VI MEAT DIET 123 



in great esteem, having no small affinity with veal, both in 

 colour, taste, and flavour." Such certainly is the case with the 

 Puma. The Gauchos differ in their opinion whether the 

 Jaguar is good eating, but are unanimous in saying that cat is 

 excellent. 



September lyth. — We followed the course of the Rio Tapal- 

 guen, through a very fertile country, to the ninth posta. Tapal- 

 guen itself, or the town of Tapalguen, if it may be so called, 

 consists of a perfectly level plain, studded over, as far as the eye 

 can reach, with the toldos, or oven-shaped huts of the Indians. 

 The families of the friendly Indians, who were fighting on the 

 side of Rosas, resided here. We met and passed many young 

 Indian women, riding by two or three together on the same 

 horse : they, as well as many of the young men, were strikingly 

 handsome, — their fine ruddy complexions being the picture of 

 health. Besides the toldos, there were three ranchos ; one 

 inhabited by the Commandant, and the two others by Spaniards 

 with small shops. 



We were here able to buy some biscuit. I had now been 

 several days without tasting anything besides meat : I did not 

 at all dislike this new regimen ; but I felt as if it would only 

 have agrh^ed with me with hard exercise. I have heard that 

 patients in England, when desired to confine themselves exclu- 

 sively to an animal diet, even with the hope of life before their 

 eyes, have hardly been able to endure it. Yet the Gaucho in 

 the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef 

 But they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat, which is 

 of a less animalised nature ; and they particularly dislike dry 

 meat, such as that of the Agouti. Dr. Richardson,^ also, has 

 remarked, " that when people have fed for a long time solely 

 upon lean animal food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, 

 that they can consume a large quantity of unmixed and even 

 oily fat without nausea:" this appears to me a curious phy- 

 siological fact. It is, perhaps, from their meat regimen that the 

 Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can abstain long from 

 food. I was told that at Tandeel some troops voluntarily 

 pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating or 

 drinking. 



* Fauna Boreali-Americava, vol. i. p. 35^. 



