Time came when the wild herds waxed so numerous that the local councils proclaimed that all such cattle were the public property of their own people. To prevent those who lived under another local council taking possession, the system of branding these cattle, when they could be caught, was introduced. When the cattle thief came on the scene, and he was got hold of, he was first branded on the shoulder and for subsequent offences branded in the hand, flogged and hanged. The straying cattle in a district belonging to the public, the public soon began to appreciate that here were cheap meat and cheap hides. They were hunted as the buffalo were subsequently hunted in North America, and it really seemed as though they were going to be exterminated. Regulations had to be made limiting the number of animals to be killed every year. Though there was still great slaughter, the herds continued to multiply amazingly, and, of course, wandered hundreds of miles away from any settlements. So the tide rolled on until two hundred years ago the number of cattle had increased to many millions. Carlos Gervasini, a Jesuit missionary, writing from Buenos Aires in 1729, says, "So numerous are the cattle in the neighbouring _campo_ here that any landlord may take from ten to twelve thousand to breed from, merely for the trouble of lassoing them and driving them home. In order to take more than this number a special licence is required from the governor. The ships returning to Spain are filled with the hides, and none but good specimens of these are troubled about. As to the flesh, each man takes what he requires and leaves the rest to the jaguars and dogs." Some years later a visitor to Argentina said there were so many cattle that the plains were covered; and had it not been for the number of dogs which devoured the young the country would have been devastated by them. There were so many cattle that when the Spaniards were at war, and invading boats appeared, their custom was to drive vast herds pell-mell down the river bank and so prevent a landing.