222 



CATTLE OF THE PAMPAS. 



as I could see, showing that the rivers in this low country are beautifully 

 curtained in with thick foliage, while behind the curtain is a great fiat, 

 an extended stage on which wild animals roam. The tall crane stands 

 admiring his reflected whiteness in a pool of clear water, which lies like 

 a mirror on the bottom of this magnificent green floor. 



The lands are beautifully hedged in by the line of forest trees. Man 

 has set before him here the hedging and ditching of nature. This 

 pampa looks like a great pasture -field, enclosed by the Mamore ditch 

 on the south, and the Secure on the north. Under the shade of those 

 trees stand the cattle of the field. They have gradually clambered over 

 the Cordilleras from the flats of Guayaquil, through the table lands of 

 Oruro, and from the salt district of Oharcas. The Creoles drove them 

 down by the side of the Mamore river, and let them out into the grassy 

 prairie lands of Chiquitos and Mojos. From this balcony we see one 

 Indian holding a calf, while another milks the cow. 



When the cattle came among the Indians, they knew not what to 

 make of them. There were no such animals in their wild lands. The 

 fierce tiger, which they worshipped along with the poisonous serpent, 

 were outdone. The cow interfered with the belief they previously had 

 that the largest animals were God's favorites, particularly those which 

 had the greatest means for active aggression or self-defence. 



The cow helped to change such a religion. She was larger than 

 either ; and to be attacked by a bull on the open prairie was quite as 

 dangerous as the tiger or the serpent. Great horns stood out boldly in 

 defence of a powerful body. 



By degrees they learned that she neither bit, clawed, or stung ; that 

 she carried a bag full of milk ; that her teeth were given her to cut the 

 pampa grass, and not to devour the flesh of a human being. That she 

 was docile and friendly to man, and not his enemy. The Jesuits taught 

 the Indians how to milk a cow, and how to use its milk. They soon 

 learn how to tend cattle ; to lasso them ; yoke them by the horns, and 

 fasten long poles to them, so that they might drag along a bundle of 

 drift wood from the edge of the river to the middle of the plain, and to 

 give up their first impression that the tail was the most appropriate and 

 convenient part of the animal to attach the sticks of fire wood to. 



In this way they kept gentle cattle by them, while herds readied 

 through the pampas, became wild, and are now so scattered through the 

 lands that it is difficult to count them. 



The horse travelled the same way from Spain with the horned cattle. 

 The ancestors of the five mares with their colts, which we see grazing 

 before us, crossed the Isthmus of Panama more than three hundred years 



