Superabundance also led to waste to an enormous extent; a gaucho would kill an ox for the tongue, or any other part of the animal he might fancy for his dinner, and leave the rest of the carcase to be devoured by the vultures, or by the wild dogs which swarmed in the country, and destroyed an incredible number of the young cattle. Little respect was then paid to this description of property, and the peons were easily bribed to kill their masters' or their neighbours' cattle to barter their hides for the tobacco and spirits offered to them by the peddling traders who wandered over the country to collect them. The government was obliged, at last, to take strong measures to stop these evils:--they enacted heavy penalties on those found destroying or selling what did not of right belong to them; whilst, for the better identification of property, every proprietor was obliged, by a given day, to brand his cattle with his own particular mark:--all beasts found without a mark after that time were declared to be the king's, and the right to seek for and seize them was sold to or farmed by individuals. Proprietors were obliged to take out licenses to sell their hides, and the slaughter of cows and calves was entirely prohibited. War, also, to extermination, was declared against the wild dogs. These regulations, however feebly enforced, were not without effect:--the protection, at any rate, which they promised to property was enough to induce the people to extend their cattle establishments, whilst their own experience, after a time, led them to regulate their annual sales in more due proportion to their stocks. 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.