THE WILD CATTLE 179 



clearly limited in the south by the Sierra de Tandil. 

 In the north it is continued in the more varied region 

 that lies between Buenos Aires and the lower Salado, 

 where the alternation of winter pasture on the dry 

 lands and summer pasture in the valleys, encourages 

 the best methods of breeding, and has made it the 

 region of the dairy industry. 



In the Entre Rios province the limit of the large 

 estates of wheat and flax is marked by 32° S. lat. 

 The part of Entre Rios which extends north of 32° and 

 the Corrientes province do not strictly belong to the 

 Pampean region. 



Extensive breeding was the first form taken by 

 white colonization on the Pampa. The word breeding 

 is, in fact, hardly the correct name for an industry 

 that mainly consisted of hunting, and was wholly 

 distinct from the patient and advanced methods used 

 at the same time in the northern provinces. 



" The real wealth of the province of Buenos Aires," 

 says Dean Funes, " was, and always will be, the trade 

 in hides" [la pelleteria).'^ A good part of the hides 

 exported came from the hunting of the wild cattle and 

 horses which had grown numerous on the area of the 

 Pampa beyond the Rio Salado. 2 It was mainly after 

 1778, when trade with Spain had been authorized and 

 there was an increased demand for hides, that the 

 hunting of these ownerless beasts was taken up. Two 

 thousand Spaniards from Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and 



' Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumdn 

 (3 vols, in i6™o, Buenos Aires, 1816, t. iii, p. 214. 



* The number of wild animals and the area over which they roamed 

 have often been exaggerated. It does not look as if they ever covered 

 the whole of the Pampean plain. A Salter who crossed Patagonia 

 and the whole of the Pampa in 1753 {Voyage du San Martin an fort 

 de San Julian, Coll. de Angelis, v.) only found wild herds near the 

 Salado frontier, and he knew by this that he was close to the ranches. 

 At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no wild cattle 

 left on the right bank of the Parand. There were still some in Entre 

 Rios. 



