The limestone is loosened by the wedge and lever, and brought away in large slabs to the kilns, where it is broken into fragments of a convenient size, and burnt with wood. The kilns are very capacious, but so badly constructed that the process of calcination is very slow and tedious. The lime, when slaked, is measured, put into sacks made of green hides, and sent in large carts, drawn by oxen, principally to Colonia del Sacramento, Monte Video, and Buenos Ayres.
Barriga Negra is distant about 160 miles north-east from Monte Video, about 120 from Maldonado, and 90 from the town of Minas. The country around it is mountainous, well watered, and not destitute of wood. The banks of the streams are thickly covered with trees, rarely, however, of large size, for the creeping plants, interweaving with the shoots, check their growth and form an impenetrable thicket. Here are numbers of great breeding estates, many of which are stocked with from 60,000 to 200,000 head of cattle. These are guarded principally by men from Paraguay called Peons, who live in hovels built for the purpose at convenient distances. Ten thousand head are allotted to four or five Peons, whose business it is to collect them every morning and evening, and once or twice a month to drive them into pens, where they are kept for a night. The cattle by this mode of management are soon tamed; a ferocious or vicious beast I never saw among them. Breeding is alone attended to; neither butter nor cheese is made, and milk is scarcely known as an article of food. The constant diet of the people, morning, noon, and night, is beef, eaten almost always without bread, and frequently without salt. This habitual subsistence on strong food would probably engender diseases, were it not corrected by frequently taking an infusion of their favorite herb _Mate_, at all times of the day, when inclination calls for it.
The dwellings of the Peons are in general very wretched, the walls being formed by a few upright posts interwoven with small branches of trees, plastered with mud inside and out, and the roof thatched with long grass and rushes. The door is also of wicker-work, or, in its stead, a green hide stretched on sticks and removable at pleasure. The furniture of these poor hovels consists of a few skulls of horses, which are made to serve for seats; and of a stretched hide to lie upon. The principal if not the sole cooking utensil is a spit or rod of iron, stuck in the ground in an oblique position, so as to incline over the fire. The beef when spitted is left to roast until the part next the fire is supposed to be done enough, then its position is altered, and the change is occasionally repeated, until the whole is cooked. The juices of the meat, by this mode of roasting, help to mend the fire, and indeed the people seem to think that they are fit for nothing else. The meat, which is naturally poor and coarse, being thus dried to a cake, bears little affinity to the boasted roast beef of England. Fuel, in some parts, is so extremely scarce that the following strange expedient is resorted to for a supply. As the mares in this country are kept solely for breeding, and are never trained to labor, they generally exceed, in a great degree, the due proportion; a flock of them is frequently killed, and their carcasses soon becoming dry, are used as firing, (with the exception of the hides and tails), which, when properly prepared, are packed for exportation.