THE. ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 615 



-unsigned to their respective receptacles. When the skeletons are 

 removed from the boilers, all the grease has disappeared from them, only 

 a few ligaments and remnants of flesh remaining. The larger bones, 

 used for inaiiuiacoures, are then separated, and the rest are used for fuel, 

 the bone ashes being collected in barrels and sold abroad for manure. 



In the space of about five minutes after it is slaughtered, the animal 

 has entirely disappeared. As to the meat, when it has become well 

 penetrated by the salt, after repeated turnings, at the end of about 

 five days, it is placed in an inclosure on horizontal lattice work, and thus 

 perfectly dried. After this it is piled in the open air upon a brick plat- 

 form and covered with hides to protect it from birds of prey, or to await 

 its sale. For transportation it is put up in barrels or bales securely 

 pressed. The grease, after having been refined, is run into pipes and 

 sold by weight. Some saladeros, to utilize the grease and tallow, have 

 soap and candle factories annexed to the establishments. 



Such is a general resume of the usual operations of a saladero in good 

 condition. Ordinarily they can slaughter and take care of four hundred 

 animals per day, the work beginning at daylight. The men engaged 

 in these establishments possess a wonderful dexterity in their several 

 departments, and operate with a rapidity which is astonishing. The 

 season for active work begins at the end of the spring months, either 

 in November or December, when the animals are fat and can be slaugh- 

 tered to the best pecuniary advantage, and it comes to a close when 

 the frosts or the drought begins to cut down the pasturage. There are 

 now in the Argentine Republic not less than twenty-one of these great 

 slaughtering establishments, as follows: Eight in the province of Entre 

 Reos ; one in the province of Santa Fe, and twelve in the province of 

 Buenos Ay res, together representing a capital of over $6,000,000. The 

 annual number of animals slaughtered varies considerably, but gener- 

 ally reaches in this part of the Eiver Plate to a million head, though 

 in the last year or two this industry seems to be languishing. 



CITY SLAUGHTER-HOUSES IN THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



In the city slaughter-houses (mataderos) there is but little of the sys- 

 tem which belongs to the saladeros, while there is displayed a great 

 deal more cruelty to the animals. Those of Buenos Ayres are located 

 to the southwest of the municipal -limits and consist of a large number of 

 corrals or pens surrounding an extensive inclosure in which are arranged 

 the necessary buildings and sheds. The animals are lassoed in the 

 pens by a man on horseback, and they are then forced through the 

 corral gate into the inclosure, bellowing and plunging in every direc- 

 tion in a vain effort to escape. Sometimes the animals are thrown down 

 by another lasso passed around their hind legs, when they are readily 

 dispatched ; but in most cases the butcher with an immense knife in his 

 hand takes his opportunity to hamstring the brute before him, thus at 

 once bringing it to the ground, when the knife is driven into its neck 

 behind the horns, severing the spinal cord. Frequently, however, 

 the hamstringing is only partially done or unsuccessfully attempted, 

 and the bleeding animal, infuriated in its struggle for freedom, the 

 chance of which is lessened every moment by the tightened lasso, the 

 wounded leg, and the loss of blood, suffers all sorts of torture from men 

 and dogs before it finally succumbs to its fate. This same brutal oper- 

 ation is at the same time going on in each one of the corrals ; while 

 scattered at intervals in the inclosure a number of men are engaged in 

 skinning and disemboweling the animals while others are cutting up and 



