THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



605 



tribes living on the eastern slopes of the Andes commenced to use borned 

 cattle for food,* though they still prefer horse meat. In those early 

 days nearly all the cattle on the pampas were wild (alzados], and most 

 of them without owners. The reverse is now the case, and they are 

 comparatively tame, that is to say, they are accustomed to the presence 

 of men and allow themselves to be guided by them.t Even at the epoch 

 referred to, over a million hides were annually exported from the Plate. 

 The cattle-farms, or estancios, however, only contained a small propor- 

 tion of tame animals, the rest being wild were pursued on horseback 

 for their hides. 



The manner of killing them was as follows: The mounted gauchos, 

 carrying in their hands a lance, with a sharp horizontal knife in the end, 

 gave chase to the animals, and approaching them on the full gallop, cut 

 their hamstrings as they ran, bringing them down with an address and 

 dexterity which were astonishing. When they had thus secured a suf- 

 ficient number, they returned and gave the coup de grace to the prostrate 

 animals by severing, with a perpendicular thrust, the spinal cord just 

 back of the horns. When the slaughter was completed, they removed 

 the hides, which they stretched on the ground with pins, and abandoned 

 the carcasses to the dogs and birds of prey. This system of slaughter- 

 ing is still sometimes practiced on animals whose poor condition make 

 them of no value except for their hides. In such cases they are driven 

 to the neighborhood of the slaughter-house ; and, after being skinned, 

 their bodies are used for fuel for the boilers, while their bones are pul- 

 verized for manure. 



NUMBER OF HORNED CATTLE IN THE REPUBLIC. 



The business of horned cattle has formed for nearly three centuries 

 the sole occupation of Spanish settlers and their descendants, and it is 

 still almost exclusively in the hands of the natives, as sheep-farming is 

 in that of foreigners. It is the general impression that the 'number of 

 horned cattle now in the Argentine Republic is not so large as in former 

 years, owing to the immense slaughter, principally for their hides, which 

 has heretofore been carried on. There are, however, no statistics based 

 on actual count to prove this fact. I give below the number supposed 

 to have been in the Republic in 1809, compared with the number esti- 

 mated for each province in 1881 : 



* Description g6ographiquo et statistique do la Confederation Argentine, par V. Martin de Moussy, 

 vol. ii, p. GO. 



1 Captain Musters, in his book "At Homo with tlio Pataponiai)s," speaks of tho immense numbers 

 of wild cattle which are found without owners in the forests on Hie headwaters uud tributaries of the 

 Rio Negro, and the western slopes of tho Cordilleras of the Patagonian Andes. 



t Census of tho Argentine Kepublic, 1869. 



lbid., 188L 



