In this vicinity the farms are of great extent; few are so small as six miles in length, by a league in width. Such is the scarcity of wood, that the land-marks, when not already designated by nature in a chain of hills, a rivulet, or a valley, are made by ranges of stones of a peculiar form. The _quintas_ (or farms owned by gentlemen), with the country houses built upon them, as rural retreats for their proprietors, resident in Monte Video, were extremely pleasant and agreeable; the gardens were full of fine flowers and fruits, and every thing about these establishments indicated so much peace, harmony, and good neighbourhood, as to make an impression on the mind of a stranger equally pleasing and indelible. But the scene, alas! has been changed through the intestine discords produced by a revolutionary war; and the colony has been reduced from a state of happiness to one of distress and wretchedness. The inhabitants of the interior, having been instigated to plunder each other until nothing remained, ranged themselves under the banners of the predatory chieftain Artigas, and formed a desperate banditti, who robbed and frequently murdered all they met; drove the peaceable inhabitants from their farms, plundered their houses, took away their cattle, reduced the rich to poverty, and the poor to wretchedness, almost so as to desolate this once florishing colony. A man, who but a few months before possessed 100,000 head of cattle, was driven from his estate, and obliged to purchase, at the price of one shilling per pound, the meat which he had formerly left in the slaughter-house, having killed his beasts merely for their hides; so that the necessaries of life which were once to be procured almost gratuitously, became extravagantly dear; and the horrors of approaching famine were superadded to those of anarchy and spoliation.
Reverting to the former order of things, I could name more than fifty individuals of Monte Video, whose estates were from twenty to fifty miles in length, by ten or twenty in breadth, with cattle in such numbers as are almost incredible. An estate of this kind, consisting of a varied extent of hill, plain, and valley, is called a _fazenda_, as distinguished from the _quinta_, which bears a closer resemblance to the English farm, being a portion of land, generally selected near the house, for the culture of wheat, beans, Indian corn, melons, fruit trees, &c.