For That Was A
Time Of Great Events And Serious Changes, Bodily And Mental, Which
Practically Brought The Happy Time Of My Boyhood To An End.
On looking back over the book, I find that on three or four occasions
I have placed some incident in the wrong chapter or group, thus making
it take place a year or so too soon or too late.
These small errors of
memory are, however, not worth altering now: so long as the scene or
event is rightly remembered and pictured it doesn't matter much
whether I was six or seven, or eight years old at the time. I find,
too, that I have omitted many things which perhaps deserved a place in
the book - scenes and events which are vividly remembered, but which
unfortunately did not come up at the right moment, and so were left
out.
Of these scenes unconsciously omitted, I will now give one which
should have appeared in the chapter describing my first visit to
Buenos Ayres city: placed here it will serve very well as an
introduction to this last chapter.
In those days, and indeed down to the seventies of last century, the
south side of the capital was the site of the famous Saladero, or
killing-grounds, where the fat cattle, horses and sheep brought in
from all over the country were slaughtered every day, some to supply
the town with beef and mutton and to make _charque,_ or sun-dried
beef, for exportation to Brazil, where it was used to feed the slaves,
but the greater number of the animals, including all the horses, were
killed solely for their hides and tallow.
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