The annual increase on a well-regulated estancia has been ascertained to be from 30 to 40 per cent., which yields an enormous profit to the proprietor, whilst his expenses are comparatively trifling. The only serious casualty to which the cattle-owner is liable is from the effects of occasional droughts, which in these countries are, at times, attended with frightful devastation:--the cattle then rush in thousands from their own pastures in search of water in every direction, and perish for want of it in immense numbers. In the last great drought, which continued during the summers of 1830, 31, and 32, it was calculated that from a million and a half to two millions of animals died:--the borders of all the lakes and streamlets in the province were long afterwards white with their bones[80]. But for this calamity the quantity of hides brought forward in the last five years would have been much greater than it has been.
In the years immediately preceding the independency of the republic the annual export of hides from the river Plate was from 700,000 to 800,000, besides an enormous consumption of them for every conceivable purpose by all classes of the people of the country, and great destruction by waste; so that it is generally supposed that at that time the number of cattle in the provinces was not less than five millions. Azara estimated them at _twelve_ millions (in 1792), but I never met with any one who would agree with him in that calculation.
By far the greater part of these animals were then reared in the Banda Oriental and Entre Rios:--nor was it till subsequently to the commencement of the struggle for their independence, when those provinces became the seat of war, and were laid waste by the Portuguese and by Artigas, that the people of Buenos Ayres began to occupy the lands south of the River Salado, which have given so much increased importance to that province. Since that period every encouragement and protection which it is possible to give to this source of national wealth has been wisely afforded by the ruling authorities.
The Pampas are no longer a vast, useless, and unappropriated waste in which the animals run wild as formerly; by far the greater part of the lands comprised within the boundary line laid down in the map having been carefully measured by the government officers, and allotted to individuals, who, as they occupy them, are obliged to set up and preserve their marks of possession, which, together with the bounds and extent of every separate estancia, are duly registered in the topographical department of the state. Of the hundreds of thousands of cattle now reared in these lands there is hardly, perhaps, a single animal of a year old which is not branded with the mark of an owner, and that mark is equally registered by the authorities, and entitles him to claim his property wherever he may find it.