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It is a strong, nimble animal, generally inhabiting marshy places, and pursuing aquatic animals by swimming, prowling about by night and sleeping during the day. Its attacks are particularly dreaded at the ESTANCIAS, or sheep stations, as it often commits considerable ravages, carrying off the finest of the flock.
Within a range of ten miles there were no less than four estancias owned by Englishmen, besides that of their first friend Mr. Percy. A ride of twenty miles is thought nothing of out on the pampas. The estate immediately to the rear of their own was owned by Senor Jaqueras, a native.
One of the most important estancias in our neighbourhood, at all events to us, was called Casa Antigua, and that it was an ancient dwelling-place in that district appeared likely enough, since the trees were the largest and had an appearance of extreme age.
The ESTANCIAS are large cattle stations for breeding cattle; but Thalcave resolved not to stop at any of them, but to go straight on to Fort Independence. They passed several farms fortified by battlements and surrounded by a deep moat, the principal building being encircled by a terrace, from which the inhabitants could fire down on the marauders in the plain.
But for a continued cruise with a large crew this hand-to-mouth supply was insufficient. The buccaneers sometimes began a cruise by sailing to an estancia in Hispaniola, or on the Main, where they might supply their harness casks with flesh. They used to attack these estancias, or "hog-yards," at night.
How unutterably worn out, stilted, and artificial seems all the so-called pastoral poetry ever written when one sits down to supper and joins in the graceful Cielo or Pericon in one of these remote, semi-barbarous South American estancias! I swear I will turn poet myself, and go back some day to astonish old blase Europe with something so so What the deuce was that?
In the camp as all the country round Buenos Ayres is called people eat nothing but meat, either fresh or dried, and hardly any flour with it. Especially in the more distant estancias, beef and mutton, poultry and eggs, form the staple food of the inhabitants. Very little bread is eaten, and no vegetables, and an attempt is rarely made to cultivate a garden of any sort.
It was nearly dark when we arrived at the Salado; the stream was deep, and about forty yards wide; in summer, however, its bed becomes almost dry, and the little remaining water nearly as salt as that of the sea. We slept at one of the great estancias of General Rosas. It was fortified, and of such an extent, that arriving in the dark I thought it was a town and fortress.
On the way we passed the ruins of some fine "estancias," which a few years since had been destroyed by the Indians. They withstood several attacks. A man present at one gave me a very lively description of what took place. The inhabitants had sufficient notice to drive all the cattle and horses into the "corral" which surrounded the house, and likewise to mount some small cannon.
These great estancias often consist of thousands of acres. A single one of them is said to be as large as the state of Rhode Island. The owners generally have good houses but do not live in them much of the time. They are in Buenos Aires, or traveling in Europe, and their children are in the colleges and universities.
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