180 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 



Mendoza hunted every day, says D'Azara, killing an 

 animal for each of their meals in addition to those they 

 killed for hides. From 1775 to the Revolution, the 

 Spanish Government made continuous efforts to regulate 

 and reduce the massacre of the herds. It laid down 

 penalties for every person selling hides that did not 

 bear his own mark ; it farmed out the right to hunt 

 animals with no mark, and organized the destruction 

 of wild dogs, etc. The ranches developed under shelter 

 of this legislation. Still, the Revolution did not witness 

 the end of this cattle-hunting. D'Orbigny took part 

 in 1828 in two hunts of wild horses (baguales) in Entre 

 Rios. The Argentine gaucho long retained the ways 

 of a hunter rather than those of a breeder in the strict 

 sense ; witness Urquiza's soldiers who, says Demersay, 

 during the campaign of 1846, when they could not find 

 trees to which they could fasten their horses, killed 

 cattle and tied the reins to their horns. 



Passing from the hunting country to the zone of 

 ranches, one notices that the main work of the breeder 

 is to prevent his cattle from running wild. " The 

 ranches of this country/' said Dean Funes, " having 

 been set up on immense plains, on which it was not 

 easy to confine the herds within fixed limits, it some- 

 times happened that the animals went vast distances 

 in search of water or pasture, and ended by being 

 regarded as wild and ownerless/' When D'Azara 

 wants to show that the ranches of Paraguay are superior 

 to those of Buenos Aires, he is content to say that there 

 the animals are tamer (mansos). With the wild animal 

 (alzado) is contrasted the de rodeo animal : that is to 

 say, the cattle which are rounded up periodically in the 

 centre of the ranch to be taken to the pasture where 

 they must live (aquerenciar) . It is the difficulty of 

 preventing the dispersal of the herd that fixes the price 

 of the rincones (surrounded by inundated areas) of 

 Corrientes, in which the animals are captives. 



MacKann's description of pastoral life in the Buenos 



