14 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



of servaiils and retainers, and increase their power and 

 dignity ; all of ^^hich advantages were transmitted by 

 these patriarchs from one generation to another. The 

 tribes remain nomadic so long as they keep to the north 

 of the fortieth parallel of latitude. Let them cross that 

 vicAvless boundary, and they instantly settle on the 

 magical new plains, build houses, form governments, 

 wage -wars, and fashion peoples out of their once- 

 wandering hordes. 



At the other extremity of the world, on the distant 

 pampas of South America, contemporaries of the 

 Asiatic nomads, but bringing something of a higher 

 civihsation from Southern Europe, the Spaniards, 

 themselves the first skilled sheep-breeders in modern 

 times, reared a pastoralist system that has both singular 

 homologies and pointed contrasts with the old-world 

 Asiatic and Arabian systems. On plains as vast as the 

 Mongolian steppes great ranches have been carved out 

 of the untrodden wastes, and mighty herds and flocks 

 graze where, for tens of thousands of years, no foot of 

 man or hoof of beast had ever stamped human owner- 

 ship on the wild. In the Argentine, in the thirties, 

 when Darwin travelled in the country, General Rosas 

 had a number of great estancias. One of these was 

 fortified against the Indians, and was of so great an 

 extent that Darwin, arriving in the dark, believed it 

 was a fortified town. The estate occupied seventy-four 

 leagues of land, employed about three hundred men, 

 and grazed immense herds of cattle — 300,000 in number. 

 Other estancias were much less extensive. One, in the 

 Banda Oriental, had only 3,000 cattle, though it would 

 have well supported three or four times that number, 

 600 sheep, 800 mares, and 150 broken-in horses. It 

 was valued at only £2,500. The cattle weie driven 

 twice a week to a central spot to be tamed and counted. 

 Some stations were ruined by the attacks of Indians. 

 At others there were no women. One or two wonderful 

 sheep-dogs sufficed to guard large flocks of sheep. As 

 in Austraha, the stations are visited by horse-breakers. 



