VI 
MEAT DIET 
123 
in great esteem, having no small affinity with veal, both in 
colour, taste, and flavour.” Such certainly is the case with the 
Puma. The Gauchos differ in their opinion whether the 
Jaguar is good eating, but are unanimous in saying that cat is 
excellent. 
September lyt/i .-—-We followed the course of the Rio Tapal- 
guen, through a very fertile country, to the ninth posta. Tapal- 
guen itself, or the town of Tapalguen, if it may be so called, 
consists of a perfectly level plain, studded over, as far as the eye 
can reach, with the toldos, or oven-shaped huts of the Indians. 
The families of the friendly Indians, who were fighting on the 
side of Rosas, resided here. We met and passed many young 
Indian women, riding by two or three together on the same 
horse : they, as well as many of the young men, were strikingly 
handsome,—their fine ruddy complexions being the picture of 
health. Besides the toldos, there were three ranchos ; one 
inhabited by the Commandant, and the two others by Spaniards 
with small shops. 
We were here able to buy some biscuit. I had now been 
several days without tasting anything besides meat: I did not 
at all dislike this new regimen ; but I felt as if it would only 
have agreed with me with hard exercise. I have heard that 
patients in England, when desired to confine themselves exclu¬ 
sively to an animal diet, even with the hope of life before their 
eyes, have hardly been able to endure it. Yet the Gaucho in 
the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef. 
But they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat, which is 
of a less animalised nature ; and they particularly dislike dry 
meat, such as that of the Agouti. Dr. Richardson , 1 also, has 
remarked, “ that when people have fed for a long time solely 
upon lean animal food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, 
that they can consume a large quantity of unmixed and even 
oily fat without nausea this appears to me a curious phy¬ 
siological fact. It is, perhaps, from their meat regimen that the 
Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can abstain long from 
food. I was told that at Tandeel some troops voluntarily 
pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating or 
drinking. 
1 Fauna Boreali-Americana, vol, i. p. 35. 
