. . .been of fundamental importance in the history of the colonization of South America. Animals were the only goods that could be conveyed any great distance. At the beginning of the conquest the productive regions of the continent, which supplied the export trade with Europe, were very limited in extent. Pastoral colonization began at once, and spread over a very wide area. Herds of oxen, for meat or draught, horses, and mules, made their way toward the centres of consumption: towns like Lima, Bahía, and Rio, the Peruvian mines, and the sugar-refineries of the north-east of Brazil, and later toward the yerbales of Paraguay or the seaports of the Caribs and the Rio Grande do Sul, where the jerked meat industry developed. The cattle routes converge upon these centres.

The export of cattle and mules from the Argentine plains to Peru was fully established by the close of the sixteenth century, and it seems to have continued without interruption ever since. Upper Peru. . . Read More