My own experience is that on the
desert pampas wild horses are exceedingly scarce, and from all accounts
it is the same throughout Patagonia.
Next to horseflesh, sheep is preferred, and where the puma can come at a
flock, he will not trouble himself to attack horned cattle. In Patagonia
especially I found this to be the case. I resided for some time at an
estancia close to the town of El Carmen, on the Rio Negro, which during
my stay was infested by a very bold and cunning puma. To protect the
sheep from his attacks an enclosure was made of upright willow-poles
fifteen feet long, while the gate, by which he would have to enter, was
close to the house and nearly six feet high. In spite of the
difficulties thus put in the way, and of the presence of several large
dogs, also of the watch we kept in the hope of shooting him, every
cloudy night he came, and after killing one or more sheep got safely
away. One dark night he killed four sheep; I detected him in the act,
and going up to the gate, was trying to make out his invisible form in
the gloom as he flitted about knocking the sheep over, when suddenly he
leaped clear over my head and made his escape, the bullets I sent after
him in the dark failing to hit him. Yet at this place twelve or fourteen
calves, belonging to the milch cows, were every night shut into a small
brushwood pen, at a distance from the house where the enemy could easily
have destroyed every one of them.
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