168 CATTLE — ELECTRIC EELS. 



the plains, extending from the mouths of the Orinoco 

 to the Lake of Maracaybo, at 1,200,000 oxen, 180,000 

 horses, and 90,000 mules ; and in the pampas of 

 Buenos Ayres it is believed that there are 12,000,000 

 of cows and 3,000,000 of horses, not including cattle 

 which have no acknowledged owner. In the llanos 

 of Caraccas the richer proprietors of the gi'eat hatos, 

 or cattle-farms, brand 14,000 head every year, and 

 sell 5000 or 6000. The exportation from the whole 

 capitania-general amounts annually to 174,000 skins 

 of oxen and 11,500 of goats, for the West India 

 islands alone. This stock was first introduced about 

 1548 by Christoval Rodriguez. They are of the 

 Spanish breed, and their disposition is so gentle 

 that a traveller runs no risk of being attacked or 

 pursued by them. The horses are also descended 

 from ancestors of the same country, and are gene- 

 rally of a brown colour. There were no sheep in 

 the plains. 



Humboldt remarks, that when we hear of the 

 prodigious numbers of oxen, horses, and mules 

 spread over the plains of America, we forget that in 

 civilized Europe the aggregate amount is not less 

 surprising. According to M. Peuchet, France feeds 

 6,000,000 of the large-horned class ; and in the Aus- 

 trian monarchy, the oxen, cows, and calves are es- 

 timated by Mr. Lichtenstein at about 13,400,000. 



At Calabozo, in the midst of the llanos, the trav- 

 ellers found an electrical apparatus nearly as com- 

 plete as those of Europe, made by a person who had 

 never seen any such instrument, had received no in- 

 structions, and was acquainted with the phenomena 

 of electricity only by reading the Treatise of Sigaud 

 de la Fond, and Franklin's Memoirs. Next to this 

 piece of mechanism, the objects that excited the 

 greatest interest were the electrical eels, or gymnoti, 

 which abound in the basins of stagnant water and 

 the confluents of the Orinoco. The dread of the 

 shocks given by these animals is so great among 



