614 CATTLE AlTD DAIRY FARMING. 



the inTestment. On account of the amount of money required to start 

 a saladero, the majority of them in the Argentine Eepublic are the prop- 

 erty of joint-stock companies, many foreigners who hnow the economic 

 uses to which all the parts of the animal can be af)plied, having large 

 capita] invested in these industries. As I have said, the time is passed, 

 when cattle were tilled solely for their hides, and their carcasses were 

 left to rot on the pampas. Now all the appliances of European science 

 and art are brought into requisition, and the entire animal is utilized. 



One of the first conditions of a slaughtering establishment is that it 

 should be near a navigable water-course, where the largest sea-going 

 vesgeJs can anchor and receive the product. Those in this country are 

 located on the Uruguay, Parana, and La Plata Eivers. Several very 

 extensive ones are at Ensenada, where is a fine bay, large enough to 

 receive a fleet of vessels. Another condition is the possession of im- 

 mense pasture grounds supplied with an abundance of water, so that 

 the animals, tired out by their long drives on the road, may be allowed 

 to rest and recuperate before going to their slaughter, for, independent 

 of the worthlessness of tired meat, the hide is with difflculty removed 

 from such animals, being easily cut during the operation, thus resulting 

 in unsalable stock. It is also necessary to build deposits, respectively, 

 for the salt, the meat, the hides, and the tallow ; a long open shed for 

 cutting and salting the meat, and offices for overseer, peons, &c., all of 

 which are located conveniently to the slaughter-house proper. 



In well-organized saladeros there are usually three corrals, the first 

 and largest being built of very strong stakes or brick walls, opening 

 widely to receive the herds driven slowly in by the peons. The second 

 corral joins this and is only large enough to hold a number sufficient 

 for the day's slaughter ; and the third still smaller, and opening into the 

 preceding, holds about twenty head at a time, and terminates in a narrow 

 passage, through which there runs, on a level with the pavement, a plat- 

 form car on iron rails. Around this small corral there is a high gallery 

 on which one can walk, while a bridge passes over the railwaj- passage, 

 which is closed with folding doors. Through a pulley above these doors 

 is placed a long lasso, the running knot of which is in the hands of the 

 executioner, the other end attached to a yoke of oxen led by a boy. 

 The executioner throws the lasso and catches the nearest animal around 

 the horns, and calls to the boy to pull. Thus the animal is dragged in- 

 stantly onto the platform, where instinctively he rests his head against 

 the doors, when the man plunges his knife into its neck between the 

 occipital and first vertebrae, thus severing the spinal cord. The animal 

 falls dead, the door opens, and the car is drawn outside, the doors clos- 

 ing behind the carcass, which is at once deposited upon a paved way, 

 and the car is returned to its place, and another animal lassoed. 



The maneuver is done with extreme rapidity. The animals lying on 

 the pavement are bled immediately, the blood running in a trough to a 

 special tank and dried or made into artificial guano. The process of 

 sinning the animal occupies but a moment. It is then cut into quar- 

 ters, hung in an open shed on hooks, and then cut up into small strips, 

 so that nothing remains but the bones. The meat thus cut up is piled 

 under thick layers of salt several feet high. During these operations 

 apart of the grease is put aside, while the bones of the limbs and carcass 

 are removed to great wooden tubs, heated by pipes conveying the steam 

 from theboilers, thus extracting all the grease which may remain. These 

 vats are capable of holding upwards of thirty carcasses. The hides are 

 salted and piled like the meat. The paunch and intestines are made 

 into guano. The tongues, hoofs, tails, ears, horns, hide cuttings, &c., 



