96 HUNTING EXTINCT ANIMALS 



to be checked up at the settlement. The wool from the 

 big estancias was put up in iron-hooped rectangular bales, 

 weighing 450 to 500 pounds each, while that from the 

 smaller places which had no presses was sewed in oval 

 burlap bundles of 150 to 200 pounds each. 



Their wool discharged, these wagons were drawn up 

 near some store, where during the next three or four days 

 they were reloaded with a miscellaneous cargo of groceries, 

 liquors, corrugated sheet iron, furniture, tools, etc. Groups 

 of horses and oxen were driven through the streets, going to 

 or coming from the watering place. Before the numerous 

 blacksmith shops stood six or eight wagons, waiting for 

 their repairs, and lines of horses to be re-shod. The stores 

 were all rushed, and we could see why trading is so profit- 

 able, for one of these freight wagons will often take from a 

 single store (they are all general stores) a thousand or more 

 dollars worth of goods. Most of the Avagons belonged to 

 professional freighters, and, w'hen loaded, were to go to 

 points all the way up to two hundred or more miles inland. 

 This is one of the most profitable lines of business in Pat- 

 agonia, for their rates run from two to ten cents a pound, 

 and there is always plenty of wool to be hauled out from 

 the interior. Some of these freighters have regular cara- 

 vans of wagons, one of our acquaintances, for instance, 

 having eighteen wagons and 900 mules ; for he always drove 

 nine mules to a wagon and averaged four tons to a load. 

 This was an especially well-appointed outfit and usually 

 went on long trips, a round trip often taking from two to 

 three months; but the owner told us that he could make 

 one hundred per cent, of his investment per year, when he 

 traveled with his wagons. Most of the freighters, however, 

 did a smaller business, running one, two, or four wagons, 

 and about twenty-five horses to a wagon. It is a business 

 in which a man with but little capital can start and work up. 



The same is true of the sheep business where many of 

 the men started, and do still, as herders on shares (usu- 



