The thirty-four years of peace which followed in Rio Grande were employed in steady growth. A craze for cattle-raising set in, and the plains were divided up into great _estancias_ which were distributed among the governor's favourites or those who had distinguished themselves during the war. Substantially the entire population engaged in the cattle business. The Rio Grandenses and their cattle multiplied so rapidly that they spread out over the western part of the state, which was still Spanish, and to the south. In 1780 the curing of beef by drying and salting was introduced, which permitted its shipment, and afforded a stable market. [Illustration: WASHING DIAMONDS.] After the great gold discoveries in Minas during the late years of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth centuries, the prospectors ranged north from Sabara along the great Backbone Mountains, finding washings at many places in North Minas and Bahia. By 1740 the fields in Bahia were producing fifty to a hundred thousand ounces a year. As early as 1718 an expedition had penetrated fifteen hundred miles to the west and discovered good placers on the plateau where the headwaters of the Madeira and the Paraguay intertwine. This was the beginning of Cuyaba and the state of Matto Grosso. In ten years a million five hundred thousand ounces were taken out from these diggings. A little later still other fields were discovered farther west on the Madeira watershed. The miners at the gold camp of Tijuca in North Minas had noticed some curious little shining stones in the bottom of their pans and thought them so pretty that they used them for counters in games. Soon a wandering friar who had been in India recognised them as diamonds. This occurred in 1729, and the field thus opened up supplied the world with diamonds until the discovery of Kimberley. In the years from 1730 to 1770 five million carats were taken from the original Diamantina district, and the deposits are still second in productiveness only to those of South Africa. The diamond region was at once declared Crown property and a deadline drawn around it which none except officials were allowed to cross.