“It seems to me I shouldn’t sleep very well with my head between the two horns of an ox’s skull.”
“The hardened hunter of the pampas sleeps on it as on feathers.”
“And what do they do with all those hides that they get by hunting the ox?” asked Jules. [[295]]
“There is an extensive commerce in those hides. Ships bring them to us, well salted, so that they will keep. In our tanneries the salt is washed out, and then with oak-bark they are made into leather for boots and shoes.”
“Then the leather of our shoes may come from some ox strangled by the lasso on the pampas?” Louis queried.
“There is nothing impossible in that. I would not say positively that we are not wearing shoes made from the hide of a wild ox, for Buenos Aires supplies a considerable part of our deficiency in leather. It may be, on the other hand, that our shoes come simply from the domestic ox, whose hide is put to the same use as that of the South American bullock. You are at liberty to ascribe your footwear to either source.”
“For my part,” Emile declared, “I choose the wild ox, and perhaps its body is now being used by some hunter for his hut.”
“To finish the subject of tame cattle that have run wild, I will say a few words about the herds of Camargue. A little below Arles, about seven leagues from the sea, the Rhone forks and encloses between its two branches and the Mediterranean a large triangular plain. That is Camargue, a shifting tract subject to the action of both fresh and salt water, receiving the alluvial deposits of the river and the sands of the sea. There are three different regions to be distinguished in going from the riverbanks to the interior of the island, where there is a [[296]]large pond known as the Vaccarès Pond. These regions comprise the cultivated territory, the pasture land, and the group of ponds. The first, running the length of the two outlets of the Rhone, is wonderfully fertile, being made so by the annual deposits of silt. Rich harvests gild these strips of land along the river, the current of which prevents the infiltration of salt from the sea. Going further, one comes to the salt marshes, and finally, from the center of the island to the sea, stretches the region of ponds. This last is merely dry land in the making, a plain in the process of formation, with the river constantly adding its accretions of soil and the sea forever washing them away.
“In the portion devoted to pasturage roam thousands of bullocks that have reverted to the wild state, unprovided with shelter of any sort and free from all surveillance except such as is exercised by mounted keepers who, at long intervals, come and round up the unruly herds with the aid of a trident. Black, small, and stocky, with fierce eyes and menacing horns, they have resumed the primitive characteristics of the race. Bad luck to whoever should come and disturb them at their sport among the reeds. Only the herdsman, mounted on a fast horse and equipped with a trident for pricking the nostrils of the beasts, can control the wild herd. In one particular alone are we reminded that they are still man’s servants, victims destined for his slaughter-houses and sometimes also, alas, set apart for his entertainment in the barbaric bull-fight: on their [[297]]shoulders the mark of the proprietor is branded with red-hot iron.
“Over the same prairies gallop, heedless of bad weather and proud of their freedom, horses descended from those that the Arabs, once masters of the south of France, left in these regions. They are white in color, small, active, and skittish. Their mouth knows not the bit, nor their hoof the shoe. At harvest time they are led up from their pasture-ground to tread the threshing-floor and thresh the wheat. The work finished, they are set free again.