HORSES AND CATTLE.
In connexion with what I have said upon the trade of Buenos Ayres, a brief notice of the origin and extraordinary increase of the vast herds of horses and cattle which at present constitute so large a portion of the riches of Buenos Ayres, may perhaps be not uninteresting to some of my readers.
America is indebted to Europe for these animals, which were unknown to the people of the New World before its discovery by the Spaniards. Of the two it will easily be understood that the horses, which formed so important a feature in the military equipment of the conquerors, were the first introduced. In 1535, the Adelantado Mendoza, who was the first to effect a landing at Buenos Ayres, took seventy with him on board the expedition which accompanied him from Spain, of which perhaps half were lost on the voyage, if we may judge from the small number of cavalry—one author says twelve, another thirty—which he was able to muster in his first battle with the Indians. The few that survived, when his followers were shortly afterwards driven out of that part of the country by the warlike natives, were turned loose into the pampas, where they multiplied exceedingly, and were found in great numbers forty years afterwards by De Garay, when he re-established the Spanish settlement at Buenos Ayres.
It was in that expedition (in 1580) that De Garay carried from Paraguay the first horned cattle ever seen in the pampas. How the stock had previously reached Paraguay is thus told by Dean Funes, the native historian. He says, "In 1555 there arrived at Assumption, from San Francisco, on the coast of Brazil, a few straggling emigrants, amongst whom were two Portuguese gentlemen, brothers, of the name of Goa, having with them a bull and eight cows, the origin of that mighty stock of cattle which now forms the wonder of the provinces of La Plata." The Portuguese servant intrusted with the important charge of these animals in their long over-land journey from the coast, whose name was Gaete, was rewarded for his care of them with one of the cows, a payment thought so much of at the time, that it gave rise to a saying still in use in those parts—"Es mas caro que las vacas de Gaete" ("Dearer than Gaete's cows").
But the value then set upon all European animals carried to America was enormous, as well it might be when the difficulties are considered of safely transporting them in the crazy and inconvenient shipping of those days. In Peru, in the same year (1555), so highly were horses prized, that it was thought worth recording in the public archives of Cuzco that 10,000 dollars had been refused for one offered for sale;—in that city a boar and sow, about the same time, were sold for 1600 dollars, and European sheep and goats fetched prices nearly as high.
Of the cattle carried by De Garay to Buenos Ayres it was not long before some escaped into the territory of the Indians, where they increased and multiplied, as the horses had done before. The settlers were too few, in the first instance, to domesticate more than were necessary for their own immediate wants, neither was the extent of their lands, for some time, adequate to the maintenance of any considerable stock; the cattle, therefore, ranged at liberty in the Pampas, and, though occasionally hunted down by the Spaniards for the hides, or by the Indians for food, the destruction was as nothing compared with the prodigious increase which went on:—they also found their way into the Banda Oriental, probably from Paraguay, where they multiplied even faster than in the Pampas, from the better quality of the pasturage and the more constant supply of water; and here it was that the illicit trade established by the Portuguese appears first to have awakened the Spaniards to a notion of the future importance of these animals.
The vicinity of their establishment at Colonia, immediately opposite to Buenos Ayres, not only facilitated their smuggling across it the European goods and tobacco and slaves which were wanted, but made it a convenient station for collecting from the Spaniards the hides for which they were but too glad to find any sale under the restrictions then imposed upon all trade. The Portuguese took good care to buy them only at such low prices as insured them an enormous profit upon their exportation for other markets; but the speculation answered to both parties, and as the contraband trade of the Portuguese with Buenos Ayres increased, so we find did the cattle establishments of the Spaniards in the Banda Oriental.
Cargoes of hides were occasionally shipped for Spain, particularly after the Spaniards founded Monte Video, in 1726; but the demand was far from equal to the production, and the stock of cattle went on gradually increasing till the partial opening of the colonial trade in 1778. At that period the cattle had reached an amount which, perhaps, has never been equalled at any subsequent period, but the increased demand for country produce which then took place was well nigh exterminating the whole stock. In 1783 no less than 1,400,000 hides were officially registered for exportation, besides a vast number clandestinely shipped.
Superabundance also led to waste to an enormous extent; a gaucho would kill an ox for the tongue, or any other part of the animal he might fancy for his dinner, and leave the rest of the carcase to be devoured by the vultures, or by the wild dogs which swarmed in the country, and destroyed an incredible number of the young cattle. Little respect was then paid to this description of property, and the peons were easily bribed to kill their masters' or their neighbours' cattle to barter their hides for the tobacco and spirits offered to them by the peddling traders who wandered over the country to collect them.
The government was obliged, at last, to take strong measures to stop these evils:—they enacted heavy penalties on those found destroying or selling what did not of right belong to them; whilst, for the better identification of property, every proprietor was obliged, by a given day, to brand his cattle with his own particular mark:—all beasts found without a mark after that time were declared to be the king's, and the right to seek for and seize them was sold to or farmed by individuals. Proprietors were obliged to take out licenses to sell their hides, and the slaughter of cows and calves was entirely prohibited. War, also, to extermination, was declared against the wild dogs.
These regulations, however feebly enforced, were not without effect:—the protection, at any rate, which they promised to property was enough to induce the people to extend their cattle establishments, whilst their own experience, after a time, led them to regulate their annual sales in more due proportion to their stocks.
The annual increase on a well-regulated estancia has been ascertained to be from 30 to 40 per cent., which yields an enormous profit to the proprietor, whilst his expenses are comparatively trifling. The only serious casualty to which the cattle-owner is liable is from the effects of occasional droughts, which in these countries are, at times, attended with frightful devastation:—the cattle then rush in thousands from their own pastures in search of water in every direction, and perish for want of it in immense numbers. In the last great drought, which continued during the summers of 1830, 31, and 32, it was calculated that from a million and a half to two millions of animals died:—the borders of all the lakes and streamlets in the province were long afterwards white with their bones[80]. But for this calamity the quantity of hides brought forward in the last five years would have been much greater than it has been.
In the years immediately preceding the independency of the republic the annual export of hides from the river Plate was from 700,000 to 800,000, besides an enormous consumption of them for every conceivable purpose by all classes of the people of the country, and great destruction by waste; so that it is generally supposed that at that time the number of cattle in the provinces was not less than five millions. Azara estimated them at twelve millions (in 1792), but I never met with any one who would agree with him in that calculation.
By far the greater part of these animals were then reared in the Banda Oriental and Entre Rios:—nor was it till subsequently to the commencement of the struggle for their independence, when those provinces became the seat of war, and were laid waste by the Portuguese and by Artigas, that the people of Buenos Ayres began to occupy the lands south of the River Salado, which have given so much increased importance to that province. Since that period every encouragement and protection which it is possible to give to this source of national wealth has been wisely afforded by the ruling authorities.
The Pampas are no longer a vast, useless, and unappropriated waste in which the animals run wild as formerly; by far the greater part of the lands comprised within the boundary line laid down in the map having been carefully measured by the government officers, and allotted to individuals, who, as they occupy them, are obliged to set up and preserve their marks of possession, which, together with the bounds and extent of every separate estancia, are duly registered in the topographical department of the state. Of the hundreds of thousands of cattle now reared in these lands there is hardly, perhaps, a single animal of a year old which is not branded with the mark of an owner, and that mark is equally registered by the authorities, and entitles him to claim his property wherever he may find it.
It is calculated by the best authorities,—the most extensive proprietors in the province,—that the present stock of cattle in the territory of Buenos Ayres alone may be from three to four millions; and it is supposed there may be above another million in the other provinces:—from this we ought to calculate upon an annual exportation of nearly a million of hides, gradually increasing.