In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, Argentina was beginning to find herself. The Argentines were not content with the quality of the animals which were bred haphazard. They took to importing better strains from Europe, grasped what pedigree meant, began to demand the best the world could produce, and were willing to pay for it, until the call of Argentina for pedigree stock has almost become a mania, and other countries have little chance when Argentina enters the market with her bags of gold. Not only was there a wonderful increase in cattle and sheep, but horses multiplied. The Spanish contempt for females extends to mares, and no self-respecting Argentine, who was not seeking the sneers of his countrymen, would think of riding a mare. A hundred years ago European nations had not thought of purchasing South American mares; and it has been computed that in the first quarter of the last century over 500,000 mares were mercilessly slaughtered in Argentina. It has been said that an enormous number of wild horses were at large, and their continued incursions amongst the general stock caused great loss to the breeders. But that Argentina is one of the most productive lands in the world for horses is undoubted. They seem to have something approaching the fertility of the Australian rabbit. Historians disagree as to whether the first importation of horses to Argentina in the sixteenth century were seventy-two horses and mares, or forty-four horses and mares, or seven horses and five mares. Anyway, whilst Ruy Diaz de Guzman, who vouched for the latter figures, wrote they had "attained such a multiplication in less than sixty years that they cannot be counted, because the horses and mares are so many that they appear like great woods and occupy (the country) from Cape Blanco to the fort of Gabato, rather more than eighty leagues, and reach inland to the Cordillera," the monk Fray Juan de Rivadancira, who declared for forty-four horses and mares, states that "the coast is inhabited by a great many people, and there is an immense number of horses that remained there from the time of Don Pedro de Mendoza, that is forty-five years ago, forty-four horses and mares that have multiplied themselves, but, strange to say, in all this time they have not been seen by the Spaniards, who only know of them from the reports of the Indians, who say that they cover the plains to an astonishing extent." Allowing for these tales being exaggerated, the very fact they should be recorded some fifty years or so after the first importation of horses shows there must have been an astonishing increase.