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tirely ignorant of the number of the cattle they 

 possess. They only know that of the young 

 cattle, which are branded every year with a let- 

 ter or mark peculiar to each herd. The richest 

 proprietors mark as many as 14,000 head every 

 year ; and sell to the number of five or six thou- 

 sand. According to official documents*, the 

 exportation of hides from the whole Capitania 

 General amounted annually from the West India 

 islands alone, to 174,000 skins of oxen, and 

 11,500 of goats. When we reflect, that these 

 documents are taken from the books of the cus- 

 tomhouses, where no mention is made of the 

 fraudulent dealings in hides, we are tempted to 

 believe, that the estimation of 1,200,000 oxen 

 wandering in the Llanos, from the Rio Ca- 

 rony and the Guarapiche to the lake of Ma- 

 racaybo, is much underrated. The port of 

 Guayra alone exported annually from 1789 to 

 1792, 70,000 or 80,000 hides, entered in the 

 customhouse books, scarcely one fifth of which 

 was for Spain. The exportation from Buenos 

 Ayres, at the end of the eighteenth century, was, 

 according to Don Felix d'Azzara, 800,000 skins. 

 The hides of Caraccas are preferred in the pe- 

 ninsula to those of Buenos Ayres; because the 

 latter, on account of a longer passage, under- 



* Informe del Conde de Casa- Valencia, manuscript, which 

 we have already quoted several times. 



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