548 EXTENSIVE USE OF STRYCHNINE. Book III. 
of about 13,000 dollars. Scarcely anything was left of the 
13,000 acres of cultivated land, and the orchards and 
vineyards. The Colonel's possessions now consist only of 
his land, with 10,000 head of cattle, and a few thousand 
sheep feeding on it. The breeding of sheep of the better 
breeds has been recently introduced, and promises great 
results in every way. The Colonel regards pigs as noxious 
animals : he sent me word one day to our camp that he 
had killed thirty pigs, and, if we liked pork, we were wel- 
come to help ourselves — the rest would feed the vultures. 
One day I rode to the hills, on which our mules were 
grazing. A pasture like this is indeed known in scarcely 
any other part of the world : our animals were knee-deep 
in wild oats, fields of which stretched over hill and valley. 
The season was unfavourable, as there was now only the 
stubble standing : the seed, however, covered the ground 
among the stubble, and the mules fed on this. In this ride 
I also passed through a part of the cattle belonging to 
the estate, which covered the hills for miles. In these 
herds, many are killed by the wild beasts — wolves, bears, 
and cuguars. The proprietors use great quantities of 
strychnine to destroy these, the effect of which I wit- 
nessed. As I was riding out one day, I met one of the 
people of the estate throwing about poisoned meat ; and, 
on my return a few hours later, there already lay a dead 
wolf in the road. In the same manner the Colonel has 
tried to destroy the earth-squirrels, which, together with 
owls and rattlesnakes, live in holes in the ground, and are 
here the greatest enemies to the farmer. The Colonel 
strews corn, poisoned with strychnine, before the holes of 
these little animals. 
The hills of which I have spoken form a tertiary group 
in the space between the high plutonic mountain-chains, 
