PROVINCE or RIO GRANDE DO SUL. 



125 



such prodigious herds of cattle, horses, and mules. Goats are not very 

 numerous. The sheep produce a fine wool. 



In the beginning of the last century this province was covered with cattle, in 

 spite of the devastation which the Indian and the ounce had made amongst 

 them. The conquerors, persuaded that such a profusion of cattle never would have 

 an end, commenced by carrying on a destruction amongst them resembling 

 that of the tiger and the wolf in the sheepfold. This havoc was principally 

 directed against the calves, and generally one did not suffice for the dinner of 

 two comrades ; probably they both wished to eat the tongue, and to make a 

 greater certainty of it they killed a second calf, rather than divide the first. 

 There were men who killed an animal in the morning in order to breakfast on 

 broiled kidneys ; and, not to be incommoded by carrying any part of the meat 

 for dinner, performed the same operation by killing the best they could discover 

 for dinner. There was no banquet without veal only a few days old. 



Don Joaquim Vianna, governor of Monte Video, hearing of this destruction 

 of the cattle, and informed of the cause, issued an order, about the year 1650, 

 with a heavy penalty attached to its transgression, that no more calves or cows 

 should be killed, excepting such cows as were barren ; and that no bulls or 

 oxen should be slaughtered for their skins, excepting those of five years of 

 age and upwards. In the viceroyalty of the Marquis de Lavradio, some good 

 arrangements were made in the northern part of the province ; but all were not 

 under their influence, in consequence of the widely spreading districts, to many 

 of which they did not extend. 



Two small portions of the cattle of this province are appropriated, one to the 

 consumption of the country, and the other to the slaughter-house of the metro- 

 polis ; but the far greatest proportion is manufactured into jirked-beef, which is 

 salted without bones, dried in the sun, and exported to the principal ports 

 in the Brazil ; but, from the desultory warfare carried on near the river Plate, 

 it has recently become very scarce, and bacalhao, or salt fish, brought by 

 British ships to the ports of Brazil, has become a substitute at many places. 



In 1802, there were yet only amongst the subjects of the faithful crown, five hun- 

 dred and thirty-nine proprietors of land, judicially marked out amongst the breed- 

 ers of cattle, denominated fazendeiros, or farmers, and lavmdores, or husbandmen, 

 which latter breed only what is necessary for their own service and consumption ; 

 they possess generally about two square leagues of land : but those of the first 

 order have eight or ten square leagues, and some even more. The greatest pro- 



