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 licences 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 HORSES AND CATTLE. 371 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*. 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 mil * The drought in question was one of the most destructive on record; large lakes in the south, never before known to have been without water, were entirely dried up, in which immense numbers of fish perished, the stench from which was described as enough to have produced a pestilence. Another serious consequence from it, of a different description, was the prodigious increase of all kinds of vermin, especially field-mice, myriads of which overran the country, and entirely destroyed the maize-harvest for 1833. 2B 2 lions. 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 HORSES AND CATTLE. 373 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. CHAPTER XVI. PUBLIC DEBT. Origin of the Funded Debt of Buenos Ayres. Receipts and Expenditure from 1822 to 1825, during peace. Loan raised in England. War with Brazil, and stoppage of all revenue from the Customhouse for three years. Pecuniary difficulties in consequence. The Provincial Bank of Buenos Ayres converted into a National one. The Government interferes with it, and, by forcing it to increase its issues, destroys its credit. Debt at the close of the war at the end of 1828. Hopes founded on the peace destroyed by the mutiny of the Army;-deplorable consequences of that event. Depreciation of the Currency. Deficit in the revenue, and increase of the Funded Debt:-its amount in 1834, and further increase in 1837. General account of the liabilities of the Government up to that year; increased by subsequent war with Bolivia, and French Blockade. IN any attempt to convey an idea of the finance accounts of Buenos Ayres it should, in the first instance, be observed that, although those accounts are, primâ facie, national, they exhibit in reality the receipts and expenditure of the government of the province of Buenos Ayres alone :-the other provinces, containing three-fourths of the population of the whole republic, contribute nothing towards the general expenses, though most of them manage to support their petty provincial administrations. Buenos Ayres alone found all the pecuniary means both for the war with Spain for the establishment of the inde |