Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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There
Exist, It Is Believed, In The Pampas Of Buenos Ayres, 12,000,000 Cows,
And 3,000,000 Horses, Without Comprising In This Enumeration The
Cattle That Have No Acknowledged Proprietor.
I shall not hazard any general estimates, which from their nature are
too uncertain; but shall only observe that, in the Llanos of Caracas,
the proprietors of the great hatos are entirely ignorant of the number
of the cattle they possess.
They only know that of the young cattle,
which are branded every year with a letter or mark peculiar to each
herd. The richest proprietors mark as many as 14,000 head every year;
and sell to the number of five or six thousand. According to official
documents, the exportation of hides from the whole capitania-general
of Caracas amounted annually to 174,000 skins of oxen, and 11,500 of
goats. When we reflect, that these documents are taken from the books
of the custom-houses, where no mention is made of the fraudulent
dealings in hides, we are tempted to believe that the estimate of
1,200,000 oxen wandering in the Llanos, from the Rio Carony and the
Guarapiche to the lake of Maracaybo, is much underrated. The port of
La Guayra alone exported annually from 1789 to 1792, 70,000 or 80,000
hides, entered in the custom-house books, scarcely one-fifth of which
was sent to Spain. The exportation from Buenos Ayres, at the end of
the eighteenth century, was, according to Don Felix de Azara, 800,000
skins.
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