

 beam resting on two strong upright posts.. The horse draws the head of the 

 animal directly up to the beam, where a man or boy sits with a long knife. The 

 moment the head touches the beam the knife severs the spinal cord just back 

 of the horns, and the animal drops on a movable platform which runs on a 

 tramway, and is immediately drawn out of the pen by hand and placed under 

 an open shed, where two men, without hanging the carcass, quickly flay it right 

 and left ; two others take out the intestines, cut off the head, divide the trunk 

 into four quarters, hang them on hooks, cut them in slices, throw them into a 

 handbarrow, and, while one wheels off the flesh to be salted, another conveys 

 the hide, bones, horns, and tallow to their appropriate places. In the salting 

 shed is ^ large tank filled with strong pickle. The slices are deposited in this 

 for a short time, in order to wash them from all blood. They are then hooked 

 out and packed under the shed in alternate layers of meat and salt. The slices 

 take sufiicient salt in about a week. They are then removed to another part of 

 the shed, turned, and piled again. This moving and piling is repeated several 

 times. The meat is then hung on poles in the sun for a few days, when it is 

 again piled for the last time, and luoks in this, its last stage of preparation, in 

 the separate pieces, very much like codfish or sole leather; and, in the aggregate 

 pile, very much like a stack of corn-husks that has stood the storms of a New 

 England winter." 



Several new processes of curing beef and mutton are patented in European 

 countries and practiced with a good degree of success. 



That of Mr. John Morgan, which is quite simple, is based on forced infiltra- 

 tion, with the adoption of the circulatory system as a means for introducing 

 brine into the tissues at little labor and inexpensive machinery. The animal, 

 if a sheep, is killed by a blow on the head ; if an ox, by the insertion of the 

 point of a knife at the back of the head, which severs the spinal cord, and causes 

 instantaneous death. Tlje chest is then sawn open, and kept so by a cross-piece 

 of wood, and the heart is exposed. An incision is made in the right ventricle, 

 and another in the left, the blood being allowed to escape ; when it has ceased 

 flowing, a pipe with a stop-cock is introduced into the incision in the left ventricle 

 of the heart, and so into the aorta or great vessel leading through the body, and 

 is there firmly retained. This pipe is connected by a gutta percha flexible tube 

 to a barrel containing the fluid to be injected, which is composed of water and 

 salt, (one gallon of brine to the cwt.,) and a quarter to a half pound of nitre 

 carefully refined, and fixed at an altitude of from eighteen to twenty feet. The 

 briny fluid being let on, rushes out at the right side of the heart after traversing 

 all the circulatory organs, clearing the vessels and capillaries, and preparing the 

 body for the second stage, which is perfoiTued by closing the incision on the 

 right side of the heart with a sliding forceps, and thereby rendering the circula- 

 tory system perfect, with the vessels free and ready to receive the preservative 



