to obscure and tone down the brilliant displays of sunset colour upon the distant clouds. Even this phenomenon has an interest, and helps to break the tiring sameness of the plains. The flights of the innumerable feathered tribe against the sky--ducks, geese, pigeons, parrots, hawks, plovers, storks, flamingoes, herons, scissor birds, and red birds an infinite variety--help to divert the mind. It requires a long residence on the plains and an unerring intuition for direction and locality, to acquire a familiarity with all these forms of life. Landmarks that the unpractised eye would overlook become live, bold and full of meaning to a gaucho and his horse, who have been acquainted with their surroundings from their birth. [Illustration: THE LONELY CAMP.] CHAPTER XVII _A Live Industry_ The rapid strides of progress made by the Argentine Republic have been accelerated by the increasing consumption in the United States of the products of her own Western cattle lands. Every year, as the population of the world increases, the heavy demands made upon cattle-producing countries bring newer fields into use. From the middle of the nineteenth until the beginning of the present century, the vast prairies of the Western States produced more than enough meat to supply their own needs and a large export canning business rapidly came into existence, whilst even live cattle were sent yearly to England (the largest consumer) and turned out to fatten on her rich pastures and meadow lands. But the enormous growth of the packing business and the increased home consumption in the States has put an end to the export of live stock or even of frozen meat. This changed situation was Argentina’s golden opportunity, and her entry into the world’s market was well described by General Bartolomé Mitre,[2] who towards the end of the last century wrote as follows: “The natural pastures [of Argentina] allured the inhabitants towards the pastoral industry. Its vast littoral placed it in contact with the rest of the world by means of fluvial and maritime navigation. Its healthy and mild climate made life more enjoyable and labour more productive. Thus it was a country prepared for live stock breeding, appointed to prosper through commerce, and predestined to be stocked by the acclimatisation of all the breeds of the earth. So it is seen that the occupation of the soil began to be carried out by means of the cattle brought overland from Peru and Brazil, that the commercial activities of the interior are converging little by little towards the River Plate, abundance and prosperity are diffused by this means, and that the first foreign operation of the colonists after the foundation of Buenos Aires in 1580, was the exportation of a cargo of produce of their own labour (hides and tallow) that led up to the import business and induced immigration.”