THE OX 287 



11 There is an extensive commerce in those hides. 

 Ships bring them to us, well salted, so that they will 

 keep. In our tanneries the salt is washed out, and 

 then with oak-bark they are made into leather for 

 boots and shoes. ' ' 



"Then the leather of our shoes may come from 

 some ox strangled by the lasso on the pampas ?" 

 Louis queried. 



< < There is nothing impossible in that. I would not 

 say positively that we are not wearing shoes made 

 from the hide of a wild ox, for Buenos Aires supplies 

 a considerable part of our deficiency in leather. It 

 may be, on the other hand, that our shoes come sim- 

 ply from the domestic ox, whose hide is put to the 

 same use as that of the South American bullock. 

 You are at liberty to ascribe your footwear to either 

 source." 



"For my part," Emile declared, "I choose the 

 wild ox, and perhaps its body is now being used by 

 some hunter for his hut." 



"To finish the subject of tame cattle that have run 

 wild, I will say a few words about the herds of 

 Camargue. A little below Aries, about seven 

 leagues from the sea, the Ehone forks and encloses 

 between its two branches and the Mediterranean a 

 large triangular plain. That is Camargue, a shift- 

 ing tract subject to the action of both fresh and salt 

 water, receiving the alluvial deposits of the river 

 and the sands of the sea. There are three different 

 regions to be distinguished in going from the river- 

 banks to the interior of the island, where there is a 



