PROVINCE OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL. 



127 



them during this period ; but once discovered the calf is immediately conducted 

 to the cattle fold, where it is kept eight or nine months or more, being daily 

 visited by its dam, which is milked the whole of this time, for the purpose of 

 making butter and cheese, leaving to the prisoner only what it can draw from its 

 mother after she has been milked. The familiarity of the young one with the 

 persons upon the fazenda preserves it in a state of tameness. The males, 

 when sufficiently grown, are used in the cart or plough, and the females 

 pasture in the plains till they become mothers, continuing to supply the farmer 

 Avith an increasing stock. 



Although the domesticated cattle are not bred up with such a satiety of 

 provision as the wild ones, which enjoy the whole of the mother's milk, and 

 pasture the entire day without working, yet they grow as large and become 

 fatter. This is attributed to the fearful nature of the undomesticated kind, who 

 fly from every animal that appears ; whilst the tame ones, although they eat 

 less, live in quiet, always retaining the habit of going to the fold, and ap- 

 proaching people without alarm ; they are also less time in the fields, con- 

 suming less pasturage, and it is estimated that the aliment which four thousand 

 head of wild cattle exhaust is sufficient to sustain eight thousand of the tame. 

 The meat of the latter is esteemed the most savoury. 



The same fazendeiros breed also droves of horses and mules. The 

 latter are the most lucrative, a male one being at least double the value of 

 a horse ; and in consequence, its species is more numerous, although very few 

 persons breed more than two hundred annually. The she mules of two years 

 old are either sold or separated from the rest, in order to avoid the destruction 

 which they would cause in the species. A she mule seeing the foal of a mare, 

 immediately begins to caress it as her own, and will not allow the mother to 

 approach to give it milk ; the result is, that it perishes with hunger. 



The breed of sheep would, if attended to, much exceed that of cattle, 

 in consequence of their generally producing two at a birth; they are not 

 however numerous, few farmers possessing one thousand head, and the 

 major part not any. Nothing here appears so easy and cheap as the multipli- 

 cation of this animal. For the purpose of shepherding a flock of one thou- 

 sand, two cur dogs are sufficient, bred up in the following mode. As soon 

 as they are whelped, the lambs of a ewe are killed, the puppies are put to 

 her, and she suckles them until she becomes habituated to treat them 

 as her young, when, upon opening their eyes and seeing no other benefac- 

 tor, they attach themselves to her, and play with the lambs as if they were of 



