The process of preparing this meat is quite interesting, for it is so much different from the methods of preparing and preserving beef in our own country. Pelotas is the greatest centre of this industry, but thousands of head of cattle are also killed at Bagé, Quarahim, San Gabriel and other towns. The work of killing and curing is done in the season from November to May, which are the summer months. After an animal has been killed the carcass is taken to a long and broad dissecting shed, where it is immediately set upon by a man and boys armed with long knives. In less than ten minutes, as a rule, the hide has been removed, and all the meat cut in strips and removed from the bones. These strips of meat are made as large as possible. After being cut up the strips are hung up for a time on poles to cool, but no artificial cooling process is used. They are then immersed in immense tanks filled with strong salt brine. Later, they are placed in a tank filled with a still stronger brine, and, finally, into a third solution of great strength. After being sufficiently soaked in this strong brine, the strips of meat are piled up with alternate layers of salt. From these piles the meat is laid out on rows of railings, and thoroughly dried in the sun, which gives it the final process of curing and seasoning. This meat then becomes the _xarque_, or jerked beef, which forms a most important article of food in Brazil, and can be seen for sale in the meat markets all over the country. It is bound in bales of about two hundred pounds, covered with sacking and shipped to the markets. To use it the meat must first be soaked for a time in water to remove the excess of the salt preservative, and then it is boiled or roasted, making a nutritive diet of which the people are very fond. The tongues are prepared in the same way, and shipped to the northern markets. The hides are salted to preserve them, the bones, horns and hoofs are boiled to remove all the tallow and glue, and all of these products are shipped to Europe. The process as followed to this day is a wasteful one. The same care and economy of manufacture followed in the United States would yield far greater profits to the manufacturers. A half million or more of cattle are slaughtered and cured in this way, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul each year, and it could be developed to far greater proportions under proper management. It will not be, however, until foreign capital develops the industry, as it has in Argentina. [Illustration: VIEW OF PORTO ALEGRE.]