1833- J MEAT DIET. 85 



" that when people have fed for a long time solely upon lean animal 

 food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, that they can consume a 

 large quantity of unmixed and even oily fat without nausea : " this 

 appears to me a curious physiological fact. It is, perhaps, from their 

 meat regimen that the Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can 

 abstain long from food. I was told that at Tandeel, some troops 

 voluntarily pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating 

 or drinking. 



We saw in the shops many articles, such as horsecloths, belts, and 

 garters, woven by the Indian women. The patterns were very pretty, 

 and the colours brilliant ; the workmanship of the garters was so good 

 that an English merchant at Buenos Ayres maintained they must have 

 been manufactured in England, till he found the tassels had been 

 fastened by split sinew. 



September iSt/i. We had a very long ride this day. At the twelfth 

 posta, which is seven leagues south of the Rio Salado, we came to the 

 first estancia with cattle and white women. Afterwards we had to ride 

 for many miles through a country flooded with water above our horses' 

 knees. By crossing the stirrups, and riding Arab-like with our legs 

 bent up, we contrived to keep tolerably dry. It was nearly dark when 

 we arrived at the Salado ; the stream was deep, and about forty yards 

 wide ; in summer, however, its bed becomes almost dry, and the little 

 remaining water nearly as salt as that of the sea. We slept at one of 

 the great estancias of General Rosas. It was fortified, and of such an 

 extent, that arriving in the dark I thought it was a town and fortress. 

 In the morning we saw immense herds of cattle, the general here having 

 seventy-four square leagues of land. Formerly nearly three hundred 

 men were employed about this estate, and they defied all the attacks 

 of the Indians. 



September \^th. Passed the Guardia del Monte. This is a nice 

 scattered little town, with many gardens, full of peach and quince 

 trees. The plain here looked like that around Buenos Ayres ; the 

 turf being short and bright green, with beds of clover and thistles, and 

 withbizcacha holes. I was very.much struck with the marked change 

 in the aspect of the country after having crossed the Salado. From a 

 coarse herbage we pass on to a carpet of fine green verdure. I at first 

 attributed this to some change in the nature of the soil, but the in- 

 habitants assured me that here, as well as in Banda Oriental, where 

 there is as great a difference between the country around Monte Video 

 and the thinly-inhabited savannahs of Colonia, the whole was to be 

 attributed to the manuring and grazing of the cattle. Exactly the 

 same fact has been observed in the prairies * of North America, where 

 coarse grass, between five and six feet high, when grazed by cattle, 

 changes into common pasture land. I am not botanist enough to say 

 whether the change here is owing to the introduction of new species, 

 to the altered growth of the same, or to a difference in their proportional 

 numbers. Azara has also observed with astonishment this change : he 



* See Mr. Atwater's account of the Prairies, in Silliman'* ' N. A. Journal," 

 voJ L, p. 117. 



