LIVESTOCK—REAL AND BRONZED
Our friend, the manager of the company, proved to be most capable. . . We drove over the city after picking up his wife. . . Montevideo is much cleaner and more mechanized than is Rio or Santos, or so it seemed to me. The docks were less littered up. Perhaps people and business moved faster and more orderly. . . Saw a world of sheep. Sheep is a big industry in Uruguay—perhaps its biggest. There were also pen after pen of cattle. I never saw a steer there as good as Oscar Clodfelter's worst one.
If I have worked kilos into pounds and pesos into dollars correctly, prime steers are selling on the hoof there at the market at five to six cents per pound, our money. But always remember they're probably grassers and not the way the Hazlett boys or Jude Grimes corn feeds them.
Another thing in Montevideo. I've seen a real piece of art, a bronze piece of statuary "of heroic size." It sets in a park. It is called La Carreta, and depicts an early settler on a horse beside a two-wheeled pioneer cart with one big wheel sunk in the mud plumb down to the axle pulled by one bull and seven steers or oxen all yoked together, and with a spare ox tied on behind. I looked to see about that ox. He was an ox and the only possible criticism I have is that he should have been a cow tied on behind. Otherwise the thing is perfection to me. The cart slopes just right, the oxen look hard-worked, the bull like a bull, thick neck and all, the horse like a thin, tired horse ought to look, and the man like some men up on Raccoon I've seen in my time. Only he had on some local trappings my men never had. But there they are, the man yelling, the bull and oxen set and straining for every ounce, and all trying like hell to get out.
Maybe that cow was following behind a half quarter or so, and I failed to see her.