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Title: The Argentine Republic: Its Development and Progress

Author: Pierre Denis

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Language: English

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THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC

BY PIERRE DENIS

BRAZIL
Translated, and with an Historical Chapter by Bernard
Miall. With a Supplementary Chapter by Dawson A.
Vindin, a Map and 36 Illustrations
Cloth, 15/- net. Third Impression

"Altogether the book is full of information, which shows the
author to have made a most careful study of the country."—
Westminster Gazette.

T. Fisher Unwin Ltd London

THE FALLS OF THE
YGUASSU
Thirteen miles above the confluence with the
Paraná. Like the Paraná at the Salto Guayra,
the river cuts through a layer of basalt
intercalated in the red sandstone. The forest
of the province of Misiones has a tropical
character near the river. The araucarias
cover only the higher parts of the tableland.

Plate I.

Click to view
larger image.

THE ARGENTINE
REPUBLIC · ITS
DEVELOPMENT AND

PROGRESS

By PIERRE DENIS, D. es L.
Agrégé d'Histoire et de Géographie

Translated by JOSEPH McCABE

T. FISHER UNWIN
LTD
LONDON:

ADELPHI
TERRACE

First published in English in 1922

(All rights reserved)

INTRODUCTION

In the following chapters I have endeavoured to indicate the essential
aspects of colonization in modern Argentina: the conquest of the soil by
man, the exploitation of its natural resources, the development of
agriculture and cattle-breeding, and the growth of the population and
enlargement of the urban centres.

For a new country like Argentina it is not convenient to adopt the strictly
regional plan which seems to be the best means of giving a complete and
methodical description of the historic countries of western Europe, where it
is the only way to keep in close touch with the geographical facts. In
western Europe each region is really an independent unity. It has for ages
lived upon its own resources; each population-group has its horizon
definitely limited; and the complex action of the environment upon man,
and of man upon the country, has proceeded in each district rather on the
lines of an isolated and impassioned dialogue between the two. It is quite
different in Argentina. There, many of the facts which we have to record
consist in an expansion of the population, a spread of methods of
exploitation from zone to zone of the country, and the influence upon
colonization of commerce and of the varying needs of the markets of the
world.

It may be well to reply in advance to a criticism which my Argentine
friends are sure to make. They will complain that I have paid no attention to
the people of Argentina, the creators of the greatness of the country. It is
true that I have deliberately refrained from any reference to the political and
moral life of the Republic, the national character and its evolution, the
stoicism of the gaucho, the industry of the colonist and the merchant, or the
patriotism of the Argentinians generally. My work is not a study of the
Argentine nation, but a geographical introduction to such a study.

I began the work during a stay in Argentina which lasted from April 1912
to August 1914. In the course of these two years I was able to visit most
parts of the country; and, as the information I gathered during my travels is
one of my chief sources, I give here a summary of my itineraries.

October-November 1912: Rosario—Region of the colonies
of Santa Fé—Forestry-industries of the Chaco Santiagueño
—Bañados of the Rio Dulce—Salta—Jujuy—Sierra de la
Lumbrera.

November-December 1912: Tucumán—Valley of Tapi—
Santa Maria to the west of Aconcagua—Cafayate (Valley of
Calchaqui).

December 1912-January 1913: Catamarca—Andalgala—
Valley of Pucara—Córdoba—Villa Maria.

January-February 1913: Region of the Pampas (Province of
Buenos Aires, south of Córdoba and of S. Luis, district of
the Central Pampa).

March 1913: Corrientes—Posadas—Asunción—Forest-
industries of the Chaco of Santa Fé.

August 1913: Region of the Pampas (Province of Buenos
Aires).

March 1914: Lake Nahuel Huapi—Valcheta—San Antonio
—The Rio Negro.

April 1914: Rioja—Sierra de los Llanos—San Juan—
Mendoza.

July 1914: Entre Rios.

These journeys, by rail or on well-known roads, were not
supposed to be for the purpose of exploration or discovery.
Their one object was to enable me to make a provisional
classification of the chief types of country and forms of
colonization, and to draw up a methodical programme for
more thorough research. The work which I trusted to do in a
more leisurely way was, however, suspended in 1914, and,
in spite of my very strong desire to do so, I was unable to
resume it on the spot in 1919. I have therefore been
compelled to publish my first observations, completing
them, as well as I could, by a bibliographical study of the
country. I have made use of some fragments of a popular
work which I began, at the request of the Argentine
Commission, for the International Exhibition at San
Francisco, of which several chapters were published in my
absence by the University of Tucumán (Pierre Denis,
Modern Argentina: Chapters of Economic Geography.
Publications of the University during the Centenary of the
Congress of Tucumán of 1816. Buenos Aires, 1916).1

My knowledge of the publications on Argentina has two conspicuous
gaps. The first is deliberate. I declined to study at second hand the
documents and chronicles which are our sources, to the end of the
eighteenth century, for the history of the various provinces that were to
form Argentina. Hence the historical data on colonization which will be
found in the following chapters relate almost entirely to the nineteenth
century.

The second gap I was, to my great disappointment, unable to fill up. A
large part of the local publications—official or other—maps, statistics, etc.,
never reached Europe, and Buenos Aires is the only place where one can
make a thorough study of them. These publications were available to me
until 1914. Since then I have been restricted to the resources of the Paris
and London libraries, which are very scanty; and less has been sent from
Argentina since the war. I have not the complete statistics up to date.

I trust, however, that this picture of Argentina has much more than a
retrospective character; that it is not out of date before it is published. I may
add that no statistics would enable one to solve the problem which
Argentina in 1920 presents to an observer. Has the European War merely
retarded the economic evolution of the country, or has it given that
evolution a new direction? Will or will not the relations which Argentina is
now resuming with the rest of the world be of the same character as the pre-
war relations?

The effects of the war upon the life of the country must not all be put on
the same footing. That some of the exporters to Argentina have gained by
the war and others lost—that the share of the United States, and even of
Japan, has greatly increased—is a fact that may be regarded from the
Argentinian point of view as of secondary importance. The war has,
moreover, had the effect of disorganizing marine transport and bringing

about a sort of relative isolation which is not yet quite over. The reduction
in the imports of English coal has made the petroleum wells of Rivadavia of
greater value to the country. It has compelled the Argentinians to make a
hurried inventory of their natural resources in the way of fuel. Local
industries have tried to meet the needs of the Argentinian market, where
they had no longer to bear the competition of European goods. The grave
disturbance of prices has enabled them to export certain products which had
hitherto been confined to home markets. The war has, moreover, not
interfered with the existing streams of export on a large scale from
Argentina. The Republic continues to send its cereals, meat, hides and wool
to Europe; and there is no reason to suppose that the competition of buyers
is likely to diminish, or that the cultivation of wheat and lucerne must
become less profitable.

The two essential effects of the war seem to have been the stopping of the
stream of immigration and the progressive reduction of the support which
Europe gave to the work of colonization in the form of advances of capital.

From 1914 to 1918 only 272,000 immigrants landed at Buenos Aires,
while 482,000 emigrants left the country. In 1918 the figure of immigration
and emigration was only 47,000, less than a tenth of what it was in a normal
year before the war. The withdrawal of European capital was felt from the
very beginning of the war, and it has gone on uninterruptedly, capital from
North America not being enough to supply the deficiency entirely. At the
same time the extraordinarily favourable balance of trade has led to the
storing of an ample reserve of capital in the country. Argentina has, in a
very short time, won a financial independence which, in normal conditions,
would have entailed long years of work and prosperity.

However it may seem, these two facts—the interruption of immigration
and the accumulation of capital—cannot be considered independently of

each other. The inquiry opened by the Social Museum of Argentina (La
inmigración después de la guerra, Museo Social Argentino, "Bol.
Mensual," viii, 1919, nos. 85-90) show that a speedy restoration of
immigration is expected in the Republic. Certainly it seems clear that the
political and social insecurity in Europe, the misery of the old world, will
probably enhance the attractions of Argentina. We must remember,
however, that the stream of emigration from Europe to the Republic in the
nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth, century was provoked by a
complex combination of economic conditions which were closely related to
each other. High wages in Argentina were connected with the high interest
on money; that is to say, in other words, with the scarcity of capital. The
future will decide whether immigration, and the rapid progress of
colonization and production, which characterize pre-war Argentina can be
adjusted to the policy of accumulation of capital to which the war has
condemned the country.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

CHAPTER I
THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA
The physical environment—Colonization and the natural regions—The
struggle with the Indians—Argentine unity—Argentina and the world.

CHAPTER II
THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST
The inhabited zones of the Andes in the north-west—Valles, Quebradas, Puna
—The irrigation of the valles—The historic routes—Convoys of stock—
The breeding of mules and the fairs—The struggle of the breeders
against drought—The Sierra de los Llanos.

CHAPTER III
TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA
Tucumán and the road to Chile—The climate and the cultivation of the sugar-
cane—The problem of manual labour—Irrigation at Mendoza—Water-
rights—Viticulture—Protection and the natural conditions.

CHAPTER IV
THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

Manual labour on the obrajes—The land of the bañados and the agricultural
cantons of Corrientes—The timber-yards of the Chaco and the tannic-
acid works of the Paraná—The exploitation of the maté—The forestry
industry and colonization.

CHAPTER V
PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING
The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes—The first settlements on
the Patagonian coast and the indigenous population—Extensive breeding
—The use of pasture on the lands of the Rio Negro—Transhumation.

CHAPTER VI
THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS
The limits of the prairie—The rains—The wind and the formation of the clay
of the Pampas—The wind and the contour—The zones of colonization
on the Pampas—Hunting wild cattle and primitive breeding—The sheep-
farms—The ranches—The region of "colonies"—The region of lucerne,
maize, and wheat—The combination of agriculture and breeding—The
economic mechanism of colonization—The exchanges between the
different zones of the Pampas.

CHAPTER VII
ROADS AND RAILWAYS
Roads on the plain—The salt road—The "trade route"—Transport by ox-
waggons—Arrieros and Troperos—Railways and colonization—The
trade in cereals—Home traffic and the reorganization of the system.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVER-ROUTES
The use of the river before steam navigation—Floods—The river plain—The
bed of the Paraná and its changes—The estuary and its shoals—
Maritime navigation—The boats on the Paraná.

CHAPTER IX
THE POPULATION
The distribution of the population—The streams of emigration to the interior
—Seasonal migrations—The historic towns—The towns of the Pampean
region—Buenos Aires.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE

I. THE FALLS OF THE YGUASSU Frontispiece

II. THE ARID ANDES—PUNTA VACAS, ON THE TRANS-ANDEAN
RAILWAY

QUEBRADA DE IRUYA

III. THE PATAGONIAN ANDES

IV. VEGETATION OF THE INTERIOR VALLEYS (ANDES OF THE
NORTH-WEST)

FOREST ON THE OUTER SLOPE OF THE SUB-ANDEAN CHAINS

V. DRY SCRUB OF THE CENTRAL CHACO

MARSHES (ESTEROS OR CAÑADAS) OF THE EASTERN CHACO

VI. THE VALLE OF SANTA MARIA, NORTH-WEST OF MOUNT
ACONCAGUA

THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA

VII. THE OASIS DEL RINCON, BELOW SAUJIL (ANDALGALA LINE,
PROVINCE OF CATAMARCA)

THE MONTE AT EL YESO

VIII. A VINEYARD AT SAN JUAN

A VINEYARD AT MENDOZA

IX. THE LAND OF THE BAÑADOS

LORETO: FARMING BY INUNDATION

X. LORETO: THE RIO PINTO IN THE DRY SEASON

LA BANDA (SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO)

XI. QUEBRACHO TRUNKS LYING AT THE STATIONS

XII. YOKE OF CREOLE OXEN USED FOR THE TRANSPORT OF
TIMBER ON THE EASTERN CHACO, OR CHACO OF SANTA FÉ

WORKS AT TARTAGAL (EASTERN CHACO) FOR MAKING TANNIC
ACID

XIII. THE VOLCANO PUNTIAGUDO

CERCAS ON THE LIMAY (RISING IN LAKE NAHUEL HUAPI), NEAR
THE CONFLUENCE OF THE TRAFUL

XIV. THE PATAGONIAN TABLELAND (NEUQUEN)

XV. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN—TRES ARROYES (BUENOS AIRES
PRAIRIE BETWEEN THE SIERRA DE TANDIL AND THE SIERRA
DE LA VENTANA)

TOAY, ON THE CENTRAL PAMPA (590 FEET)

XVI. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN—THE RIO BAMBA (IN THE SOUTH OF
THE CÓRDOBA PROVINCE, 500 FEET ABOVE SEA-LEVEL)

BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE, 1,166 FEET ELEVATION)

XVII. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN—BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS
PROVINCE)

JUNIN (150 MILES WEST OF BUENOS AIRES, 330 FEET ELEVATION)

XVIII. AN OX WAGON

THE MAIL COACH

XIX. THRESHING ON THE PAMPA

SACKS OF WHEAT READY FOR LOADING ON THE RAILWAY

XX. CONFLUENCE OF THE YGUASSU AND THE PARANÁ

XXI. THE PARANÁ AT CORRIENTES

THE BARRANCA AT PARANÁ (ENTRE RIOS), LEFT BANK

XXII. THE PARANÁ ABOVE THE ESTUARY

XXIII. THE OLDER INDUSTRIES OF THE PAMPA—DRYING HIDES

DRYING SALT MEAT

XXIV. A HERD OF CREOLE CATTLE

A HERD OF DURHAM CATTLE

MAPS

I. ARGENTINA: THE NATURAL REGIONS

II. IRRIGATION IN THE WEST AND NORTH-WEST OF ARGENTINA

III. THE CATTLE-BREEDING AREAS

IV. DENSITY OF THE MAIZE CROP

V. DENSITY OF THE WHEAT CROP

VI. THE RAILWAYS

VII. ESTUARY OF THE RIO DE LA PLATA

The Argentine Republic

CHAPTER I
THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

The physical environment—Colonization and the natural regions
—The struggle with the Indians—Argentine unity—
Argentina and the world.

The South-American continent is divided, from west to east, into three
great zones. The lofty chains of the Andes stretch along the Pacific coast; at
the foot of these are immense alluvial tablelands; further east are the level
plains of the Atlantic coast. The eastern zone, the tablelands, ends
southward at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It enters Argentine territory
only in the north-east corner of the province of Misiones. Below 35° S. lat.
the alluvial plains open freely upon the ocean. The position of Buenos
Aires, in the threshold of the plain of the Pampas, is somewhat like that of
Chicago at the beginning of the prairies; if you imagine the north-eastern
States and eastern Canada struck off the map, and the sea penetrating inland
as far as the Lakes.

The three essential aspects of Argentine scenery are mountain, plain, and
river. The Paraná, indeed, is a whole natural region in itself, with its arms
and its islands, and the ever-changing low plain over which its floods
spread, as one sees it from the top of the clay barrancas (cliffs); though it is

so broad that one cannot see the opposite bank. It wanders over the plain
like a foreigner, an emissary from tropical America; for it has a flora of its
own and tepid waters which often cause a fog over the estuary where they
mingle with the waters of the sea.

From the general mass of the Argentine plains, we must set apart the
region between the Paraná and the Uruguay, which Argentinians call
"Mesopotamia." While æolian clays form the soil of the Pampa on the right
bank of the Paraná, fluvial deposits—sands and gravel, in which it is
impossible to distinguish the contribution of the Uruguay from that of the
Paraná—cover a great part of Mesopotamia. The earlier beds of the rivers
may be traced here, not only by the alluvial deposits they have left, but by
the lagoons which still mark their course. Running waters have shaped the
landscape and scooped out a system of secondary valleys, and these reflect
the history of the river itself and the variations of base-level which led to
alternate periods of erosion and deposit.

On the right bank, on the contrary, the Paraná has no tributaries of any
importance except at the extreme north of the country. The scarcity of
running water is, in fact, one of the characteristic features of the plain of the
Pampas. Except in the east, along the Paraná, where a network of
permanent streams develops on a comparatively impermeable and fairly
humid soil, and except at the foot of the mountains, where irregular torrents
and streams, swollen after a storm and scanty in the dry season, disappear,
as a rule, within sight of the hills that gave them birth, there is no superficial
organized drainage. As a whole, the alluvial covering of the Pampas, the
upper beds of which are cut through by the barranca of the Paraná, is not of
river origin; it was brought and distributed by the wind, which took the
place of running water. The clay of the Pampas is a present from the winds.
The increasing dryness of the climate toward the west, as one approaches

the Cordillera, explains the feebleness of the erosion by water and the
extent of the erosion by wind.

It is aridity, too, that gives their particular character to the Argentine
Andes. They have little trace of perpetual snow, the lower limit of which
approaches to within about four miles of the Bolivian frontier. There are no
glaciers there; they reappear in the south only in the latitude of San Juan
and Mendoza, on the flanks of the three giants of the southern Cordillera,
Mercedario, Aconcagua, and Tupungato. Below the small number of steep
furrows which the glaciers have carved, and usually up to the top of the
mountain, there spreads what has been called, very expressively, "the zone
of rubbish." In this the winter's snows, fretted by the sun in that clear
atmosphere, form those multitudes of narrow pyramids which the
Argentinians compare to processions of white-robed pilgrims. The
underlying rock is rarely visible. It is covered with a thick cloak of rubbish,
split off by the frost, which the slow-moving waters released by the melting
of the snows heap up at the foot of the slopes, at the bottom of depressions.
The half-buried summits are succeeded by basins of accumulation. In the
valleys round the mountains there are immense beds of detritic, half-
rounded shingle. The torrents have cut their way through the alluvial mass,
and they flow at the foot of high terraces which mark the sites of former
valleys.

The spread of colonization toward the south during the last generation
has extended Argentine territory beyond the limits of these classic scenes.
The Patagonian Andes differ profoundly from the Northern Andes; and the
change is not more sudden than that of the climate, to which it is due. Going
toward the south, one passes, almost without a break, from the Atlas
Mountains to Scandinavia. The moisture increases in proportion as the
mean temperature falls. The mountains are covered with snow, and the
glaciers lengthen. In one part of Patagonia they still form a continuous cap,

an "inland sea," concealing the rock over the entire central zone of the
Cordillera; though they are only the shrunken remainder of a glacial cap
which was once far more extensive. Here ice was the chief sculptor of the
scenery. It has made elevated tablelands, broadened the deep valleys which
cut the flank of the mountain, polished their sides, and deposited at the
point where they open out the amphitheatres of the moraines, behind which
the waters have accumulated and formed lakes; and these lakes stretch back
like fiords to the heart of the Cordillera, and are the pride of Patagonia.

The waters of these moisture-laden mountains have, to the east, carved
out the Patagonian tableland. It is crossed by broad and boldly cut valleys,
several of which, abandoned by the rivers which scoured them, are now
dead valleys. The rubbish from the wearing down of the mountains and the
glacial moraine has been spread over the whole face of the tableland in the
form of beds of gravel. But the rivers that rise in the Andes cross a country
of increasing aridity as they descend eastward. There is no tributary to add
to their volume. There is none of that softening of lines, of that idle flow of
a meandering stream which characterizes the final stage of a river in a moist
district. Their inclination remains steep, and their waters continue to plough
up coarse sediment; and everywhere, up to the fringes of the valleys, the
fluting of the sandstone and steepness of the cliffs bear witness, like the
edges of the hamadas of the Sahara, to some other form of erosion than that
effected by running water—the influence on the country of the westerly
winds. On the tableland the wind polishes the rounded pebbles, makes
facets on them, and gives them the colouring of the desert.

Thus from the north to the south of Argentina there is a complete contrast
in the way in which the controlling forces of the landscape are distributed.
In the north the moist winds come from the east; the rains lessen as they
pass westward. The clays, capped with black soil, of Buenos Aires are
æolian deposits, brought by the wind from the desolate steppes which close

the Pampa to the west, fixed and transformed by the vegetation of a moister
region. In the south, on the contrary, the rains come from the Pacific, and
the fluvio-glacial alluvial beds of the Patagonian tableland are evidence of
copious reserves of moisture in the Andes; but the arid climate in which the
waters have left them has made its mark upon their surface.

This diversity of the physical environment is only fully brought out by
colonization. It is colonization, the efforts and attempts of human industry
to adjust agricultural or pastoral practices to the natural conditions, which
enable us to assign the limits of the natural regions. In this differentiation it
is essential to notice the historical element.

The introduction of new crops gives a geographical meaning, which had
hitherto escaped observation, to climatological limits such, for instance, as
the line of 400 millimetres of rainfall which is the western frontier of the
region of cereals. These limits of crops remain uncertain for a time, then
experience and tradition gradually fix them. They always keep a certain
elasticity, however, advancing or receding according as the market for the
particular produce is favourable or unfavourable.

Improvement in the methods of exploiting the soil—the adoption of
better agricultural machinery, dry farming, etc.—usually leads to the
extension of the sphere of a particular type of colonization, as it enables this
type to overcome some natural obstacle which restricted its expansion.
Sometimes, however, it brings to light a new obstacle and creates a new
geographical limit.

To this category belongs the northern limit of the belt of selective
breeding, which slants across the plain of the Pampas from the Sierra de
Córdoba to the Paraná. The more or less degenerate cattle of the natives had
spread over the whole of the South American continent, except the tropical
forests, since the seventeenth century, adapting themselves easily to very

different climatic conditions, from the Venezuelan llanos to the sertao of
Bahía and the plains of Argentina. But pedigree animals, more valuable and
more delicate, introduced on to the Pampas fifty years ago, are not able to
resist the malady caused by a parasite called the garrapate. Hence the
southern limit of the garrapate suddenly became a most important element
in the economic life of the Republic. It would lose its importance if we
discovered a serum that would give the animals immunity against Texas
fever.

The range of one and the same cause varies infinitely with the
circumstances. The limit of the prairie, as of the scrub (monte) which
surrounds it on every side, and keeps it at a distance of 320 to 440 miles
from Buenos Aires, had no decisive influence on primitive colonization.
Whether covered with grasses or brushwood, the plain is equally suitable
for extensive breeding. The ranches are the same on both sides of the
border. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, when the area of
cultivation increased, the prairie was at once found to be superior. The
labour required for clearing the brushwood before the plough can work is
enough to divert from it, at least for some time, the stream of agricultural
colonization. While the population of the monte, wood-cutters and breeders,
are indigenous, the prairie has absorbed the immigrants from Europe, and
the border of the scrub has become in many places an ethnographical
frontier.2

The changes which man
has made in the floral
landscape are, as a rule,
slight. The limits of the
forest zone have scarcely
been altered. The beech
forest of the southern

Andes seems to be less THE ARID ANDES. PUNTA
tenacious than the monte
which surrounds the VACAS, ON THE TRANS-
Pampa, and it has been ANDEAN RAILWAY.
ravaged by fire along the
The bottom of the valley is 8,000 feet above
whole edge of the southern
sea-level; the sides buried under rubbish. It
steppe at 37° S. lat. The
is especially in this latitude, above a height
work of man is generally
of 10,600 feet, in the zone where the moisture
confined to changing the
falls as snow even in summer, that the rock is
primitive complexion of
everywhere buried under its own rubbish.
the natural formations,
This is Keidel's Schuttzone. It extends to the
without altering their
foot of the Alpine peaks, carved by glaciers.
general appearance. Thus
Photograph by Moody, Buenos Aires.
valuable essences are
disappearing from the
Click to view
forest and the scrub, the
larch and the cypress from larger image.
the district of the
Patagonian Lakes, and the
red quebracho from
Santiago del Estero.

A change that is scarcely
visible, but is of
considerable economic
importance, thus takes
place in the vegetation of QUEBRADA DE IRUYA.
the prairie owing to the
Eastern slope of the Sierra de Santa Victoria,
presence of herds. The
65 miles from the Bolivian frontier, in the
pasto fuerte, composed of
zone of summer rain. The valleys have been
rough grasses, which is the

natural vegetation, is being filled with an enormous mass of torrential
succeeded by the pasto alluvia. The water afterwards made a course
dulce, in which annual through the mobile deposits.
species, soft grasses, Photograph by Keidel, Mines Division.
leguminous plants, etc.,
predominate. It is mainly Plate II.
composed of plants of
European origin. The
Click to view
difference between the larger image.
pasto dulce and the pasto
fuerte or duro is so important for the farmer that there is hardly a single
work on Argentina which does not dwell on it. The idea, however, that the
pasto dulce has advanced steadily westward, starting from the vicinity of
Buenos Aires and constantly enlarging its domain, is not strictly accurate. In
1895 Holmberg3 traced the western limit of the zone of the pasto dulce
through Pergamino, Junin, Bragado, Azul, Ayacucho, and Mar Chiquita.
When we compare this with earlier observations, we see that in the course
of the nineteenth century the zone of the pasto dulce has extended by about
a hundred miles on the southern Pampa. When Darwin travelled from Bahía
Blanca to Buenos Aires in 1833, he found no pasto dulce except round
Monte, on the right bank of the Salado. Further north, on the other hand, the
extent of the pasto dulce does not seem to have altered appreciably. The
expedition to the Salt Lakes in 1778 found that there were already thistles
beyond the line of the ranches, and these are characteristic of the pasto
dulce in the Chivilcoy region on the Salado, which was then abandoned to
herds of wild cattle. "There was thistle enough to cook," says the journal of
the expedition. The difference is connected with the history of colonization
in the province of Buenos Aires, where ground was gained only toward the
south between 1800 and 1875. Since 1895 the pasto duro has been
eliminated by agriculture rather than by the feet of the herds. Hence the

advance of the pasto dulce is no longer in a continuous line moving toward
the west. It is sporadic, depending upon the construction of new railways
which open up the plain to the plough.4

Colonization does more than emphasize the individuality of each of the
natural regions. It connects together different features, and blends them in a
complex vital organism which goes on evolving and renewing itself.

The occupation of the whole of the soil of Argentina by white colonists is
quite a recent event. The second half of the nineteenth century was
characterized by a rapid territorial expansion, and over more than half the
country the expression "new land" must be taken literally. It is only one
generation since it was taken from the Indians. There can be no question
here of tracing the history of the relations between the white population and
the free Indians of the Chaco and the Pampa. The most formidable of these
were, in the north, the Abipones and the Tobas. On the Pampa, the foes of
the colonists were Indians of Araucanian descent, Ranqueles, Pehuenches,
etc., who came down from the mountains and took to horses. At the close of
the eighteenth century the frontier of Buenos Aires was on the nearer side of
the Salado, and was bordered on the south-east and north-west by the
fortresses of Chascomus, Monte, Lobos, Navarro, Areco, Salto, Rojas, and
Melincue. The proposal of D'Azara to extend it as far as the Salado was not
carried out, and it was not until 1828 that there was a fresh advance
westward.5

The new frontier, which would not be altered until 1875, passed by
Veinte Cinco de Mayo and Blanca Grande, at the north-western extremity
of the Sierra de Tandil. It included the entire region which lies between the
Sierra de Tandil and the lower Salado, where the village of Tandil had been
established in 1823. In addition, a line of forts stretched from Blanca
Grande in the south-west to Bahía Blanca. The expedition sent in search of

a port south of the mouth of the Plata had not found any nearer site that was
suitable. But Bahía Blanca was to remain an isolated advance post until
1880, sharply separated from both the colonized zone of the Pampas and the
establishments on the Patagonian coast.

While the cultivated area was thus growing toward the south, it was
being reduced in the north of the province of Buenos Aires and the south of
Córdoba. The lands of the lower Rio Cuarto were not occupied. About 1860
(Martin de Moussy) the farthest establishments in this sector were S. José
de la Esquina and Saladillo on the Tercero. The road to Chile by the Rio
Cuarto, Achiras, and San Luis was threatened. The advance of colonization
in this zone was at first in the west to Villa Mercedes on the Rio Quinto.
The line of the Rio Cuarto by Carlota was reoccupied, and before 1875 the
frontier had been pushed back to the Rio Quinto, where it joined the forts of
southern Buenos Aires by way of Sarmiento, Gainza, and Lavalle.

At last, in 1878, General Roca abandoned the classical methods of
fighting the Indians, and took the offensive. He deprived the Indians of their
refuges to the south of San Luis and the Central Pampa, and threw them
back toward the desert. The Argentine troops followed in their steps as far
as the Andes and the Rio Negro. There are to-day few traces in the immense
territory that was won of the indigenous population. Its extreme mobility
had masked its numerical inferiority.6

The history of the northern frontier is much the same. At the end of the
eighteenth century the Spanish outposts ran along the course of the Salado.
To the north of Santa Fé, at Sunchales, Soledad, and San Javier, they
protected the direct route from Santa Fé to Santiago del Estero. These
outposts were abandoned during the revolutionary period, and the Indians
advanced as far as the suburbs of Santa Fé. The roads both to Santiago and,
by the Quebracho Herrado, to Córdoba were cut.7 Urquiza reorganized the

Santa Fé frontier, first as far as San Javier, then below 29° S. lat. between
Arroyo del Rey on the Paraná and Tostado on the Salado. The expedition of
1884 brought the Argentine army as far as the Bermejo, and broke the
resistance of the Tobas. The forts which, more to the north, guarded the
province of Salta, on the further side of the Sierras de la Lumbrera and
Santa Barbara, had been dismantled at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, as the tribes in this part of the Chaco were not hostile.8

The memory of the fights with the Indians is so completely blotted out
to-day, and the menace of invasion by the tribes has been so rapidly
extinguished, that it is difficult to realize fully the profound influence they
once had on colonization. The line of forts was a frail barrier that was
constantly broken through. The Indians of the Pampa stole cattle from the
ranches of Buenos Aires, and sold them in Chile. Colonel Garcia calculates
in 1816 that about 40,000 animals were stolen every year.9 Colonel Roca
gives the same figure in 1876. The Pampa put no natural difficulties in the
way of the movements of the Indians, no points which might serve as bases
for the frontier. D. Pedro Pablo Pabon points out that the proximity of the
Sierra, instead of giving protection to outposts in the Tandil region, would
be an additional source of insecurity, as it increased the difficulty of
keeping watch. In the north the Indian incursions followed the clearings in
the scrub, avoiding the dense and impenetrable parts. The lagoon of Mar
Chiquita, to the west of Santa Fé, was a valuable rampart, in the shelter of
which a fairly large population had established itself round Concepción del
Tio.

The enlargements of the frontier were sometimes due to expansive
movements of colonization, the breeders occupying new land beyond the
line of forts and demanding protection, and sometimes to the arbitrary
action of a Government which was eager to extend its territory, though it
was still without the means of exploiting it. Roca has well shown the

defects of this system of premature military occupation. "To go far away
from the populated districts in acquiring new territory is, in my opinion,
only an aggravation of the inconveniences of defensive war, and it places a
desert between the new lines and the settled regions.... Invasions occur at
once."10 We should therefore be likely to make serious mistakes if we were
to identify the history of colonization with that of military occupation.
Moreover, the garrisons of the forts did not take a very active part in the
exploitation of the soil. The plan which D'Azara proposed, of making
blandengues (lancers) colonists and rooting them to the soil by distributing
it amongst them, seems to have been purely Utopian. His description of the
frontier shows clearly how slight a hold the early colonization had on the
Pampa, where the only relatively industrious element was represented by
the groups of civilians (paisanos) who gathered about the works and moats
of the forts. It was different on the Santiago del Estero frontier, where there
was agriculture as well as breeding. Here the fort was identical with the
village, and each soldier had his plot of wheat, maize, or water-melons.11

The provinces which
were to combine in
forming the Argentine
Republic had no economic
unity. They were really
two countries, two separate
worlds, the coast regions
and the mountain regions
(de arriba), joined
together, but not blended,
by the main road from
Buenos Aires to Peru, by
way of Córdoba, Tucumán,

and Salta. They MAP I.—ARGENTINA. THE
represented two different
branches of Spanish NATURAL REGIONS.
colonization. "Two human The map shows the distribution of the natural
streams," says Mitre, regions—the dry Andes in the north-west,
"contributed to the with irrigated cultivation; the monte, or
peopling of the vice- brush, which is still used for extensive
royalty.... The first came breeding; and the Pampa, with its great
directly from Spain, the areas of cereals and lucerne. The line
mother country. It marking the frontier of 1875 shows the speed
occupied and peopled the at which colonization has developed in the
banks in the basin of the western half of the plain of the Pampas. The
Rio de la Plata, in the only regions not given on the map are the
name of the right of plateau of Misiones, with its tropical forests,
discovery and conquest, and the wet Andes of Patagonia.
and fertilized them by its
labour. The other stream Click to view
came from the ancient
larger image.
empire of the Incas,
already subdued by the
Spanish armies. This spread toward the interior of the country as it passed
from the Pacific to the Atlantic, occupied the land in virtue of the same
rights, and exploited it by means of a feudal system.... The same year, 1535,
saw the foundation of the two towns, Buenos Aires and Lima, and was the
centre of these two cycles of discoveries and conquests. Thirty-eight years
later, in the same year, 1573, the Conquistadores who came from Peru
founded the town of Córdoba, two hundred miles away from the Paraná,
while those who came from the Rio de la Plata founded the town of Santa
Fé on the banks of that river."12

Tucumán and Salta were established by conquerors from Peru, while San
Juan and Mendoza were built by the Chilean Spaniards. The line of
demarcation between the two zones of colonization crosses the immense
desert plains of the interior, not the elevated tablelands of the Andes.

The two types of Argentinians differed in every respect, in blood as well
as in environment. The indigenous race, which was eliminated on the coast,
mingled intimately with the conquering race in the interior.

The establishments on the Rio de la Plata had originally been merely
stages on the road to Peru, and had no value of themselves. The elevated
tablelands of the Andes long remained the economic centre of Spanish
America, and the provinces of the interior, which sold them cattle and
mules, depended very closely upon them. The end of the eighteenth century
was marked by more rapid progress in the region of the Pampas. The vice-
royalty of La Plata was created.

Freedom of trade was secured between Buenos Aires and the Spanish
ports. The export of hides increased. The influence of Buenos Aires spread
over the interior and, in spite of the Córdoba tariff, reached the regions of
the north-west. "The creation of the vice-royalty," says Dean Funes, "and
the new direction taken by commerce had the effect that Buenos Aires
became the centre of considerable and important business."13

This commercial development, which seemed destined to bring closer
together the two halves of Argentinian territory, was interrupted in the first
half of the nineteenth century. This did not, however, break the connections
between the provinces to the north-west of the tableland and those on the
Pacific slope, and indeed, they became more varied and more binding.
Packs of mules, carrying the ore of San Juan and La Rioja to the foundries
of the Chilean side, added life to the Cordillera. When Chile, transformed

into an agricultural country, could not meet its own demand for cattle, the
oases of the Argentine side were sown with lucerne for fattening the cattle
which were to cross the mountains. The provinces of Mendoza, San Juan,
La Rioja, Catamarca, Tucumán, and Salta were held within the orbit of the
Andes districts.14 There are historical reasons for this set-back to the
influence of Buenos Aires. The wars of the revolutionary period and the
conflicts between the Buenos Aires Government and the maritime powers
checked the commercial enterprise on the banks of the Plata. This political
isolation of the province of Buenos Aires, under the Rosas Government,
lasted until 1853. Poncel gives us statistics of the imports of Catamarca
which show the great importance of this date in the history of Argentine
commerce:

1850 1851 1852 1853 1854
Imports into the Province of Catamarca:
From the Pacific across the Cordillera (in millions of piastres) 72 50 71 40 12
From the Atlantic (Buenos Aires or Rosario) 11 7 20 64 116 15

In 1854-5 the Cordillera route definitely ceased to be of commercial
importance to Catamarca, and it was afterwards used merely for the export
of cattle.

But the attraction of Buenos Aires after 1853 was not merely due to its
commercial life and its intermediate position between the provinces of the
interior and Europe. It was chiefly based upon the economic development
of the region of the Pampas, which began about this date, and altered the
balance between the two halves of Argentina. The exploitation of the
Pampa, the improvement in breeding methods, and the introduction and
expansion of agriculture on the plain of the Pampa, which fill all
publications on modern Argentina, are in themselves one of the great events
in the economic history of the nineteenth century. They had also an indirect
but profound influence upon the life of other parts of Argentina. The

consuming capacity of the Pampa increased simultaneously with its wealth
and population. It absorbed the products of the neighbouring provinces and
in turn made customers of them, distributing amongst them, according to
the services they rendered, part of the gold it obtained from beyond the
Atlantic. One after the other the provinces lost the relations which had
hitherto connected them with foreign lands. There was the same
development all over the zone of cereals and lucerne—the direction of the
stream of commerce was reversed. In some places, as at Tucumán and
Mendoza the change was accomplished a generation ago. In other places, as
at Salta and San Juan, it is still going on. In yet other places, the more
remote valleys, like Jachal and Santa Maria, it will occur in the near future.
By a singular anomaly the Far West of North America, which sprang up half
a century ago, tends to withdraw more and more from the influence of the
eastern States, which provided it with capital and immigrants, while the Far
West of Argentina, which is just as old as the east and by no means a
creation of the east, since it developed in isolation and freedom, and was
already adult and rich when they came into contact, has nevertheless fallen
into complete dependence upon the east in the course of a few years.

The life of the whole country depended upon the great colonization
movement which transformed the plain of the Pampas. This brought about
an economic unity which was at once reflected in the political world. The
railway from Buenos Aires reached Tucumán before 1880; Mendoza, San
Juan, Salta, and Catamarca before 1890; and La Rioja before 1900. The
establishment of closer economic relations between the coast and the
provinces of the interior has nearly always inaugurated a period of great
prosperity for the latter. In every case the influence of Buenos Aires
vitalized them, put an end to their slumbers, and made them rich.

Not only did the coast take for itself the products of the western
provinces, which had hitherto found their way to other markets, but new

centres of production had to be created to meet its needs. The forests of the
Chaco received a great influx of wood-cutters, to provide the sleepers for
the railways. The valley of the Rio Negro was planted with vines, to
provide the wines of the colonies in the district of Bahía Blanca. The
attraction of the Pampa was felt as far as the frontiers. Paraguay competed
with Corrientes in the supply of tobacco and oranges; with Misiones in the
supply of yerba maté. Each district chose the particular crop which was best
suited to its climate, in order to secure the highest possible advantage from
its relations with Buenos Aires.

The two most brilliant satellites of the Pampa, the most important
productive centres of the interior, are Tucumán and Mendoza. All the other
important towns of Argentina belong themselves to the region of the
Pampas. Tucumán and Mendoza, which live by supplying the Pampa with
sugar and wine, have become in turn secondary centres of attraction. They
are a sort of regional capitals, and they have their own spheres of economic
influence. A network of commercial streams has developed about them, and
this has led to the formation of new roads. These lines of local interest are
easily recognized on a map of the railways, where one sees them
superimposed upon the regular fan of lines which converges toward Buenos
Aires. La Rioja provides the props for the vines of San Juan and Mendoza.
From the north of Córdoba to Salta, a distance of about 250 miles, the wood
is cut for the fuel of the sugar-works of Tucumán. Santiago dries the fodder
for its troops of mules. The prairies of Catamarca, which once fattened the
cattle that were intended for Chile, and often came even from Tucumán,
now sell their beasts to the butchers of Tucumán. The wines of San Juan
find their best customers at Tucumán. Even the nearest portions of the plain
of the Pampas, to the north-east of Santa Fé and the south of San Luis,
supply maize and wheat to Tucumán and Mendoza, instead of sending them
to the ports for export.

While Argentina lives on the Pampa, the Pampa lives on export. It has
been developed through the inflow of European immigrants, and Europe
pays by sending its manufactured products and capital. Except as regards
emigration, the United States had, before the war, much the same relation to
Argentina as the countries of Western Europe. Thus the economic
prosperity of the Republic binds it more and more closely to the life of the
whole world. Its position in the temperate zone of South America had
retarded its entrance into world-commerce, and this explains the slowness
with which its colonization proceeded at first. Its climate and products were
too similar to those of Spain. Not only the mining and metallurgical centres
of the Andes and of Mantiqueria, but even the sugar and cotton regions of
Brazil, the Antilles, and the Guianas, were developed before the plains of
the Pampas.

The turn of the Argentine Republic did not come until the growth of
population in the industrial countries of Europe made them dependent upon
foreign lands for their food, and until the application of steam to ships made
it possible to export wool, meat, and cereals on a large scale.

When we compare the economic organization of Argentina with that of
the United States, we see that it is both less complex and less capable of
being self-contained. The difference is due to the architecture of the
country. I said at the beginning of this chapter that Argentina has no
equivalent for the zone of the Atlantic tablelands, which is now the great
industrial region of North America. The industrial prosperity of eastern
North America provides a safe home market for the farmers of the west, and
relieves them of the need of exporting their produce. Moreover, the Atlantic
tablelands, the original centres of population, where the first generations of
colonists lived on land that was often poor, have seen the gradual formation
of reserves of labour and capital which were afterwards used in colonizing
the west. The east sifted, in a sense controlled, the influence of modern

Europe in the colonization of the United States. It classified and assimilated
the new emigrants who set out for the west, mingled with the troops of
native pioneers on their way to the prairies. In the same way, when
European capital flowed into the United States, it found in the eastern cities
a large treasury and a body of financiers in whose hands it had to remain.

In Argentina, on the contrary, everything speaks of the close and direct
dependence of the country upon oversea markets. The soil itself bears the
marks of this solidarity. It is seen in the network of the railways, the
concentration of the urban population in the ports, and the distribution of
the cultivated districts in concentric circles which are often limited, not by a
physical obstacle, but by the cost of freightage between the productive
centre and the port. Thus we get a geographical expression of facts which
seem at first sight to belong to the purely economic or sociological order.

CHAPTER II
THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST AND
PASTORAL LIFE IN THE SCRUB

The inhabited zones of the Andes in the north-west—Valles,
Quebradas, Puna—The irrigation of the valles—The
historic routes—Convoys of stock—The breeding of mules
and the fairs—The struggle of the breeders against drought
—The Sierra de los Llanos.

The whole life and wealth of the arid provinces of north-western
Argentina depend upon irrigation; the water-supply definitively settles the
sites of human establishments. The water resources are irregularly
distributed. They are especially abundant in the south (San Juan, Mendoza,
and San Rafael), where the torrents of the Cordillera are fed by the glaciers,
and on the outer fringe of the hills above the Chaco, at the foot of
Aconcagua, which gathers masses of cloud and rain on its flanks
(Tucumán). In the intermediate district, on the contrary, in the regions of La
Rioja and Catamarca, and in the interior of the hilly zone to the north-west
of Tucumán, the amount of available water is small; the oases shrink into
small spots far removed from each other.

This natural inequality was not felt at first. For a long time the spread of
cultivation and the progress of wealth were restricted only by the scarcity of
population, the difficulties of transport, and the inadequacy of the markets.
The best endowed oases paid no attention to the surplus supply of water, for
which they had no use. We have to come down to the close of the
nineteenth century to find men reaching the limits which nature has set to
colonization, and mapping out their domain. It is not until then that La
Rioja ceases to compete with Mendoza, or Catamarca with Tucumán. While
large industrial enterprises develop at Mendoza and Tucumán, strong
centres of urban life arise, the population increases, and immigrants stream
in, the oases of the interior scarcely change. Their population does not keep
its level. Life has an archaic character that one finds nowhere else in
Argentina. The physical conditions have retarded, one would almost say
crystallized, the economic development. The living generation exploits the
soil in ways that to some extent go back as far as the indigenous tribes, the
masters of their Spanish conquerors in the art of irrigation. The industry of
fattening and convoying cattle, which was once the chief source of wealth
of the whole country, is still alive in those districts.

The zone of the elevated tablelands of the Andes without drainage toward
the sea—the Puna—has still, below 22° S. latitude on the northern frontier
of Argentina, a width of about 250 miles. This breadth steadily contracts
southward as far as 28° S. latitude, where the Puna ends about the level of
the road from Tinogasta to Copiapo.

To the east and south of the Puna the Argentine Andes are cut from north
to south by a series of long gullies and large basins, between which there
are lofty and massive chains with steep flanks. Some of these lie in the heart
of the mountains, while others often open like gulfs upon the edge of the
plain. These depressions with rectilinear contours are a common feature of
the topography of the Andes in this latitude. The central plain of Chile is

closely related to them. In the Argentine speech they are called valles: Valle
de Lerma, Valle Calchaqui, Valle de Iglesias, de Calingasta, d'Uspallata.
They are, however, not "valleys" in the sense of hollows made by erosion
by running water. They owe their formation to tectonic movements,
subsidences of the surface. The scanty rivers of the arid Anacs are not
capable of doing work of that kind. When they enter the already formed bed
of a valle, they seem to be lost in the immense space. Often they dry up in
it, leaving behind the sediment and salts with which the water was laden. In
other places they cut at right angles across the valle, escaping by narrow
breaches in it, while the depression continues its course on either side,
taking in sections of a number of independent streams.

Opposed to the valle is the eroded ravine, carved out by water, the
quebrada. It opens upon a valle with a V-shaped mouth, which widens out
at the top, and one can recognise at sight the various slopes and the
successive stages of erosion. Narrow and winding, a level bed of shingle
filling the entire base of the valley, it rises rapidly toward the mountains and
provides a route from the valle to the puna. These valles, quebradas and
puna are the three inhabited zones of the Andes. The first is the richest. The
inhabitant of the valle, proud of his comparative comfort, has for his
neighbour in the quebrada or the puna—the coyada—a contempt such as
one finds the inhabitants of the good land in Europe feeling for the people
in poorer districts.

The narrower the valle, the less rain there is. The observations give 112
millimetres of rain per year at Tinogasta, 290 at Andalgala, and 200 at Santa
Maria. Salta and Jujuy have a much moister climate, and have no less than
570 and 740 millimetres of rain annually. This is because the eastern chain
of the Andes, which stretches from the Sierra de Santa Victoria on the
Bolivian frontier to Aconcagua, sinks lower at the latitude of Salta, and lets
in the moisture of the Chaco to the heart of the zone of the Andes. The rains

of Salta and Jujuy are suspended during the winter, but they are so heavy
during the summer months (November to March) that maize, which needs
only the summer rain, can be cultivated without irrigation. But when we
follow the Valle de Lerma southward from Salta the maize harvest becomes
more and more uncertain, and it is no longer sown in dry soil when we get
to about twenty miles from Salta, in the latitude of the confluence of the
Arias and the Juramento. However, the summer rains, which are good for
maize, are very injurious to the vine; they spoil the grapes. Thus the
southern limit of the cultivation of maize in dry soil almost coincides with
the northern limit of the vine. At that point we have the real beginning of
the typical scenery of the valles.

The need of irrigation is
due to the scarcity of rain,
but it is accentuated by a
number of causes which
tend to increase the aridity.
The valles are the scene of
scorching day-winds, the
zonda, like the Föhn of the
THE PATAGONIAN ANDES.
Swiss Alps, which, there Mount Tronador (11,500 feet) on the Chilean
being no snow, dry up the frontier, dominating the road from Lake
water of the springs and of Nahuel Huapi to Chile. The glaciers still
the irrigation trenches, or reach the bottom of the valley, which they
use the deposits left by the filled at one time. A burnt forest in the
waters to form dunes, foreground.
which they push
southward, sometimes like Plate III.
veritable glaciers of sand.
Moreover, the soil of the
valles is generally

composed of coarse and Click to view
permeable alluvial
deposits, which absorb the larger image.
rain-storms immediately.
There is at the foot of both sides of the hills which enclose each valle an
immense and far-lying bed of imperfectly rounded shingle. This double
zone of detritus is strangely desolate, for the vegetation on it is restricted to
isolated bushes of jarilla and tola. From the sheepfolds on the mountains to
the oases in the valleys one hardly meets a single house. The bed of the
valley is not so desolate. A broad ribbon of sand marks the dry bed of a
torrent, and on the clays of its banks, if the sheet of water underground is
not too deep, one finds, in spite of the goats and asses and charcoal-burners,
little forests of algarrobas, which the foundries use for fuel.

The modern alluvial beds, gravel and sand, represent the upper stratum of
a considerable series of continental deposits which lie on the Paleozoic
crystalline rock of the Andes.16 They chiefly consist of red sandstone and
coloured marls, which crop up here and there through the alluvial covering
and give the landscape a rugged character, worn by water and wind. There
is no trace of humus: nothing to soften the vivid colours of the rock.
Bodenbender, to whom we owe the first general attempt to classify the
series, points out the importance of distinguishing the different strata in
connection with the question of water supply and the conditions of human
life.17 A complete geographical study would have to follow the geological
description in detail. In places—on the eastern edge of the Sierra de los
Llanos—the fine modern clays are in contact with the granites of the hills
and form above them a thick bed that is rich in fresh water. In other places
—south-westward of the Sierra de la Famatina, as far as the Bermejo—the
outcrop is of red sandstone only. The tablelands of Talampaya and
Ischigualasta, which are cut across by the gorges of the tributaries of the

Bermejo, form one of the most conspicuously desert regions in the whole
Republic. Wherever the gypsiferous marls of the Calchaqui are near the
surface, the springs are saline. The undulations of the impermeable rocky
substratum bring to light the water that gathers in the alluvial beds. Thus the
streams which come down the Famatina range in the west disappear in the
alluvial beds on the fringe of the Sierra, but re-appear presently in the oasis
of Pagancillo.

Hence the valles are by no means wholly productive. The oases represent
only a limited portion of them. It would be impossible to imagine a more
striking contrast than that of the freshness and life of the oases compared
with the surrounding desert. Screens of poplars shelter them from the
zonda. The water runs along trenches paved with round pebbles under the
spreading vines, at the foot of which, to economize water and space, lucerne
is sown. Each garden feeds a family. Near the raw-brick houses there are
large earthenware vessels, as tall as a man, in which the corn is kept. The
hammering of the cooper fills the air.

In places the oasis is watered by a stream. In those cases there is on each
side of the bed of the stream a narrow fringe, a continuous ribbon, of
smiling gardens, which hide the path. Above and below Santa Maria a
trench is opened every mile in the wet sands of the Rio. The water rises in it
and fills it, and is directed by it toward one of the banks, where it is
jealously collected and distributed. The water which flows from the
irrigated fields and returns to the river, as well as that which the porous side
of the trench has permitted to escape, goes to fill another trench and supply
other fields farther on. The region of Los Sauces, in the northern part of the
province of La Rioja, to the south of Tinogasta, shows a different type of
irrigated cultivation, on account of the sandy course of the stream. The
fields follow the feeding artery for about fifty miles. It is bled at the

beginning of each bend, the waters remaining underground like hidden
wealth.

In most cases however, the valle has no running water. What reaches it
from the lateral quebradas is lost in the alluvial beds accumulated at the
point where the quebrada enters the valle. In order to make use of it the
cultivated areas are grouped on the cone of deposition; at least, that is the
position in the great majority of the oases. A costa is a line of separate oases
with their backs to the same slope. When the valle is narrow, the costas on
either side of the sterile depression face each other, like two parallel roads.
The water of the quebrada is never sufficiently abundant to irrigate the
whole of the cone of the torrent. In order to create an oasis there, they have
selected the most easily cultivable zone, which is usually the foot of the
cone, where the deposits are finer and more fertile, retain the moisture
better, and require less watering. The summit of the cone is composed of
coarse stones, the first to be dropped by the torrent as it loses its strength.
These are bad lands, where the water is wasted.

To meet the occasional drought and the danger of sudden floods in this
fluvial zone, which is entirely the domain of the torrent, there is need of
constant care and ingenuity. At Colalao del Valle the cultivated fields are
five or six miles from the summit of the cone. After a number of successive
years of drought the stream of water which reached them on the flanks of
the cone lost half its volume and threatened to disappear altogether. They
then built a stone dam at the outlet of the quebrada, and the water
accumulates behind this during the night. At three o'clock in the morning
the sluices are opened, and the stream, having thus nursed its strength,
reaches the fields down below about seven o'clock. Then the sun and the
wind rise, just at the time when the reservoir is empty, and by the middle of
the day the stream ceases, and irrigation is suspended. At Andalgala, above
which rises the glittering crest of Aconcagua, the waters of the melting

snows which feed the torrent have not time to be "decanted" before they
reach the valley. They come down laden with mud and sand. Above the
points where the irrigation-channels begin the people make, in the bed of
the torrent, a dam of branches of trees which filters the water. It is swept
away by every flood that occurs, and is at once restored.

What is even more admirable than the ingenuity of the vallista in
utilizing the natural resources is the minute detail of the water-rights. It
seems as if the vallista is even more cunning in protecting himself from his
neighbour than in dealing with nature. The water-customs of these Andean
valleys are worth an extensive study. The water does not belong to the
State, and is not used by concession from the State. It is private property.
The owner uses or abuses it as he pleases on the lands which he has
selected. A man may be poor in land and rich in water, which he
accordingly sells. There are frequent business deals in regard to water-
rights, just as in regard to the soil and its produce. Appropriation of water
often precedes appropriation of the soil. Many oases are communities where
the non-irrigated lands are common to the whole population, and the
irrigated fields alone are divided.

A primary group of customs regulates the relations to each other of
communities higher up and lower down the same stream. At Catamarca the
water of a certain stream is shared by Piedra Blanca and Valle Viejo. Piedra
Blanca, in the upper part, absorbs the whole of the water for a week, but it
must then suspend its irrigation during the following week and permit the
stream to flow down the valley. The same evening, or the next morning,
according to the season, the water reaches Valle Viejo. It is a custom known
as the quiebras in the southern valleys of the desert side of Peru, where it
allows different stages of cultivation to proceed simultaneously. In the same
way, above Santa Maria, where several communities (S. José, Loro Huasi,
etc.) receive the water brought by a channel from the Rio Santa Maria, each

of them has a right to the full output of the channel for three days. At the
end of that time the sluices are closed, and the water passes to the next
community. There is grave trouble for any oasis that has its rights infringed
or does not compel the communities higher up to respect them.

Amongst individuals the water-right is generally defined by a
measurement of time, a certain number of days or hours—during which the
owner controls the entire flow of the spring or stream. It is only when the
water is more abundant that we find another method of fixing the right of
water, defining it by bulk. The water is then said to be demarcada, as the
unit is customarily the marco, or the volume which passes through an
opening about twenty-one centimetres in width and eight in height. The
marco has infinite divisions, and each subdivision has its own name—the
naranja, the bombilla, the paja, and so on.

As all the water is utilized, and the rights of all are equally entitled to
respect, the division of the water into marcos (demarcacion) is in practice
merely a proportional distribution of it amongst those who have rights to it.
If the sum total of rights expressed in marcos represents something like the
total flow of a stream during an average season, in the time of low water it
is disproportionate, and the water no longer flows to the tops of the marcos.
In other words, the quantity of water granted to each rises or falls with the
rise or fall of the stream itself.

Theoretically, when the water-right is defined in marcos it is permanent.
Often, however, it is impossible to grant each proprietor a permanent title to
the water. Even in oases where the water is "demarked," the turno—that is
to say, the turn of the proprietors to have water—which is the absolute rule
in the poorest oases, reappears during the months of scarcity, in winter,
when there is no rain, and at the beginning of summer. It reappears also
when the right of ownership has been broken up into fractions that are too

small, and it is better to grant a larger volume of water for several hours
instead of a constant stream of water which would be too scanty for
profitable use. At Andalgala the "turn" is sometimes obligatory, and
regulated by custom, in channels where the irrigating proprietors are too
numerous; at other times optional, and settled by convention amongst the
owners themselves, when water is scanty. At Valle Viejo (Catamarca), when
the water runs low, they set up the mita; that is to say, the sluices remain
closed in each channel during four days out of eight, each proprietor in turn
giving up his right to a permanent supply in order to have a double
allowance when his turn comes. The turno is, therefore, a general practice.
Everywhere we can see the farmers on the watch along the acequias,
waiting for the moment to close their neighbour's trench with a pellet of
clay and to let the stream into their own trenches with a blow of the spade.

The most minute precautions are taken in order that no one shall suffer
injury. As the irrigation is always slower and less thorough during the night,
they take it in turns to have the day and the night alternately. When the
community receives the water from another community higher up the
stream, the succession of "turns" amongst its members differs every time.
The water comes down charged with sediment, pushing in front of it a mass
of liquid mud, as the flush of a torrent does. It takes some time for the
stream to become regular and clear. The first irrigator therefore exercises
his right under unfavourable conditions. In the local phraseology the
volcada de agua is not as good as the corte de agua, which means the
irrigation that begins when the acequia is full.

Irrigation entails the services of quite a staff of arbitrators and
administrators. The head men, who have jurisdiction of a higher order and
secure the accurate distribution of the water amongst a number of channels
or communities, are now, as a rule, officials of the administration, appointed
by the provincial authorities (juez de Irrigacion at Catamarca, juez de rio at

Rosario de Lerma). But the juez de agua of each community or each
channel is a syndic elected by the interested parties. At Santa Maria the juez
de agua is elected by the owners and confirmed by the Government. He
controls irrigation throughout the department, settling all differences,
submitting plans of work to a meeting of the owners, and assigning their
respective charges in labour and contributions according to their rights.

This land of customs and traditions is also a land of lively movement.
The briskness of the traffic is primarily due to continuous exchange
between the various zones of the mountainous district. This large trade, so
scattered that the railways could not dream of satisfying its needs, is
carried, in the old fashion, on the backs of mules. The lively aspect of the
roads between the tableland and the lower valleys of the region, the brisk
interchange of goods between zones with different climates, is one of the
common features of life on the Andes.

But the classic spectacle presents a different aspect in different latitudes.
In Peru, and in southern Bolivia, the higher valleys—Jauja, Cuzco, the
Pampas of Cochabamba and Sucre—have centres of dense population and
agricultural wealth at a height of between 9,000 and 11,000 feet. They raise
cereals, and receive from the tropical districts (montañas and yungas) sugar,
cane-brandy, cocoa, and coca-leaf. The valleys of the Argentine Andes are
usually at a less elevation than the yungas and montañas of Bolivia and
Peru. But they are not hot districts, and have not tropical vegetation. Frost
prevents the harvesting of sugar-cane at Salta, at a height of 4,000 feet. As
to the coca-leaf, which is not as much used here as in the north, the
Argentine valles do not send it to the tableland, but receive it indirectly
from there, through the southern yungas. In default of tropical crops, the
Argentine valles sow wheat and maize, which they sell to the Indians of the
cold districts of the Puna for wool and salt.

These commercial currents are of very ancient, probably pre-Columbian
origin. Boman has discovered ears of maize in the prehistoric tombs of the
Puna de Atacama.18 The Puna, at a height of 11,000 to 12,000 feet, is
permanently inhabited, unlike the high valleys of the Cordillera de San
Juan, which are occupied only during the summer season by Chilean
shepherds. It is primarily a pastoral and mining region, but it has some tilled
land, at more than 6,700 feet above the level of the valleys. The higher limit
of annual cultivation in the cold districts, which is fixed by the summer
temperature, does not fall in the same way as that of arboriculture in warm
districts, because trees suffer from the winter frosts. The Indians of
Cochinoca and Susques sow lucerne and barley for fodder, and the quinoa
and potato for food. Transport between the Puna and the valles is carried on
by the inhabitants of the Puna, and is not shared by the vallistas. They are
especially active in the north, in the province of Jujuy. Belmar shows how
important the sales of the Puna woollen goods were by the middle of the
nineteenth century.19 These fabrics were used by the mill-owners of the Rio
Grande de Jujuy to pay for the work of the Indians of the Chaco, whom
they employed in the sugar-cane harvest. The competition of the
manufactured products of Europe now menaces the domestic weaving of
the Puna, just as the competition of the flour of the Pampa menaces the
cultivation of cereals in the valles.

Besides this traffic of local interest the valles serve for a traffic of a
higher, almost a continental character. It seems certain that during the pre-
Spanish period the road from the Peruvian tablelands to Chile avoided the
inhospitable desert of the Puna de Atacama, entered the region of the valles
to the east, and crossed the Cordillera in the latitude of Tinogasta, or even a
little further south. That was the route of the armies of the Incas, which in
the fourteenth century came as far as Maule. The pre-Columbian roads, of
which Boman has found traces between the Valle de Lerma and the Valle

Calchaqui, seem to correspond with this direction of traffic. By this route
the long quechua passed amongst the Diaguites populations. The
conquerors followed the Indian guides. Almagro, in going from Peru to
Chile, passed through the valles at the eastern edge of the Andes.

Later the valles were incorporated in the many variations of the historic
high road, one of the first and busiest of Spanish America, which goes from
the Rio de la Plata to Lima: a route both for armies and merchants. The plan
proposed by Matienzo (1566) to make a road from the silver mines to the
estuary of the Paraná, through the Valle de Calchaqui, seems to have been
intended merely to improve a line of communication that had already been
in use. Buenos Aires for a long time received European goods by this road.
About 1880 the Salta route recovered for a time its continental importance,
during the Pacific War and the occupation by the Chileans of the maritime
provinces of Bolivia.20 At that time it was the only outlet for Bolivia.

But of all the forms of
traffic that have enlivened
the valles the most
constant, and the form that
has had the most profound
influence on their
existence, is the movement
of cattle. The cattle trade VEGETATION OF THE
has been of fundamental
INTERIOR VALLEYS
importance in the history
of the colonization of (ANDES OF THE NORTH-
South America. Animals WEST).
were the only goods that
could be conveyed any Descent of Tafi del Valle, going to Santa
great distance. At the Maria. The ravine is excavated out of the

beginning of the conquest mass of coarse deposits which forms a fringe
the productive regions of between the mountain and the valley. On this
the continent, which permeable soil the vegetation is particularly
supplied the export trade thin. Cactus.
with Europe, were very Photograph by the Author.
limited in extent. Pastoral
colonization began at once, Click to view
and spread over a very larger image
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
FOREST ON THE OUTER
or the seaports of the
Caribs and the Rio Grande SLOPE OF THE SUB-
do Sul, where the jerked ANDEAN CHAINS.
meat industry developed.
The cattle routes converge Sierra de San Antonio (Salta province).
upon these centres. Perennial foliage, creepers, ferns.
Photograph by the Author.
The export of cattle and
mules from the Argentine Plate IV.
plains to Peru was fully
established by the close of
the sixteenth century, and

it seems to have continued Click to view
without interruption ever
since. Upper Peru is, larger image
however, not the only
market on which the Argentine breeders lived. At the end of the eighteenth
century D'Azara demanded that they should permit the sale of horses and
mules to Brazil, for use in the mines. The cattle traffic with Portuguese
territory had not then assumed the form of a regular commerce, and the
Brazilians made raids on the north-eastern provinces for the animals they
needed—60,000 a year, D'Azara says.21 The export of cattle to Paraguay
and Misiones was, on the other hand, of substantial economic importance in
the eighteenth century. Before the Revolution, Rengger says, as many as
200,000 head of cattle passed yearly from Corrientes to Paraguay, which
paid for them in maté and tobacco.22 This trade was kept up intermittently
in the nineteenth century. The exports from Corrientes were especially
important at the time when the Paraguay stock was reconstituted after the
war (40,000 head of cattle in 1875).

Finally, the Chilean market was opened to the Argentine breeders about
the middle of the nineteenth century. In the time of Martin de Moussy the
convoys of cattle to Chile were so numerous that the lucerne fields of both
slopes were stripped bare at the very beginning of the season; and they were
rented at a high price.23 Not only the mining provinces of the north, but
central Chile also, bought Argentine cattle. The opening of the Chilean
market was followed by a remarkable expansive movement in the pastoral
colonization of Argentine territory. We can follow the progress of this not
only in Martin de Moussy's book, but in all contemporary works of travel.
Its chief theatres are the provinces of San Luis and of Santiago del Estero,
north of the Rio Dulce, where Hutchinson, in particular, describes the
activity of the ranches.24 Finally, after the Pacific War (1880) the nitrate

district, taken from Bolivia and Peru by Chile, received a great influx of
population, and works sprang up in the midst of the desert. The nitrate
fields, wholly barren and doomed, under their shroud of grey dust, to an
unalterable desolation, became at once one of the chief centres of
consumption for Argentine stock.

It is difficult to give accurate details of the volume of trade in cattle in
colonial Argentine. However, the facts given by travellers (though they
often merely borrow from each other) suffice to show how important this
traffic was in the life of the country and the extent of the zone that was
occupied with it. As early as the middle of the seventeenth century Córdoba
seems to have exported to Peru as many as 28,000 to 30,000 mules
annually.25 At the close of the eighteenth century, we read in D'Azara,
60,000 mules were exported; and Helms gives the same figure.26 The mules
were bought young by Córdoba dealers at Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, and
Corrientes, reared at Córdoba, and then sent to Salta, where they were sold
in their third year to mule-dealers from Peru.

An article in the Telegrafo Mercantil of September 9, 1801 (reproduced
in the Junta de Historia y Numismatica americana, Buenos Aires, 2 vols.,
1914-5) contains very valuable information in regard to the mule trade.
From 1760 to 1780 Salta sent between 40,000 and 50,000 mules annually to
Peru. At Salta they were worth ten piastres each before they were broken in,
and thirteen or fourteen afterwards; and they were sold at the age of four
years. The arrieros, who conveyed European goods and home products
(ropas y frutas), bought a large number of them. The Telegrafo complains
that this trade has been gradually transformed. The mules now came from
Santa Fé and Córdoba to Salta two years old, and after the invernada they
were still, at fair time, barely three years old. They suffered much during
the long journey to Lima, and the losses of the caravans were heavy. They
could not be loaded for the journey, and, as the arrieros could no longer

secure adult and strong animals, the freight to the tableland had risen, to the
serious loss of merchants on the coast. The reply of a Potosi mule-dealer
(December 13th) clearly shows that the last years of the eighteenth century
had been marked by increasingly heavy demands from Peru for Argentine
mules. In order to meet these demands the Córdoba breeders had developed
production. The buyers, coming to Salta from Lima, Cuzco, and Arequipa,
took, without discussion or examination, the batches that were offered
them. The correspondent of the Telegrafo complains bitterly of these
caballeritos who came from Peru with their 100,000 piastres, and raised the
price at Salta, alleging that their instructions were to get mules at any cost.

Robertson gave in 1813 the recollections of a mule-dealer as to the
convoys of mules between Santa Fé and the Andes, which had already
ceased at that time. Each convoy or arreo comprised 5,000 to 6,000 mules.
They came from Entre Rios, or even from the Uruguay, whence they were
brought, after crossing the Paraná, to the Santa Fé ranches. The Santa Fé
breeders owned the best part of the land on the left bank of the river. The
expedition also included thirty waggons of goods and 500 draught-oxen;
and fifty gauchos were in charge of it. The main expense was then tobacco
and yerba. One feature of this mule traffic that is emphasized in all the
descriptions is that it was divided into two stages, with an interval between
them, for breaking in. As we have already learned from Azcarate, Córdoba,
Santa Fé, Santiago, and Salta kept the mules for two or three years before
sending them to Peru. Córdoba and Santiago del Estero seem to have been
important in connection with the industry of breaking in the mules.

The sending of cattle on foot to Bolivia and Chile is now only a
subsidiary element of the national economy, but it is not yet quite extinct, as
the table on p. 53 shows.

Whatever its point of departure, the traffic in stock always passed
through the valles. Transport of cattle was particularly difficult in the
Argentine Andes. The chief obstacles were not the elevation of the passes or
the steepness of the roads, but the scarcity of water and the extent of the
travesias, which were equally poor in pasturage and water, and had to be
crossed rapidly by doubling the stages. The difficulties of the journey were
very profitable to the oases that lay along the route. The cattle-driver could
not dispense with the hospitality of the vallista or dispute the price he cared
to charge.

The length of the
journey and the difficulty
of keeping the animals in
good condition in the poor
pastures of the breeding
districts made it advisable
to stay longer in the oases.
There thus arose lucerne-
farms—the invernadas—
to receive and fatten the
cattle which passed
through. Lucerne is the
characteristic and most
profitable produce of the
valles. It is grown
wherever there is an
MAP II.—IRRIGATION IN
assured supply of water, THE WEST AND NORTH-
and is invariably found in WEST OF ARGENTINA.
the upper section of the
system of irrigation- Extent of the irrigations in the north (zone of
channels; the cereals are the great summer rains), and the south

sown lower down, and are (glacier zone) The historic industry of
the first to suffer from fattening cattle in the invernadas and the
drought. In the quebradas, export of cattle to the Andean regions only
where space is more survive in part. On the other hand large
limited, the lucerne-fields modern industries have developed at
cover the entire oasis. Tucumán, Jujuy (sugar-cane), Mendoza, and
Every cattle track has a San Juan (vines), and they supply the Buenos
corresponding line of Aires market.
invernadas, which is often
completed on the opposite Click to view
slope by a last group of larger image.
lucerne-farms where the
beasts recover from the
journey before they are sold and dispersed.

1910 1911 1912 1913 1914
Export of Cattle:
To Bolivia 3,600 6,600 6,200 6,300 4,800
To Chile 61,200 87,500 68,400 58,800 28,300
Export of Mules:
To Bolivia 2,700 4,600 7,900 8,300 2,500
To Chile 2,300 3,200 5,000 2,600 3,500
Export of Asses:
To Bolivia 9,000 10,500 15,000 15,600 14,40027

Besides the official routes there have for a long time been clandestine
tracks, through more difficult ravines, by which stolen cattle were conveyed
with impunity. Guachipas was the gathering place for cattle of suspicious
origin, and, to avoid being seen in Salta and Jujuy, they passed through the
Quebrada del Toro or the Quebrada d'Escoïpe. When Brackebusch visited

Guachipas in 1880 the inhabitants still kept something of their reputation as
smugglers.

A map of the cattle-tracks which are still used in the Argentine Andes is a
complicated network in which we can trace two main directions, crossing
each other at right angles. One set of tracks leads to the west, toward the
Pacific coast, the other set to the north, toward the Bolivian tableland.

The cattle traffic is now restricted to Chile. It survives at San Juan,
Jachal, Vinchina, and Tinogasta. The cattle descend to Chile about
Coquimbo, Vallenar, or Copiapo. But the trade is now busiest in the region
of the saltpetre-beds. The roads lead from the Valle de Lerma and the Valle
Calchaqui toward the tableland by the Quebrada del Toro or the Quebrada
de Cachi or de Luracatao, crossing lofty passes at the foot of the Nevados of
Acay and Cachi, and reuniting between Santa Rosa de Pastos Grandes and
San Antonio de los Cobres to cross the Puna de Atacama. Vegas (pastures)
and fresh water are scarce here. The track passes interminably by
depressions covered with a carpet of glistening salt, dominated by volcanic
crests. It is used in every season of the year, but in winter the caravans are
exposed to the cold wind laden with snow, the viento blanco. San Pedro is
the port in this desolation. Here there are, on the flanks of the enormous
cone of Licancour, fields of lucerne and groups of figs and algarrobas. The
cattle are left there for a few days' rest, to prepare them for the last stage,
the Calama oasis on the Antofágasta railway.

The centre of this trade is Salta, or, rather, the little village of Rosario de
Lerma, nine miles south of it, where most of the caravans are formed. The
saltpetre works make yearly contracts in advance with the Rosario dealers,
fixing the number and price of the beasts to be delivered at Calama. The
cost of transport includes, besides the pay of the cattle-drivers—eighty to a
hundred piastres a journey—the shoeing of the mules, the rent of pasture at

San Pedro, and the value of the beasts which die on the way. In 1913 the
number of animals exported by this route was put at 30,000. The saltpetre
works buy also draught-mules for their waggons. Draught-mules must be
heavy, and only animals over five feet in height are sent to Chile. Bolivia is
now the only market for the smaller mules and for asses.

The trade in mules in its traditional form and the industry of breaking-in
still flourish at Santa Maria. The mule-dealer's business is very different
from that of the cattle-dealer. The mules are so tough that it is possible to
send them by roads which would be unsuitable for cattle.28 The journeys are
longer, and the contracts are less settled in advance. Moreover, breaking-in
is a delicate operation that requires experience. The survival of the mule-
trade at Santa Maria is an example of the maintenance of an industry owing
to the presence of skilled handicraft. The men who break in the mules at
Santa Maria have a remarkable caste-pride. Their first job is to go to
Santiago or Córdoba to buy the mules. They bring them back to Santa
Maria by way of Catamarca or the valley of Tafi. At Santa Maria the mules
are broken in, then taken to the lucerne-farms at Poma to be put into good
condition. There they remain in pasture for several months; and at length,
when the season is suitable, the little band of Santa Marieños gathers
together and, driving the now docile beasts in front of them, and putting no
loads on them in order that they may keep fresh, make for the fair at Huari
in Bolivia, or even as far as Sucre. There they sell at a hundred and fifty
piastres each the animals which they had bought for half that price before
being broken in. The number of mules hibernating at Poma is about 4,000.

The business done in the fairs of the southern Andes is very varied in
character, but their main function was always as markets for stock.29 They
are held in March or April, when the rains do not fall, but pasture is still
abundant and travelling easy. The fair at Vilque, north of Lake Titicaca, is
no longer visited by dealers in Argentine mules. The Salta fair which was

held at Sumala, near Rosario de Lerma, has ceased to be important; at the
close of the eighteenth century it was the chief centre of the mule-trade. The
fair held at Jujuy is still, like the annual pilgrimage to the Virgen del Valle
de Catamarca, one of the great dates in the life of the Andes. In the
eighteenth century it was mainly a cattle-fair, but it is now frequented only
by mule-dealers. The development of the railways is gradually causing it to
decline.

The cattle-trade has long been really a form of barter. The Argentinians
who took their herds to Peru brought back with them European goods that
had come via Panama and the Pacific. At Jachal direct communication with
Argentina is still so costly that they prefer to get many manufactured
articles from Chile. Everywhere else, however, the sellers of stock take
payment in cash. The Santa Marieños bring back from Bolivia only a few
bags of coca and, for chief payment, letters of exchange, which they cash in
the Salta banks when they return. Their gains swell the profits of the
merchants of Salta, Catamarca, and Jujuy, who get their goods at the large
importing houses of Buenos Aires. It is the first form under which the
influence of Buenos Aires reaches the valles. It gets their custom before it
begins to absorb their produce.

A large proportion of the stock sent to Chile now comes from the Andean
valleys themselves. The most arid and desolate regions round the oases
breed only goats and asses; but as soon as the soil improves sufficiently to
give a better vegetation, it is found good enough for a hardy and tenacious
breed of horned cattle. The land is divided into large ranches, and the
owners have also lucerne-farms, either individually or communally, the
tillers of the oasis each putting in their beasts, which wander about in small
groups without control. During the summer they go of their own accord up
to the cerros, where the rains have brought out the vegetation, and drinking-
water is found in the ravines for several months. In the winter they return to

the valley, within range of the reservoirs and permanent acequias.
Bodenbender gives us a few details about movements from place to place
owing to such differences, as they are in vogue in the western part of the
province of La Rioja, in the district of Guandacol. There the herds are taken
during years of drought up to the mountains of the west.

Apart from the Andes, the zone which used to feel the influence of the
trans-Andean markets has been steadily reduced in the last forty years. At
one time it comprised the whole range of the scrub, and even overflowed
upon the prairie region, but it is now limited to the nearest cantons to the
fringe of the mountains. Over the greater part of the monte the cattle are
now sent in other directions; either to Buenos Aires or to other Argentine
towns with a growing population, such as Córdoba, Mendoza, and
Tucumán.

The rupture of commercial relations with Chile has, however, not made
any notable change in the pastoral industry. Pastoral life in the scrub has
very uniform characters. It is chiefly dominated by the question of water-
supply. Natural open water is scarce, and the cattle can drink only where
man's industry makes it possible. The problem of taming the beasts, which
the breeders on the prairies have not always been able to solve, is simplified
by the scarcity of water. There is no need to hunt the cattle, no periodical
rodeos, when the herd is drawn in every night by thirst to the water-supply.
Advance in colonization means the provision of wells and reservoirs
(baldes and represas), without which the breeders cannot occupy the plain
permanently, but have to fall back during the dry season upon the few
streams that cross it. The word balderia means districts where the presence
of a sheet of water not far underground has enabled them to form a system
of wells. The best known is the Balderia Puntana, in the northern part of the
province of San Luis.

Of the regions apart from the Andes which still depend on the Chilean
market it will be enough to mention two, which may be regarded as typical.
The first is the Chaco Salteño, on the eastern slope of the Sierra de la
Lumbrera. The Lumbrera is a lofty anticlinal range of limestones and red
sandstones, which pass to the west underneath the clay of the Chaco plain,
and separate it from the great longitudinal sub-Andean corridor, which was
followed by the old road, and is now followed by the railway from
Tucumán to Jujuy. Colonization began beyond the Lumbrera in the
eighteenth century by passing round it, from south to north, by the valleys
of the Juramento and the San Francisco (which joins the Bermejo). The
ranches, which employed the Indians—the occupation of the Chaco at this
point being pacific—bordered the Bermejo and the Rio del Valle, which
flows from the Lumbrera range toward the former bed of the Bermejo, and
washes the foot of the range at the edge of the plain.

The cattle live in the
scrub during the summer,
when the rains have
brought out the grasses. In
winter they go up to the
moist forest, with
perennial vegetation,
which covers the flanks of DRY SCRUB OF THE
the range.30 The CENTRAL CHACO.
comparative abundance of
water lessens the labour of On the Añatuya line (province of Santiago
the breeders and, at the del Estero). Cactus. The leafless tree in the
same time, the discipline foreground is a red quebracho. The leafy
of the herds. When the trees are white quebrachos.
time comes, the whole Photograph by the Author.

ranch is mobilized for the Click to view
purpose of collecting the
adult cattle and making a larger image.
convoy of them.
Horsemen, with the double
leather apron which hangs
at the saddle-bow to
protect them from the
branches, ride up the range
with their dogs and plunge
into the scrub. The savage
beasts are rounded up and
held at bay. The procession
is formed, and sets out, MARSHES (ESTEROS OR
either by the rugged paths
CAÑADAS) OF THE
across the forest and
mountain or along the EASTERN CHACO.
easier tracks over the plain On the Tartagal line (province of Santa Fé).
to Embarcación or It is by means of these marshes, which form
Lumbreras, where they in the forest, that this part of the plain is
reach the railway. If buyers drained.
from the sugar-refineries at Photograph by the Author.
Jujuy do not take them, the
cattle are put into trucks Plate V.
and sent to the Salta
market, where there are Click to view
sales all the year round. At larger image.
Salta the beasts are
fattened on the lucerne-
farms before crossing the Cordillera. There is hardly any tillage, either

because the winter drought makes the result dubious or because the
breeders are not good at agricultural work.

The Sierra de los Llanos in La Rioja is another centre for extensive
breeding. From the railway, which follows the range at some distance,
between Chañar and Puntá de los Llanos, before it reaches La Rioja, no one
would have the least suspicion of the importance and life of the region. It is,
nevertheless, one of the main foci of Argentine history. It has proved a
cradle of population and wealth. It was there that Quiroga and, later, the
strange adventurer who was known by the nickname of the "Chacho"
gathered the strength that enabled them to dominate part of Argentina.
Colonization is even older here than in the Chaco Salteño. It occupied two
distinct periods, separated by a long interval. At first it advanced from north
to south, passing round the foot of the Sierra. It is marked by a line of
springs, poor but permanent, the waters of which are absorbed as soon as
they flow down to the porous alluvial beds of the plain. They appear much
in the names of the district—agüitas, aguaditas, and so on, abound. The
road from La Rioja to San Luis passed these springs, and some population
grew up about them. Thus the two sides of the range—the costa baja in the
east and the costa alta in the west—became inhabited. The estate of
Facundo is one of these aguaditas of the costa alta.

The two costas form the historic territory of the Llanos. It was from there
that colonization swarmed over the plain long afterwards. This expansive
movement began about 1850; that is to say, at a time when the breeders
enjoyed comparative peace and security, and especially when the
invernadas of San Juan and Mendoza were developed, together with the
export of cattle to the agricultural provinces of Chile. The price of stock
rose, and the unoccupied land became of value. The occupation and
exploitation of the plain was the work of the last two generations. They
pushed on to the very edge of the salt lakes, leaving no vacant space. The

travesias which surrounded the narrow inhabited zone of the costas were
filled with life. The Sierra and its two costas are no longer an oasis in the
desert, as they were in the time of Sarmiento; though they still differ from
the remainder of the pastoral zone in the density of their population and the
variety of their resources.

The early date of the colonization may be traced in a special system of
tenure, though this is also found in parts of the provinces of Catamarca and
Santiago del Estero. On the plain the right of ownership was obtained in the
nineteenth century by purchase or by concessions of public lands which
belonged to the provincial Government. They were allotted in very large
estates, and these, intact or broken up, are the actual ranches. In
approaching the foot of the range one passes estates in the mercedes. The
name indicates concessions that date from the colonial epoch, and they are,
in all parts of South America that were early colonized, the source of land-
ownership. But what is peculiar to the mercedes of the Llanos is that they
have never been divided amongst the heirs of the first owner.31 Sometimes
the number of co-proprietors is small. They are conscious of their
relationship to each other and know the value of the rights of each. The
merced is in that case only an undivided property held in common.
Sometimes, however, the numbers of comuneros is so great that they have
lost count of the exact share of the merced which belongs to each of them.
The merced feeds a whole population, legitimate heirs and usurpers mixed
together. In these cases it is a real communal property, and one might
compare it, in spite of its different origin, with the Indian communities
which exist in Argentine territory as well as that of most of the other
Andean States.

The economy of the Llanos is less simple than that of the Chaco Salteño.
There is agriculture as well as breeding. There is not much rain, and it is
confined to the summer months. The mean rainfall is, no doubt, higher than

what we find at La Rioja (about 30 centimetres), but it is not good enough
to dispense with irrigation. The aguadas, springs and brooks at the foot of
the range, are the only provision of permanent water, and it is very limited.
The oases watered by these springs and brooks cover only a few acres at the
foot of the steep cliffs of the range. It has not been possible to cultivate the
land far from the mountains. At Chamical a trench that was made to convey
water to the railway dried up. All that can be done is to follow for a few
miles with a line of wells a subterranean stream of fresh and not very deep
water. At Bella Vista a comunero has dug an acequia several miles long,
and he sells the water at a rate of five piastres for forty-eight hours. But
when it reaches the end of the acequia, it is lost between the trench and the
field to which they would conduct it. At Ulapes, though it is one of the chief
centres, it takes the full outflow of the spring during sixteen hours to
irrigate one cuadra (a little over two acres), and each man's "turn" is for
seventeen days. The entire oasis measures about fifty acres. At Olta the thin
stream of water is surrounded by so many cupidities that the "turn" comes
only every fifty-eight days, so that each field has to live fifty-eight days on
one watering. At Catuna where a trickle of brackish water is eagerly
collected at the foot of a dejection-cone, the water-right is regulated by an
arrangement of turns that covers ninety days, so that plants die of thirst in
the interval. The plots vary according to the quantity, quality, and regularity
of the water. The orange-tree is the most exacting, the fig the most
tenacious, of the trees. The poorest oases consist only of a few gardens of
dusty fig-trees.

However small it is, the oasis always stands for a rudiment of communal
life, a poblado, a centre round which life is organized in this pastoral,
anarchic, amorphous world. Land that has a water-right is regarded as
detached from the merced and never remains undivided.

Besides these properly irrigated lands there are the bañados: cultivated
plots in the hollows, where the moisture left by the storms is concentrated
and preserved. These are much more extensive, and they are very
irregularly distributed. Inequalities of the alluvial ground that almost escape
the eye are sufficient to direct the streaming of the water after rain, and it is
quickly absorbed. Man assists nature as well as he can, and one sees
everywhere tiny ridges of earth across the paths, for the purpose of
diverting the water to the plots. These are the tomas. When you follow a
toma downward, you see it after a time pass under a hedge of dry thorn, and
this encloses a field, a cerco. The crops have to be jealously guarded against
the cattle which roam in the scrub. The cercos are sometimes so numerous
that they give the impression of a regular agricultural district. Most of them
are planted with maize. The maize harvest rarely fails in the summer, for it
is then, on account of the regular rains, that the maize grows and ripens.
When the ears have been gathered, the cattle are let into the cerco, as
maize-straw is excellent fodder. But wheat also grows well in the bañados.
Provided the year has had a few late showers, the wheat sown in autumn
stands the winter drought more or less well, and ripens after the early rains,
at the beginning of summer. The Llanos produce a hard wheat; it is not
milled, but eaten, like rice, in the grain. There have been times when the
Llanos have exported wheat. The census of 1888 gives the Department of
General Belgrano, on the eastern slope of the Llanos, an area of 900 acres
under maize and 1,900 under wheat. When the Chilecito railway was
constructed, this wheat competed with that brought on mules from Jachal,
in the mining district of the Famatina range. Like the gardens in the oases,
the cercos may be divided, and they are the personal property of those who
cultivate them.

Sowing and reaping are, however, mere episodes in the life of the
Llanero. He is mainly occupied with cattle-breeding. The quality of the
pasture differs considerably according to the nature of the soil and the good

and bad character of the season. Sometimes it forms a thick carpet under the
brushwood, but in other places it is poor and there is nothing but the leaves
and pods of the algarroba. If the herd is too large, the grass will not grow
again; the breeder recognizes at a glance the campo recargado—the field
which has had its capacity overstrained. The pasture has to be carefully
nursed. But the most urgent problem is to get a supply of water for the
cattle. Round the Sierra the underground water is often fresh, and there are
plenty of wells. Still, in order to avoid having to draw the water, they dig
large trenches at suitable spots in the clay, and round these they arrange the
earth that has been dug out, with an opening toward the hills to catch the
water when it is raining. These are the represas. As in the case of the
bañados, ridges of earth direct the stream to the represa. It is surrounded by
a hedge as carefully as the field is. On the plain rain is rare, and the represas
are usually the only reserve. They have to last the whole year; even two
years if there is a particularly dry summer that prevents re-filling. Thus they
become sometimes veritable lakes. From a distance you can see, above the
top of the brushwood, the bald curve of the mound of beaten earth which
encircles them. The water flows over it when there has been much rain. The
mound is sometimes 4½ to 5½ yards high; as it is at Tello, between the
Sierra d'Ulapes and the Sierra de los Llanos, where the San Juan coach used
to change horses.

The represa is the real centre of the estate. The house is built near it, and
guards the entrance. From early morning until dusk the cattle come to it,
singly or in groups. The rancher admits them, lets them drink, and closes
the gate behind them. If the thirsty cattle have not his mark and belong to a
neighbour, he sends them to drink at their own represa; but he gives water
to lost beasts, from a distance, whose owner will presently come for them.
Near the represa is the enclosure (potrero) for calves that have just been
born. The cows come there every morning, and they are milked for a few
months to make cheese. Like the cerco, the represa is the personal property

of the man who made it, or of one who has inherited it and sees to its
upkeep.

The cattle of the Llanos move a good deal. There are certain irregular
migrations, and others that are periodic or connected with the seasons.
Everywhere on the fringe of the Sierra the cattle remain in the ravine and on
the foot-hills during the winter. In the summer they return of themselves to
their querencia on the plain. The irregular migrations are due to scarcity of
water or pasture. Driven by hunger, the beasts travel a long distance of their
own accord. They mingle with other herds, sometimes so far from the
ranches where they were born that no one recognizes their mark.
Sometimes, again, the rancher himself goes, when his represa is dry, to ask
hospitality in some more favoured canton. He is fortunate if the drought has
not been general; if part of the country has been spared and can offer a
refuge.

But it sometimes happens that the whole district has suffered, and the
land is naked and scorched everywhere. There is then no help except a long
journey, to San Luis or to the lucerne-farms of San Juan, for the cattle. The
misfortune of the Llanos sends up at once the rent of the invernadas all
round. A general evacuation of the cattle is a desperate remedy, and is, in
fact, often impracticable. During the whole summer the men wait patiently,
hoping for the end of the drought. There is room for hope until April, when
storms are still possible. If the month ends without rain, it is too late to
remove the exhausted cattle; the stages across the desolated country are too
severe.

The memory of the worst years of drought—the "epidemics," as the
Llanero calls them—lives for a long time. They make a deep impression on
the popular imagination, and legend makes plagues of them, in the Biblical
way. The drought of 1884 was particularly disastrous. The herds were

destroyed, and families that had been wealthy the day before set out on foot,
"having nothing to put a saddle on": a touching picture of misery for this
race of centaurs, people who feel themselves mutilated when they are not
on horse. The rain returns next year. The pasture grows all the better
because the herd is smaller, and the Llanos give the traveller who crosses
them an exaggerated impression of their natural wealth.

Until quite a recent date the cattle reared in the Llanos were destined
exclusively for Chile. Dealers from Jachal or Tinogasta came in the autumn,
and the cattle passed the winter in the invernadas at the foot of the
Cordillera. From the Sierra d'Ulapes, which is a southward continuation of
the Llanos, the cattle destined for Chile were first sent to San Juan. They
took one or two weeks to reach it. Five men were needed for a herd of a
hundred beasts: eight for a herd of two hundred. The caravan was directed
by an estanciero (rancher) or his capataz, or by dealers who came originally
from the Llanos.

Exports to Chile have not entirely ceased. In 1913 the dealers from
Tinogasta and Jachal, who had not appeared in 1912, came back. The
southern part of the Sierra d'Ulapes, which is some distance from the
railway, reserves its cattle for San Juan. The cattle are, however, more and
more sent by rail to the coast. In the Sierra d'Ulapes the dealers from Villa
Mercedes, which has become one of the great markets of Argentina, come
every year, rent an enclosure (protrero), and collect in it, one by one, a herd
of cattle, which they then take away on foot. They are sold at the fair at
Villa Mercedes, and they disperse in every direction toward the fattening
zones of the Pampa.

This commercial revolution has led to a rise in the price of cattle, and this
in turn has raised the value of land. When the value of the land rises, the
methods of working it are necessarily improved, there is greater security,

and thefts of cattle (cuatrerismo) become impossible. The farmers are not
content merely to enlarge their represas or dig deeper wells. They divide the
fields by fences—cheap iron wire stretched on home-made posts, or hedges
of spines like those which protect the bañados. Thus pasture can be
reserved untouched for the difficult months.

This subdivision of the land by fences began in the south, in the Ulapes
district, in touch with the richer districts of San Luis and Córdoba. In the
Llanos proper the practice has scarcely begun. At Ulapes it is even done on
the mercedes. Each comunero, without opposition, encloses as much space
as he can, and leaves his cattle outside, on the common land, as long as
possible. He only brings them into his enclosed land when the common
pasture is exhausted. This will bring about the end of the mercedes; and,
indeed, communal ownership is not suited to modern conditions. The latest
sign of progress is the appearance of lucerne fields. Lucerne can be grown
on the bañados wherever anything else can be grown; and the creation of
lucerne-farms will give the pastoral industry a security and stability it never
had before, besides enabling the breeders to collect stores of dry forage and
exploit the full pastoral capacity of the monte.

CHAPTER III
TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA THE GREAT
INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

Tucumán and the road to Chile—The climate and the cultivation
of the sugar-cane—The problem of manual labour—
Irrigation at Mendoza—Water-rights—Viticulture—
Protection and the natural conditions.

The great industrial forms of cultivation, the sugar-cane and the vine,
gave a new aspect to the scenery of Tucumán and Mendoza at the end of the
nineteenth century. The increase of population and wealth which they
entailed was so sudden, the economic advance so swift, that the owners of
vineyards and the sugar-makers have now lost all recollection of the
primitive industries which gave life to colonial Tucumán and Mendoza, and
were maintained until the last generation. Nevertheless, if one compares
Tucumán or Mendoza with some centre of irrigated tillage in north-west
Argentina, one quickly perceives the original features which three centuries
of history have given them. The system of land-tenure, water-rights, the
distribution of the cultivated zones, and a thousand other features, show that
the colonization is old. The exploitation of the soil and utilization of the
water have not proceeded on a methodical plan, conceived in advance,
which would make each piece of work—the dams and channels of
distribution, for instance—subordinate to the whole. The engineers who
constructed the great modern dams of Mendoza, San Juan and Sali, had not
to create a region of new estates, but merely to improve the water-supply,
which was used wastefully by the existing estates. There is nothing more
suggestive than the contrast between these stone dams, built according to all
the rules of hydraulics, and the network of irregular channels, following the
accidental variations of the land and the slope, which preceded them, and to
which they have been accommodated as far as possible. In some cases the
primitive acequias could not be altered so as to start from the dam. The
accumulations of water succeed each other down the slope, held up by a
simple barrier of branches and earth which is periodically destroyed by

floods. The modern flood-proof dam (dique nivelador), which cuts the
torrent in its entire width, and enables them to make use of its whole
volume, allows a certain amount of water to pass, for the use of the
acequias lower down. This falls back into the broad, stony bed, exposed to
evaporation and infiltration as it was before.

Long before the development of the sugar industry on a large scale, there
was a typically urban life, added to the common fund of pastoral life, at
Tucumán. The neighbouring cantons of the scrub—Trancas, Burruyacu, and
Graneros—sent cattle and mules to Peru and Chile, like the other Argentine
plains. But Tucumán drew still greater profit from its position as chief stage
on the high road to Peru, at the point where the plain passes into the
mountain. Primitive Tucumán was an excellent type of high-road village.
The road determined its position at the point where the Sali had to be
crossed. The first site of the town, near Monteros, was abandoned in the
eighteenth century, when the high road to Peru settled in the sub-Andean
region and ceased to run through the Calchaqui valley. The road sustained
its chief industries, tanning and harness-making for the muleteers of the
Andes, and waggon-making for the troperos of the plain. The road and the
people travelling along it afforded an outlet for its wheat and flour, and
facilitated the export of its tobacco to the coast-provinces. The waggon-
owners were really contractors, conveying stuff at their own cost.
Moreover, part of Bolivia came to make its purchases at the shops (tiendas)
of Tucumán, and the merchants of the town took in exchange Bolivian ore
for export. Thus the road built up a nucleus of available capital at Tucumán.
This capital was invested, at the close of the nineteenth century, in sugar;
and it has increased a hundredfold. Most of the works still belong to old
families of the town.

The sugar-region is comparatively small. It covers an area which has
exceptional climatic features, owing to the vicinity of Mount Aconcagua.
While the higher chains of the Andes further north are separated from the
Chaco plain by lower ranges, on which the east winds leave their stores of
moisture less freely, Tucumán has on its west the great mass of Aconcagua.
It rises, a giant landmark, at the beginning of the plains, from which there is
nothing to separate it, and gathers the clouds round it.

On the eastern slope of
Aconcagua is the limit of
the crescent of tropical
forest, which begins about
three thousand miles away,
on the flank of the
Venezuelan and
Colombian Cordilleras, THE VALLE OF SANTA
and is connected in the
centre, in the equatorial
MARIA, NORTH-WEST OF
zone, from Guaviare to MOUNT ACONCAGUA.
Mamore, with the forests
At the bottom of the valle one can see the
of the Amazon region. At
sandy bed of the river as a white line in the
its two ends it is reduced to
foreground. Zone of torrential terraces,
a narrow belt which does
which follows the edge of the valle.
not reach, in the east, the
Photograph by the Author.
alluvial plains, the
savannahs of the Orinoco Click to view
and the scrub of the Chaco.
The humid forest of the larger image.
Argentine Andes is
nowhere more luxuriant
than near its southern

limit, above Tucumán.
There are no palms or tree-
ferns, but the convolvulus
abounds, and the evergreen
trees are covered with
epiphytes. Aconcagua is
one of the sharpest
climatological limits in the
world. In the latitude of
THE OASIS OF
Salta one has only to go ANDALGALA.
about 150 miles to pass
At the western foot of Aconcagua, the snowy
from the moist forests of
crest of which can be seen.
the sub-Andean chain of
Photograph by the Author.
the Lumbrera to the arid
valley of Cachi. On both Plate VI.
sides of Aconcagua there
are less than fifty-five Click to view
miles between the sugar-
larger image.
cane fields won from the
forest and the oasis of
Andalgala, or that of Santa Maria, which are right in the desert zone.
According as one approaches Aconcagua from the east or the west, one
finds, from base to summit, either the successive stages of vegetation of the
humid Andes—from forest to grain-sown prairie (paramo or pajonal)—or
those which are characteristic of the arid Andes, from the spiny scrub of the
valleys to the fields of resinous tola of the Puna. The contrast of climates is
repeated in the character of the soils. Aconcagua contains in itself the entire
Andes in miniature. At the foot of the narrow zone of Alpine crests, in the
few square miles of the elevated valleys of Tafi and Pucara, there is a small
agricultural and pastoral world, in a temperate climate, that has nothing

quite like it elsewhere, narrowly confined between the forest and the
desert.32

The sugar district of Tucumán is not, properly speaking, an oasis; that is
to say, it is not an irrigated canton in the midst of a desert, but a moist patch
in the heart of a less favoured region. The traveller who comes from the
Chaco finds that the dust disappears from the moister air as he approaches
Tucumán. The rainfall approaches 974 millimetres at Tucumán. Irrigation is
a valuable aid to the farmer, but it is not indispensable. Maize is generally
raised without watering, and part even of the sugar-cane crop is raised on
land that is not irrigated. It is not the relatively heavy rainfall that has led to
the development of the sugar-cane estates at Tucumán, but the evenness of
the temperature, together with the atmospheric moisture and the rareness of
frost. The mists which develop at the foot of Aconcagua form a protecting
mantle above Tucumán which prevents nocturnal radiation. The nearer one
gets to the mountain, the later, rarer, and lighter the frosts are. If, on the
contrary, one goes out some distance westward toward the plain, the frost
becomes more severe, and it is impossible to grow sugar-cane. Not only the
humidity, but the contour also, has some influence on the changes of
temperature and the distribution of frost. The depressions in which the cold
air accumulates, in virtue of the well-known meteorological phenomenon of
inversion of temperature, are more exposed than sloping districts, where the
air circulates regularly and freely. The eastern limit of the zone spared by
the frosts passes about thirty-five miles from the foot of Aconcagua. It has
only been made clear by experiment, and one can still see there the traces of
abandoned plantations.

The water-supply in the Tucumán district consists, primarily, of
numerous evenly flowing streams which come down the eastern flank of
Aconcagua (Lules, Famailla, Angostura, Gastona, Medinas, etc.). They join
the Sali to the south of Tucumán. The Sali is an irregular torrent which rises

in the sub-Andean depression to the north and Tucumán, and, after
squeezing Aguadita between the north-eastern extremity of Aconcagua and
the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, enters the plain at Tucumán. It then
flows southward, meandering over a large bed of shingle in which it has not
had force enough to excavate a valley, and the inclination of the land on its
left bank (to the east) is toward the east and south-east. The lands on the
right bank of the Sali are consequently better provided with water than
those on the left bank. The difference is so marked that, as the estates on the
right bank get most of their supply elsewhere, the water of the Sali nearly
all goes to the left bank. In 1912 a siphon was actually constructed
underneath the bed of the Sali to convey the unused water of the Rio Lules
to the right bank. Lastly, to the north of Tucumán the Sierra de Burruyacu
provides a few intermittent streams of water, which the estancias (ranches)
formerly conducted, with great labour, to their represas. These do not
suffice for irrigation on a large scale.

The sugar-cane was first grown at the gates of the town and, to the east,
at Cruz Alta, on the left bank of the Sali. These were some distance from
the mountain because, as there was less rain and the soil was fairly dry, the
natural vegetation was less luxuriant, and it cost less to prepare the
ground.33 The Central Córdoba Railway, which passes along the right bank
of the Sali south of Tucumán, is the axis of another zone of cultivation and
of old factories. Colonization afterwards went further west. A new
provincial railway, describing a section of a circle, was grafted at Tucumán
(1888-90) and Madria upon the Central Córdoba line. It keeps close to the
foot of the range, the falda, and enables farmers to settle on it. The new
estates have not confined themselves to the alluvial plain; they have crept
up the foot hills, and are constantly going higher. In the latitude of Tucumán
the mountain approaches within eight or twelve miles of the Sali, and the
possibilities of extension westward are strictly limited; indeed, they are

already exhausted. Further south, on the contrary, the plain extends more
than fifteen miles to the east of the provincial railway. West of Monteros,
Concepción, and the existing line of works, there is a reserve of available
land; there is room for a fresh advance westward. There is also room for
expansion to the north-east, at the foot of the sub-Andean chain of
Burruyacu, where the frosts are slight. It is in this direction that most of the
clearing is now going on.

These various districts do not offer quite the same conditions to the
farmer. The Falda is the most suitable, not only on account of the rareness
of frost, but because of the fertility of the soil, as the tropical forest has
accumulated inexhaustible stores of humus. The sugar-cane returns are
higher there than anywhere else. Irrigation is not necessary, but, on the
other hand, the humidity reduces the proportion of sugar in the cane.
Irrigation is the rule in the next belt, between the local railway and the
Central Córdoba line (on the right bank of the Sali). On the left bank a large
number of the estates must still do without watering.

The most original feature of the organization of the sugar industry at
Tucumán is the maintenance of a class of independent cultivators, the
cañeros, side by side with the large enterprises. This survival of small and
medium properties is a fact to which we find no parallel in the other sugar
districts of tropical America.34 Everywhere else, in Brazil and in the
Antilles, the farms which worked up their own produce, on primitive
methods, have been absorbed by the central works. The home-worker has
lost his land as well as been ruined in his industry by the competition of the
modern factory. At Tucumán, on the contrary, the sugar industry never
passed through the stage of domestic production. It was set up in full
development, some devoting their capital to building works, others to
growing the cane. Irrigation seemed from the first to dictate a concentration
of ownership; the refineries at Cruz Alta constructed costly special canals to

bring the water of the Sali. It is only large proprietors who have the
resources needed to carry out work of this kind, and sufficient influence to
secure permission to conduct the water over adjoining estates. However, the
law of 1897 reorganized irrigation and withdrew the water-supply from the
control of a few privileged big capitalists. Public works, undertaken by the
provincial authorities, brought the water within the reach of every farmer.
Since 1897 the number of water-concessions has risen from 230 to nearly
2,000.

The interests of the factory (ingenio) and the farmers (cañeros) are not
indissolubly connected. Their respective parts in the final product of the
sugar industry are not invariable. The increase in the number of factories
means an increase in the number of cane-buyers, and so tends to raise the
price. During the years antecedent to 1895 the refineries improved their
machinery, and their productive capacity increased faster than the cultivated
acreage. The price of the cane then rose to about twenty piastres a ton. As
this figure is far above the net cost, the refineries endeavoured to profit
themselves by the advantages that accrued to the cañeros, and they bought
land for cultivation. It is to this period that the big concerns of Cruz Alta
belong. Afterwards the production of cane increased, and nearly met the
demands of the refineries, so that their competition relaxed. They ceased to
buy land, and the price of cane was lowered.

The refineries now deal with cane which they grow themselves, with paid
workers of their own; with cane that they buy at a reduced price from
tenants (colonos), who grow it on their own estates; and with cane sold
them by cañeros who own their own fields. The range of the country
absorbed by each refinery is often very extensive. The Sugar Congress of
1894 estimated that half the cane-harvest was transported by rail, and that
freight from one canton to another in the sugar district brought the railways
more than a third of what they got for conveying sugar from Tucumán to

the coast. Each railway company tries to keep along its own line the cane it
carries to the refineries, so that the transport of the sugar when it is made
will fall to itself. Thus the cane-market is divided into two separate
compartments, with very little exchange between them. The first comprises
the zone that depends on the Central Argentine and the State Railway; the
second is the zone of the Central Córdoba and the old local line bought by
the Central Córdoba.

Certain parts, such as Cruz Alta and the district round the town, have too
many works in proportion to their production of cane, and they are centres
of import. The price of the cane is always higher here than in the
agricultural districts. Each works has its customers. At the stations it instals
weighing machines for receiving and weighing the cane. It is only the more
important cañeros who have the privilege of selling by the truck-load, or
selling to distant works. The small growers are compelled to deal with the
local refinery. They sell it their canes direct, or, sometimes, through agents
and dealers. In the days when the works were competing for cane it became
the custom to sign the purchase-contracts as early as possible; sometimes at
the beginning of October, as soon as the harvest of the year is over. In order
to make sure of the loyalty of the cañero the manufacturers advance money
to him, in proportion to their difficulty in getting cane.

Cañeros and mill-owners have had to work together to settle the problem
of labour. There was not enough at hand, and it had to be recruited
elsewhere. Agents were sent all round—to Catamarca and Santiago del
Estero, and even to the province of Córdoba—to collect and bring gangs of
workers. They were a mixed, unsteady, undisciplined lot. The owners of the
works advanced them money in order to keep them, and then, fearing to
lose the money advanced, would not dismiss them for laziness and
irregularities. These troubles are not felt as much now as they were at the
time when the industry was expanding. The population of immigrant

workers has settled down and taken root. Besides creoles it includes a small
number of Italians and Spaniards; but while the creoles have been definitely
incorporated in the sugar industry, the European immigrants use their
savings to buy a bit of land and take to farming.

In normal times Tucumán has all the labour it requires, but the harvest
always compels it to seek help in other provinces. In May and June the
agents, well supplied with money, set out for the Salado, the districts round
the Sierra d'Ancasti, etc. The temporary attraction of Tucumán at this
season is felt over a considerable distance. At Santa Maria, on the far side
of Mount Aconcagua, 600 people—men, women, and children—emigrate
for five months, and live on the cane-fields. The merchants of Santa Maria
make them advances, in the name of the refiners, to the amount of about
sixty piastres per worker. Further north the Tucumán enganchadores come
into collision with those from Salta and Campo Santo, and they divide the
available labour between them. Some of the temporary immigrants settle
down permanently every year, and swell the normal population of the sugar
industry.

Outside the Tucumán district an unfortunate attempt was made to plant
the sugar industry at Santiago del Estero, and large works were constructed.
But the frost is severe there. For some years they tried to keep the Santiago
works going with cane brought from Tucumán, but the freight was too
heavy, and the works had to be abandoned, or else dismantled and set up
elsewhere. The valley of the Rio Grande, from Jujuy to 200 miles north of
Tucumán, in the sub-Andean depression between the Sierra de Zenta and
the Lumbrera, has, on the other hand, suitable conditions for the cultivation
of the cane. Frost is rare. The climate is warmer than at Tucumán, the canes
ripen more quickly, and the average return is higher. The water-supply also
is good. There have long been plantations in this region. Their first market
was the region of the tableland and the valleys, where they chiefly sold

brandy: a traffic of long standing, which one always finds round the cold
districts of the Andes, from Colombia to the north of Argentina. The
modern refineries of Ledesma and San Pedro took the place of the primitive
mills as soon as the railway approached Jujuy, and even before it entered
the valley of the Rio Grande. They then sent their sugar by waggon in
November and December, between the close of the sugar season and the
commencement of the rains, which spoil the roads.

The sugar district of Jujuy now has a very different economic and social
organization from that of Tucumán. Here there are no farmer-proprietors.
Each centre is a large estate, in the midst of the forest, where the workers
are lodged and fed by the works that employs them. The contractors who
clear the ground for them are obliged by the terms of their contract to
import their workers directly from the south, so that they will not take any
away from the farming. There is no available labour, no free market, on the
spot. Since the completion of the Quebrada de Humahuaca line, however,
there has been a good deal of immigration, to settle or temporarily, of the
mountaineers of the tableland. The sphere of influence of San Pedro now
extends as far as Bolivia. For the harvest, which, like that of Tucumán,
requires a good deal of additional manual labour, the works look to the wild
Indians of the Chaco. This curious stream of seasonal migration, which the
sugar campaign of Jujuy provokes every winter outside the zone of white
colonization, is of very old date, going back more than sixty years. Belmar
notices it about the middle of the nineteenth century. The recruiting agents
of San Pedro and Ledesma set out from Embarcación, where the railway
ends, and enter the Chaco, from which each of them brings a troop of some
hundreds of natives between March and June. The number of these
temporary immigrants seems to be about 6,000. The Chiriguanos of the
north leave their families on the Chaco, and the men come alone. The
Matacos immigrate in whole tribes. They camp in huts like those of their
own villages, under the shelter of the works, and are paid in maize, meat,

and cigars. In October, when the algarroba flowers and makes them dream
of their own country, they receive the remainder of their pay in money, and
spend it in brandy, clothing, knives, and firearms.

The history of Mendoza resembles that of Tucumán in many ways. In the
province of Cuyo, as at Tucumán, urban life has been precocious. In the
middle of the eighteenth century Mendoza and San Juan exported wines,
dried fruit (pasas and orejones), and flour to the coast and to Paraguay. Part
of the so-called "Chilean flour" consumed on the Pampa, really came from
Jachal and Mendoza. This trade ceased in the nineteenth century, but San
Juan and Mendoza found another source of wealth in fattening cattle and
sending them to Chile. Belmar, in 1856, estimates the extent of the lucerne
farms of Cuyo to have been 150,000 cuadres(440,000 acres). 35 As at
Tucumán, the present period is characterized by a rapid expansion of
cultivation and a rapid growth of population. But, whereas at Tucumán the
neighbouring provinces have provided the whole of the manual labour
required, and the actual population is essentially creole, at Mendoza there
has been a larger number of foreign immigrants. In 1914, foreigners were
310 per 1,000 of the entire population of Mendoza: a larger proportion than
for the whole country. The immigrants going straight to Mendoza from the
ports numbered 12,000 in 1911, and 15,000 in 1912; almost as much as for
the province of Santa Fé, and more than for the province of Córdoba. Thus
Mendoza plays a part of its own in the charm which Argentina has for the
imagination of Europe. When we examine a chart of the population of
South America, we notice that the oases of Cuyo contain the only important
groups of European population at any distance from the coast.

The prosperity of Mendoza to-day depends upon the cultivation of the
vine, just as that of Tucumán depends upon sugar. The cultivation of the
vine is possible in the greater part of Argentina. In the early days of
colonization there were vineyards as far as the Paraguay. They still flourish

at Concordia on the Uruguay and at San Nicolas on the lower Paraná. But
the wet summers of the eastern provinces are not suitable for them. The
climate for them improves as one goes westward, and there is less rain. The
dry zone of eastern Argentina is the special field of the vine. There it has
spread over nearly twenty degrees of latitude, and it depends, like other
cultivation, upon irrigation. In the Andean valleys of the north-west it rises
to a height of 7,500 feet. South of Mendoza the higher limit of the vine
sinks rapidly, and there are no vineyards in the mountainous district itself.
On the other hand, its range increases; in the east it spreads as far as the
Atlantic coast, in the valley of the Rio Negro.

The former centres of viticulture in the north-west, in the oases of the
costas of La Rioja, Catamarca, and Salta, have scarcely been affected by the
advance; and, in any case, their extent is very limited. The vine-district of
the Rio Negro is only in process of creation, and its output is still small.
Thus the area of production on a large scale is limited to the three oases of
San Juan, Mendoza, and San Rafaël, which in 1913 yielded 4,750,000
hectolitres, out of the total Argentine production of 5,000,000 hectolitres.
These three centres differ from each other to-day rather in their economic
development than in their physical conditions. At San Juan, the
transformation of the earlier methods of production and the traditional
creole industries is only now taking place. At Mendoza it is quite finished.
The San Rafaël centre, on the other hand, is of recent origin; it was created
on the site of a fortress which guarded the Indian frontier until 1880.
Cultivated areas have appeared on virgin soil, in the midst of the desert.
These different circumstances account for diversities which, though they
will disappear in the course of time, are still obvious to the traveller. The
general scene is the same everywhere. Arid and desolate mountains close
the horizon in the west; at their feet spreads the immense alluvial deposit on
which the vineyards, surrounded by rows of poplars, grow wherever water
is to be found.

There are so few gaps in the lower slopes of the Cordillera that the
available water is gathered at a small number of points. The Rio San Juan
alone drains a belt of the Cordillera at least 140 miles broad. Each of the
two oases, Mendoza and San Rafaël, has two streams of water to feed it.
The Mendoza and the Tunuyan at Mendoza, and the Diamante and the Atuel
at San Rafaël, approach each other, when they leave the mountains, so
closely that the estates they water blend into a continuous area. Then,
however, instead of uniting, they diverge and are lost, separately, in the
plain. These streams have less fall than the thinner torrents of the oases of
the north-west, and the average inclination of the dejection-cones which
bear the vineyards is slight. The upper slopes of the cone, where thin beds
of clay lie upon shingle, give clear wines of excellent aroma. Hence, in the
Mendoza district, the vineyards of Lujan and, further down, of Godoy Cruz,
Guaymallen, and Maipu produce choice brands. On the plain, to the east of
Mendoza, at San Martin and Junin, the harvest is larger, but the wine is
rough, and one can often taste the saltpetre of the clayey soil. There is the
same difference between the upper and lower district at San Juan and San
Rafaël.

The oases of San Juan and San Rafaël spread evenly over the most
suitable parts of the alluvial talus, but the oasis of Mendoza has a peculiar
shape which can only be explained by historical causes. The cultivated belt
is a narrow strip along the Tunuyan, for more than sixty miles, as far as the
heart of the plain, out of sight of the Cordillera. It is one instance, out of a
thousand, of the influence of traffic on colonization. As a matter of fact, the
road from Mendoza to the coast, by which the cattle convoys of San Luis
went to the invernadas, passes along the Tunuyan. The estates grew up by
the side of it. The villages of Santa Rosa, Las Catitas, and La Paz, which
mark the various stages of it, are all of ancient origin. Strangers are rarely
found there. One still sees in them very old houses, built before the railway
was made, dating from the days of the carril or waggon-road. The

importance of this line of water across the desert is clearly seen on the
Woodbine Parish map.

The use of irrigation in this district raised different technical problems
from those of the north-western provinces. In this latitude the torrents of the
Andes are formidable when the snows melt, at the beginning of summer.
The flood is all the greater and more sudden as the heat is late. From all the
ravines of the mountains the muddy waters then converge toward the valley.
The flood scours the bed of the river, erodes its banks, and threatens to find
a way amongst the estates. Even the towns of Mendoza and San Juan have
more than once been in danger. The fear of diverting the flood and of
bringing it upon themselves compelled them to be content with raising only
light and frail dams in the path of the torrent. At San Juan they used, for a
long time, the waters of the Arroyo del Estero, a small brook fed by
infiltration from the Valle de Zenda, and it was some time before they
ventured to draw upon the river itself.

Another problem, which
the smaller oases of the
north-west hardly know—
the problem of drainage—
is of paramount
importance at San Juan
and Mendoza, as far as a
large part of the irrigated THE OASIS DEL RINCON,
surface is concerned. The
water infiltrating into the
BELOW SAUJIL
soil forms a subterranean (ANDALGALA LINE,
sheet which approaches PROVINCE OF
more or less to the surface
according to the CATAMARCA).

topography. It comes to the The dejection-cone, at the foot of which is the
surface at the foot of the very small oasis, is seen resting against the
cone, where the slope Sierra d'Ambato.
diminishes and the cone Photograph by the Author.
gradually passes into the
plain. Hence the cone has, Click to view
at its base, a belt of larger image.
marshes (ciénagas), and
sometimes a line of good
springs (barbollon). At San
Juan, if you move far
enough away to get a
comprehensive view of the
whole of the estates, you
see that they occupy the
middle belt, half-way
down the cone, the top of
which is composed of
THE MONTE AT EL YESO.
coarse shingle, while the
bottom is too wet. The Zone of clay hills at the foot of the Sierra de
advance of the plots San Antonio, at the edge of the Chaco.
upward and the steadily Corral (cattle park) made from tree-trunks.
increasing use of the Photograph by the Author.
available water tends to
raise the level of the Plate VII.
underground sheet and
Click to view
enlarge the area of marsh.
larger image.
There is a fine black
soil, very fertile when it is drained, and no irrigation is needed; as it is
possible, according to the depth of the drainage-trenches, to regulate the

level of the underground water so as to make it reach and feed the roots.
The draining of the marshes, again, opens up a field for the further
expansion of the estates, especially at San Juan, where it has scarcely
begun. Moreover, the water that is obtained by draining the marshes enables
them to create new irrigated estates further on. At Mendoza there is already
a considerable area irrigated by drainage-canals (desagüe).

The level of the water in the marshes sinks in the summer and rises in
winter, at the time when the irrigation of the upper districts is suspended or
greatly reduced, and when the surplus of the acequias, which the fields no
longer take, flows or infiltrates downward in any way that it can. Thus,
contrary to the torrent itself, it is in winter that the drainage-canals are at
their fullest. At Barriales (Mendoza), and on the lower course of the Zanjon
canal, thousands of acres, watered by the drainage-canals and exposed to
drought in the summer, have the right to take water from the river or the
canal during the three summer months, from November to January. During
the remainder of the year they are restricted to the use of the drainage-
canals. This sort of concession seems to provide a means of using the
surplus of the river during the summer.

With this exception there are no temporary rights limited to the high-
water season and enabling them to raise quick crops, that ripen in a few
months, round the area of perennials. At least, the expansion of the estates
and the wish to use the full water-supply have led to the creation of eventual
rights, besides the definitive rights. They do not come into play,
theoretically, until the definitive rights have had their full supply, and then
only in a fixed order. They are subordinated to the ordinary rights, and the
market value of land with eventual water-rights is much lower than that of
land with definitive rights.36 At San Rafaël, where colonization preceded
the systematic inventory of the natural resources, the concession of eventual
water-rights was a means of facilitating the development of estates; though

they were very badly informed as to the surplus of the Atuel and the
Diamante and the area that the new land might cover.

In practice, the co-existence of eventual and definitive rights presents
many difficulties, and more than one pretext for fraud. Sometimes the
owners of eventual rights have access to the river higher up than the older
intakes, which ought to be served first. A whole group of canals feeding
land with eventual rights is in this way grafted upon the Tunuyan above La
Paz, the rights of which are definitive and ancient.

At Mendoza and San Juan the water-rights, codified in provincial laws
which date, like the dams, from the end of the nineteenth century, are very
different from the water-rights which hold in the Andean provinces of the
north-west. The variety of the physical conditions is reflected in the
institutions. Here water is not an object of private ownership independently
of the soil. The concession of water is assigned to a definite estate, and it is
formulated in superficial measurements. The law fixes the volume of water
that goes with each unit of surface. If the output of the river is not large
enough to provide the volume stated in the law to the whole of the irrigated
district, all the lands with definitive rights receive at least an equal amount,
and the available water is shared by the canals in proportion to the extent of
the surface they irrigate.

No law could secure for the farmers of Cuyo, even those with definitive
rights, a constant supply of water, or save them from suffering in common
from the variation in the volume of the torrents, and it was not even
possible to guarantee them water in any permanent fashion. The turno is
used everywhere when the water is low. Lower down, where the drought
lasts nearly the whole year, the turno is the standing rule. At La Paz, on the
fringe of the irrigated area, it has to be applied rigorously. The turn of each
owner comes every eight, ten, or twelve days. In normal times he receives

the suerte de agua; that is to say, the output of a sluice of a fixed size during
a half-hour for each hectare (a little over two acres) of land. But if the river
runs low, it becomes impossible to supply several neighbours
simultaneously, and, in order to avoid making the interval between supplies
too long, the duration of the suerte de agua is reduced by half or three-
quarters.

The oases of Cuyo are like the small oases of the north-west as regards
the function of those who are engaged in the administration of irrigation.
The water-laws give the provincial functionaries general directions. Below
them, however, to arrange the distribution of the water and the upkeep of
the canals in detail, they have allowed to survive, and have merely
regulated, certain primitive democratic organisms. At San Juan the
superintendence of the irrigation is entrusted to elected municipal councils
and the governor of the department. At Mendoza, the owners appoint a
council of three delegates and an inspector for each canal, and these settle
the annual budget of the canal, submit it to the provincial authorities,
receive the taxes, carry out the necessary repairs, and so on. The great
subdivision of property and the large number of electors make these little
republics very lively; and they are very jealous of their autonomy.37

Even within the narrow limits of the Cuyo district the climatological
conditions, which control the growth of the vine, are not everywhere the
same. The opening of the vineyards varies by several weeks, according to
the locality.38 The northern slope of the cone, exposed to the sun and
protected from the southern winds, is more precocious. Some districts,
poorly sheltered from the southern winds, and very liable to have late frost,
have not been planted with vines (district of the Tucuyan below San Carlos,
to the south of Mendoza). Everywhere the dryness of the atmosphere causes
the ripe grapes to remain long on the vine, so that the harvest may last two
months or more without any harm. It thus requires a relatively small

supplement of manual labour, and does not necessitate seasonal migrations.
The length of the harvest, moreover, facilitates the trade in grapes, which is
one of the special features of the Argentine vine-industry.

The climate is not so suitable for making wine as it is for growing vines.
The temperature is high at the time of the harvest, and it retards
fermentation in the cellars. The grapes have too much sugar and too little
acid for the transformation of the must to proceed of itself. Hence it is
necessary to have an expensive equipment, improved cellars, and skilled
workers. This industrial organization is beyond the reach of the small
cultivators. The cultivation of the vine and the making of wine are,
therefore, not always associated. They are taken up by two different classes
of the population. Tucumán has its cañeros and factories, and Mendoza, by
a division of labour which seems to the European visitor as strange as the
climate which partly explains it, has its vine-growers (viñateros) and its
manufactures (bodegueros).39

Each of these two classes has had its share in the common work. The
viñatores have created the vineyard. The creole vine, imported into Peru
from the Canaries and spreading over the whole of the southern Andes,
yields great quantities of a sugary, but rough fruit, which does not lend itself
to imitating the wines of Europe. At Mendoza it has almost entirely
disappeared, though it survives at San Juan. It is grown on trellis-work,
wooden frames resting on forked branches of algarroba; though sometimes
the strong stems rise without support to a height of about six feet and are
crowned with shoots and leaves. The new vine has been grown from French
cuttings. While the creole vines look like orchards, the French vines are
grown in rows of iron wire.

The plantations were first made by creole workmen, who were paid by
the day. Afterwards, as immigration from Europe increased, long-term

contracts came into vogue, in virtue of which the colonist received the bare
land and undertook to have it planted with vines at the end of three, four, or
five years. The owner supplied the material, and at the end of the contract
the colonist received a few centavos for each vine, or sold the whole or part
of the first harvest. On account of these contracts there were always a great
many foreigners in the districts where vineyards were in course of
formation. The proportion is now less at Mendoza than at San Rafaël, where
colonization is more recent. Whenever they could, the owners left to the
colonists, not only the business of planting the vines, but the upkeep of
adult vineyards. In those cases the colonist receives a fixed sum per hectare
(100 piastres, for instance), and has to dig, prune, irrigate, etc. A large
number of these agricultural workers and small contractors have saved a
small capital, and purchased land of their own. This they have planted, and
they thus form a new class of working owners.

While the viñatores were multiplying vineyards, the bodegueros were
transforming the methods of making wine. The weakness of imperfectly
fermented wines, which turn sour and evaporate quickly, was all the worse
for the growers of the colonial period because transport was slow, and there
was no protection against the sun, which cooked the algarroba casks or the
leather bottles on the backs of the mules. The vineyard-owners often
preferred to distil their wine and export brandy, flavoured with aniseed, to
the Andean tablelands or the coast. The climate and the risks of transport
had brought into existence an astonishing variety of methods of treating the
must. Sometimes it was concentrated by boiling until it became a thick
syrup (arrope), something like, apparently, the thick wines of the
Mediterranean in former times. At other times the must was cooked without
thickening it, to prevent immediate fermentation, as is done with the chicha
in Chile to-day; or sour wines were mixed with boiled must and ashes of the
shoots, which masked the acidity.

These traditions are now lost, but it is curious to see the bodegueros still
endeavouring to meet the taste of the creole population of the north-west,
which has retained the preference for sweet and fruity wines. San Juan,
which caters to these customers, manufactures mistelas—fresh boiled must
with an addition of alcohol—which are mixed with mature wines in order
the imitate the imperfect fermentation of earlier days. Perhaps there is no
part of the world where the art of wine-making has been pushed so far as in
the bodegas of Mendoza. The correction of the must, and the analysis and
treatment of diseased wines, follow the most modern of methods. The
bodegas produce a very steady wine, which is guaranteed by their trade
marks. The wine of the Mendoza type, which they endeavour to produce, is
a strong red wine, of heavy colour, with twelve or thirteen per cent. of
alcohol. It may euphemistically be called a blended wine, but is in reality
diluted wine. Argentina does not produce very light wines, and has no use
for diluted wine.

The number of wine-making cellars in 1913 was 997 at Mendoza and
336 at San Juan. But they differ very much from each other in size. Most of
them have only a small equipment and modest capital. Some, on the other
hand, are large enterprizes which could produce enough to supply a city:
vast constructions of brick or adobe, with light roofs as a precaution against
earthquakes.

The owners of the cellars almost always have their own vineyards, but
they also buy the harvests of cultivators who have not cellars. In 1908 it
was calculated that 140,000 tons of grapes were sent to the press by the
owners and 175,000 tons bought by the bodegueros.40

The conflicts of the interests of the viñateros and the bodegueros are the
very woof of life at Mendoza. The price of grapes is infinitely more variable
than that of wine, and the viñatero who has no cellar is at the mercy of the

bodeguero. If he does not want to see his harvest go to waste, he has to
accept unconditionally the price that is offered him. The bodeguero has,
moreover, the advantage of disposing of the grapes grown on his own
estates. If the circumstances do not encourage him to produce all he can, he
sends to the press merely his own harvest and will not buy any other. Thus
the whole burden of commercial crises falls upon the vineyard with no
cellar.

The prices paid for the grapes differ a little for different parts of the
vineyard, but the variation is more due to the number of bodegas in the
district and their capacity than to the quality of the grapes. Transport of the
grapes to a great distance is very expensive. In exceptional times grapes
have been brought from San Rafaël to the Mendoza cellars, but each
bodega gets its supply as far as possible from its own district. At San Juan
the capacity of the cellars is proportionately less than at Mendoza, and the
bodegueros have imposed very hard conditions on the growers. The price
fixed in the purchase-contract does not of itself give a complete idea of the
benefits which the bodeguero enjoys. The grapes are purchased by weight,
but the bodeguero reserves the right to say at what date they are to be
delivered. He begins to harvest his own vines when the fruit is scarcely ripe,
but he puts back the harvesting of the grapes he buys as far as possible,
even to April or May. These grapes exposed on the plant to the heat of the
sun, become overripe; they gain in sugar and lose in weight. They make
wines with a higher percentage of alcohol, and with these he can correct the
lighter wines made during the preceding weeks. Finally, the bodeguero does
not advance money to the viñatero, as the manufacturer does to the cañero
in the sugar industry.

The only safeguard of the vine-growers is the lack of understanding
between the bodegueros and the competition between them. Although there
are conventions amongst the bodegueros which lay down officially, before

the vintage, the basis of all transactions, they are not respected except in so
far as they serve a man's interest. If it is expected that the wine will easily
be sold, and that grapes will be short, buyers are abundant, and contracts are
signed before the fruit appears. It is a sort of gamble, as in the case of wheat
and cotton. Bulls and bears struggle for the market. If the bulls win, the
viñateros grow rich.41

When we compare the diagrams which show the production of wine and
sugar in Argentina during the last thirty years, we see that they clearly
illustrate the condition of dependence of the vineyard industry and the sugar
industry as regards the home market. The prosperity of the region of the
Pampas, especially during the years before 1914, is reflected at Mendoza
and Tucumán. The expansive movement of the estates is similarly bound up
with the construction of railways to connect them with the coast. Industry,
on a large scale, began at Tucumán in 1876: that is to say, at the opening of
the Central Córdoba line. The area planted with cane rose from 2,200
hectares in 1876 to 14,800 in 1886. The production of sugar was trebled in
four years, from 1876 to 1880. But the Central Córdoba was a narrow-
gauge line, expensive to use and necessitating a transfer of goods at
Córdoba. In 1891 the broad-gauge line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was
extended to Tucumán; and in 1892 the narrow-gauge line from Rosario to
Santa Fé, San Cristobal, and Tucumán was also brought into use. The
following years were marked by rapid advances of the sugar industry. From
1891 to 1895 the area planted with canes rose from 14,200 to 40,700
hectares, and the manufacture of sugar from 31,000 to 135,000 tons. At
Mendoza, also, the development of the vineyards dates from the completion
of the San Luis Railway in 1885. Plantations were at once started, and three
years later they came into touch. In 1887, the railway carried 27,000
hectolitres of wine from Mendoza to the coast; in 1890-91 it carried

268,000 hectolitres. Production had increased tenfold in that short space of
time.

As the home-production of wine and sugar increased, the imports from
abroad fell. As early as 1885 Tucumán was able to meet the home demand
for raw sugar, and refined only was imported. In 1888, a refinery was
erected at Rosario to deal with Argentine sugar which came by rail, and
foreign sugar which came up the river. Import ceased at this date, or there
have since only been occasional years of import, to meet a scarcity. The
imports of ordinary foreign wines continued to increase until 1890 (800,000
hectolitres), or as long as the wine produced at Mendoza did not suffice to
meet the demand. They have steadily declined since that date (350,000
hectolitres in 1913), and are now only seven per cent. of the national
production. We should add that, even in regard to ordinary wines, the
Mendoza and the imported wine are not strictly comparable, that the
competition between them is not simply a matter of price, and that some
customers continue to prefer foreign wine.

The elimination of
foreign wines and sugar
and the development of
Mendoza and Tucumán
were facilitated by a
Protectionist tariff. The
details of this are very
curious, as they had to be A VINEYARD AT SAN
adjusted to the natural JUAN.
conditions. The need of
protection is chiefly due to Trellissed creole vines.
the distance of the market Photograph by Boote, Buenos Aires.

from the productive

centres. Mendoza is 650 Click to view
miles from Buenos Aires,
Tucumán more than 750 larger image.
miles. Freightage on the
railways is dear. It is
thirty-five piastres a ton
for wine between Mendoza
and Buenos Aires, or
nearly double the normal
maritime freight for the
European wines sent from
Bordeaux or Genoa. The
charge for sugar is about
thirty piastres a ton A VINEYARD AT
between Tucumán and MENDOZA.
Buenos Aires. Thus the
cost of transport is nearly French vines on wire. An irrigation-trench
one sixth the entire cost of along the path. In the foreground (left) a
production. In spite of this wine-cellar (bodega).
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados, Buenos
common burden, the need
Aires.
of protection is not at all
the same in Mendoza and Plate VIII.
Tucumán. The climate of
Mendoza is excellent for Click to view
the vine. The dryness of
larger image.
the atmosphere keeps
down cryptogamic
diseases, and the risks of cultivation are slight. The crop is abundant, the
frosts late, and not serious. Hail is frequent, it is true, at the mouths of the
Cordillera valleys, but it is never general; it affects only a small part of the

harvest. The curve of production is very regular. It rises every year very
gradually, and in proportion to the increase of the cultivated area. As a
result of all this, the wine market has a stability which the vine-growing
countries of Europe, with their less reliable climate, do not enjoy. The
protective tariff, therefore, remains fixed. The duty on foreign wines in the
cask—eight centimes (gold) per litre—has not been altered since the
introduction into Argentina of the wine-industry on a large scale.42

The curve of sugar-production is just as irregular as that of wine-
production is regular. From one year to another the output may vary by as
much as 100 per cent., and the changes cannot be predicted: 147,000 tons in
1912, 335,000 tons in 1914, 150,000 tons in 1915. The reason is that the
sugar output depends upon the season. Canes which have been touched by
frost go sour and ferment in the ground. They have to be milled quickly, and
the harvest must not be prolonged. Even in good years the costly equipment
of the works is active during only three months (July to September, but at
Jujuy, July to October).

This irregularity of production, which makes protection inevitable, also
complicates it infinitely in practice. Sometimes the harvest is not large
enough to meet home demands, and imports have to be permitted.
Sometimes production is far beyond the home demand, and the sugar-
manufacturers have to export the surplus so as to prevent a slump in prices
on the overloaded home market. In order to meet these very different
situations, the protecting tariff has had to be repeatedly modified and
complicated. But it is impossible for us to give the history of it in detail
here. The duties on foreign sugar were fixed, in successive instalments,
between 1883 and 1891; and special protective measures were taken in the
interest of the refiners in 1888. Over-production appeared for the first time
in 1895. Export at a loss, to relieve the home market, was at first organized
by an association of the producers themselves (in 1896). But in 1897 the

Government developed it by putting a premium on export. The export
period lasted from 1897 to 1904. The law of 1912, which gives its latest
form to the Protectionist regime, gives the Government the right to suspend
for a time the duties on imports and allow foreign sugar to come in. As at
Mendoza, the provincial Government intervenes as well as the national. The
alternation of bad and exceptionally good harvests leads to the appearance
of all sorts of unforeseen laws, modifying the bases of taxation, regulating
production in the works, and restricting the acreage of cultivation.43 Thus
Tucumán has lived in an atmosphere of storm and uncertainty and
unceasing discussion, of discouragement and insecurity; the price of its
geographical position at the extreme limit of the area in which cane can be
grown.

CHAPTER IV
THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

Manual labour on the obrajes—The land of the bañados and the
agricultural cantons of Corrientes—The timber-yards of the
Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Paraná—The
exploitation of the maté—The forestry industry and
colonization.

From the Andes of Tucumán and Salta to the banks of the upper Paraná
in the province of Misiones the north of Argentina is now a vast timber-yard
for the exploitation of the forests. It resounds everywhere with the axe. This
exploitation of the forest is of early origin on the river; in the eighteenth
century Buenos Aires was supplied with wood from the Paraná. In the
western Chaco the difficulty of transport by land retarded the development
of the forestry industry. The only market for the timber of Tucumán was the
Andean region. It was not sent to Mendoza after the beginning of the
nineteenth century, when the willow was acclimatized in the oases of Cuyo.
Below Rosas the wood of the quebracho was at first taken in waggons from
Santiago to Buenos Aires, but this traffic ceased when the river-route was
reopened, and we do not find it resumed until recent times, when railways
were constructed.

The outer fringe of the forest and the scrub where the industry has had to
find labour, is inhabited by a very sparse pastoral population. There are,
however, besides the thinly populated districts of the farms, certain busy
hives which lend animation to the scrub. These over-populated cantons are
districts of cultivation by bañados, or the cultivation of flood-lands. There
is constant intercourse between these ancient centres of creole life and the
timber-yards of the forest. The forestry industry recruits its workers there,
on temporary contracts. The wages paid are brought back to these centres
and spent there. They help to maintain social groups of an archaic type,
which the meagreness of their production would otherwise doom to
extinction.

The bañados are scattered over the range of all the sierras within the
limits reached by the torrents from the mountains before they are lost. They
also stretch along the two rivers that are considerable enough to cross the
scrub, the Salado and the Dulce. The course of the Bermejo, where the
natural conditions are much the same, lies outside the sphere of primitive
creole colonization. The tilled lands are not continuous on the Salado or the
Dulce. There are no bañados wherever the bed of the river is enclosed by
high banks which prevent flooding. The course of the Salado threads
together, in the manner of a rosary, three main groups of bañados below 26°
S. lat., (Matoque and Boqueron) between 27° and 28° S. lat. (Brea), and
between 28° and 29° S. lat. (Le Bracho and Navicha). But the classic
country of the bañados, where they cover the widest extent and sustain the
most considerable body of population, is the interior delta of the Rio Dulce
below Santiago del Estero, in the departments of Loreto, Atamisqui, and
Salavina.

Santiago is situated almost at the top of it. In its upper part the Rio Dulce
is enclosed between high clay cliffs (department of the Rio Hondo). Below
Santiago the river seems to run to the top of a sort of flattened alluvial cone,

over which it wanders. Instances of the migration of rivers during the
historical period are plentiful in the north of the Argentine plain. The scrub
is scored east of the Salado with a network of dry beds, the edges of which
gradually disappear as the vegetation extends over them. But there is no
other part where the erratic nature of the waters is so marked, the
vagabondage so considerable, as in this section of the basin of the Rio
Dulce. The small towns of Atamisqui and Salavina, which lived on the
waters of the Dulce, were suddenly ruined in 1825, when the river, in
consequence of a particularly violent flood, turned away to the south and
lost itself in the Salinas Grandes. A canal was dug in 1897 to irrigate the
district of Loreto, on the left bank of the Dulce, but the entrance was badly
protected, and the flood of 1901 swept into it, and, guided by it, reached the
bed it had abandoned a century before, going south-eastward toward
Atamisqui. That town and Salavina recovered their prosperity, while it was
necessary to abandon the farms on the Rio des Salines, which now has
water only during high floods. Actual beds, old beds that are always ready
to serve again, and traces of canals changed and cut by the stream, form a
great network in the midst of the plain; and the flood rolls to one side or the
other according to the road open to it, and the facility with which the
various elements of the network lend themselves to the passage of the
water. Such is the land of the bañados.

You enter it to-day at Loreto station, where the line from Santiago to
Frias approaches within a few miles of it. This station is erected in the midst
of the arid monte, and owes its existence to the neighbouring bañados.
Turning eastward from the railway, as soon as one has crossed the broad,
sandy bed of the Rio des Salines, one finds oneself in the heart of the
bañados farms. The road passes between hedges (cercas), over the top of
which one sees the green of the wheat and lucerne. The plots are very small:
gardens rather than fields. In clearing the ground they have preserved the

best-situated trees, and the light foliage gives a useful shade to the crops.
The crown of the algarrobas rises everywhere above the top of the hedges.

The fields do not cover the whole area of the annual inundations. They
are confined to the part where the flood is fertilizing; where it leaves behind
it a fine, useful clay which keeps the store of moisture for several months.
In other places the current is too rapid. It furrows the soil, leaves large holes
in it like the lônes in the flood-area of the Rhone, and sweeps away the
barriers; or the water brings sterile sand which it deposits in long stretches;
or again, if it is not drained away in time and evaporates on the spot, it
deposits the salts it contains, and the land, looking as if it had a white
leprosy, becomes unfit for vegetation.

The floods begin in summer, during November or December. They are
caused by the rain-storms in the Tucumán district, and are very irregular.
Some of the houses are evacuated, and others are protected by walls of
earth, which are raised from hour to hour according to the rise of the waters.
Behind these walls the people await the abatement of the flood. When the
mud which is left behind has the proper consistency, they till it and sow
wheat. The wheat grows in the winter, and is harvested in November
quickly, so that the fresh flood may not overtake it.

The caprices of the flood compel them frequently to change the sites of
their houses and fields. The ancient village of Loreto was evacuated after a
flood, and is now merely a mass of deserted ruins. Round the naked trunks
of the algarrobas, killed by excessive deposits of sand or salt, are uniform
colonies of plants of the same age and the same species, which invade the
area where the adult scrub has been destroyed. The mill has been rebuilt
less than a mile away, and has not lost its customers, who have raised their
ranchos some distance away. The insecurity of the plots has prevented the

development of small ownership. The farmers are tenants of the ranches,
which stretch from the river to a considerable distance in the interior.

The use of bañados for agriculture is of long standing. It probably goes
back to the pre-Columbian period. Father Dobritzhoffer, who is the first to
refer clearly to it, compares the Rio Dulce to the Nile44; and in point of fact,
the bañados have some resemblance to farming in Pharaonic Egypt, while
there is nothing like them in the irrigated zones of the Andean valleys. The
bañados were then devoted to the cultivation of wheat and pumpkins. The
pumpkin, which is of American origin, had not yet been eliminated by
wheat, which was introduced by the Spaniards. The wheat produced in the
bañados maintained a fairly active export trade at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and the bañados were at times called, with some
exaggeration, the "granary of the Vice-royalty." It is difficult to trace
accurately the movements of the population of the bañados because of the
constant changes of the administrative areas in the province of Santiago.
The total population of the province is not now more than three per cent. of
the total population of Argentina, but its comparative importance was much
greater in the middle of the nineteenth century (nearly eight per cent. at the
census of 1861). The departments of Loreto, Atamisqui, and Salavina on the
Rio Dulce, which live mainly on the estates of the bañados, comprised
46,000 inhabitants in 1861, and only 43,000 in 1895. The Woodbine Parish
map and Hutchinson's description clearly give one an impression of a dense
population in the area of the bañados. I refer elsewhere to the antiquity and
constancy of the streams of temporary immigration which spread the
population of the bañados over a large part of the territory of Argentina.45
The temporary emigration of the Santiagueños is distributed amongst most
of the provinces of central and northern Argentina, but it is chiefly of
interest in connection with the frontier region. The Santiagueño is a
woodman above all else, and the forest area has the advantage over the

other labour-markets of wanting workers at all seasons, summer or winter,
whereas the sugar-cane harvest at Tucumán and the harvest in the south
only last a few months. They emigrate from the bañados to Tucumán in
May; to Córdoba and Santa Fé in October, November and December; but to
the forests of the Chaco all the year round.

Apart from the bañados
of the Dulce and the
Salado, the province of
Corrientes contains the
main reservoir from which
the timber industry drew
its manual workers. Just as
at Santiago del Estero, one
finds at Corrientes also the THE LAND OF THE
opposition between BAÑADOS.
agricultural and breeding
districts which is so On the Rio Dulce, near Loreto, in the dry
common in the older season. Its actual bed, excavated at a recent
date by a flood in soft clay, is not yet stable.
colonized regions of South
Photograph by the Author.
America. The estancieros
(ranchers), who are
Click to view
breeders, are the masters
of Corrientes, but the line larger image.
of low hills of sand and red
clay, punctuated by
lagoons, which crosses the
north-western corner of the
province, is not subject to
their domination. There the
land is subdivided; there

are once more fields.
Tobacco was an article of
export for this fraction of
Corrientes, especially after
the political isolation of
Paraguay, the chief
producer of tobacco in the
nineteenth century. During
the whole of the first half LORETO: FARMING BY
of the nineteenth century INUNDATION.
the tobacco-buyers
In the zone of the scrub, where the floods of
travelled all over
the Rio Dulce spread. The interior delta of
Corrientes after the
the Rio Dulce is one of the earliest centres of
harvest, in January and
population in Argentina.
February. The fertile soil,
Photograph by the Author.
moreover, with a mild
climate in which tropical
Plate IX.
plants flourish as well as
those of the temperate Click to view
zone, provides the
elements of a local comfort
larger image.
which is complete in itself.
Here again agricultural colonization has created a relatively dense nucleus
of population, capable of great increase. Although the administrative
divisions do not exactly correspond with the natural divisions, the unequal
distribution of the population in Corrientes is made plain by the figures
given in the census of 1895. The density rises in the agricultural areas to
eight inhabitants per square kilometre, in the department of Bellavista; ten
at San Cosma; fourteen at Lomas; thirty at San Roque. It is only between
one and two in the purely pastoral departments (Concepción and Mercedes).

Corrientes also has its forests, and in these we find most of the species of
the forests of the Chaco, in straight lines, along the water-courses, and in
somewhat larger patches on the tablelands which separate the lower valleys
near the Paraná. They at first supplied the Curupai bark which was used in
the Corrientes tanneries. The yards for the construction of river-boats
emigrated from Paraguay to Corrientes at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, at the same time and for the same reasons as the tobacco trade. The
exploiting of the red quebracho did not begin until about 1850. In 1887
Virasaro relates that fifty ships are engaged in loading with Nandubai
timber on the banks of the Rio Corrientes and transporting it to Rosario.46
Born on the left bank of the Paraná, the forestry industry emigrated toward
the end of the century to the right bank, whither the workers of Corrientes
followed it.

We find the same movement further north, on the Paraguay. The
exploitation of the woods is in that case a very old industry on the
tributaries of the left bank. D'Azara draws attention to its importance.47
Robertson found, when he went from Corrientes to Asunción in 1814, a
population of wood-cutters in the marshy belt near the river. During floods
they took refuge in the agricultural cantons of the frontier on high ground,
where they were well received. It seems, then, that wood-cutting was
already a seasonal industry at this time. The exploitation of the forests is
now rapidly invading the right bank, which was long abandoned to the wild
Indians.

The Santiagueños and Correntinos do not mix. The two zones of
expansion and of forestry, of which they are the pioneers, are independent
of each other. The quechua, which is the language of the bañados of the Rio
Dulce, is spoken in the timber-yards of the Chaco de Santiago; the guarani,
the language of Corrientes and the Paraguay, is most common along the

river, in the Chaco de Santa Fé. Their respective spheres will not come into
touch with each other until the Quimili branch of the Central Norte
Railway, which comes from the Santiago province, joins the line of
penetration at Resistencia, on the Paraná, in the west.

The forestry industry of the interior and that of the river-districts differ
not only in the character of the workers, but in their organization and their
market. The variety of red quebracho which is exploited in the west is not
quite the same as the variety that is found in the east. Each has a name of its
own—quebracho santiagueño and quebracho chaqueño. The former
contains ten per cent. of tannin, the latter thirty per cent. The former is cut
down for timber, the latter in order to extract the tannic acid. The one is sold
in Argentina, and the other sent abroad.

The working of the timber at Santiago has remained in the hands of a
number of small capitalists and contractors who do not own the land and do
not work there. They are content to buy in small amounts and according to
the demand at the moment, the right to exploit the forests (derecho de
monte or derecho de leña). The trunks of exceptionally large quebracho
provide logs that are sold by cubic measurement, but the district of the
quebracho santiagueño mainly exports sleepers. Quebracho sleepers have
been used in constructing the railways, both narrow and broad gauge,
during the last twenty years on the Pampa. Tall and thin trees make
telegraph posts; the smaller branches make stakes for wire fences. In parts
of the bush where there is no red quebracho, the retamo is used, to make
posts for enclosures, and also the white quebracho, which is sold in round
logs. Finally, the forests provide wood for fuel. The works at Tucumán, and
the locomotives over a good part of the land, use wood-fuel. The wood of
the red quebracho, if left for some years in the yards where the sleepers are
made and is rid of the sap-wood, which rots and falls out—the leña
campana—is excellent fuel. Charcoal is cheaper to transport than the wood,

and can therefore be sent farther over the whole prairie district. It is made in
the monte, along all the railways, and especially in the thinner forests on the
edge of the prairie.

The forestry of the interior is unstable as well as scattered and primitive.
The equipment—saws that are easily taken down and set up—is not costly,
and does not require much capital. When one canton of the forest has been
exhausted, the saws are taken down and removed. The cuttings are not
made in such a way as to allow the forest to recover, and so permit a
continuous exploitation. Everything of any value is taken. The quebracho
is, moreover, a tree of slow growth. The forestry industry has at times
returned, after an interval, to land that had been stripped, but that is not
because they had planted a new generation of trees. It is because it became
profitable, as the state of the market and the cost of transport changed, to
cut down the small trees which had not been considered good enough on the
earlier occasion.

When the master obrajero removes, he is followed by the greater part of
the workers. But to induce them to emigrate, or to recruit cutters in the
bañados who will agree to work in remote or new districts, he has to be
liberal and offer higher wages. Hence the conditions of work and the rate of
wage are not the same in every part of the forest. The oldest area of
working, which is crossed by the Central Córdoba, between the provinces
of Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, has a surplus of good workers. On
the other hand, the obrajeros of the valley from San Francisco to Jujuy,
where the exploitation is more recent, have only a moderate amount of
labour at their command. The returns are not higher there than in the south,
though the forests are incomparably denser and richer. It has been very
expensive to bring about a continuous stream of immigration toward the
main region of forest work, which is now called the Chaco, along the
railway that starts from Añatuya and goes about 130 miles further north. As

the worker is on piece-work, the price per sleeper when the work was begun
on the Chaco had to be double, on the Añatuya line, what was paid in the
older line from Santiago to Frias, close to the bañados.

The work is profitable only within a short distance from the railways.
Waggon transport raises the price rapidly. Moreover, the forestry industry is
just as dependent on the railways for provisions as it is for the carriage of its
wood. The obraje has no source of food-supply on the spot. The marshy
estates which begin to spread in the area of irrigation-canals at Banda,
eastward of Santiago del Estero, supply only their customers at Añatuya and
the Chaco line. Sometimes the railway has to bring water as well as food.
Over a great part of the Chaco de Santiago there is no running water, and
the underground sheets are little known, or inaccessible, or salty. The obraje
is a land of thirst. In order to meet the demand for water they dig reservoirs
like the represas on the ranches, which are filled by the rains. But as soon
as the dry season sets in they become stagnant green pools, and the men
have to rely on waggon-cisterns.

While the Chaco de Santiago is now a democracy of small obrajeros and
contractors, the eastern Chaco, along the Paraná, has quite a different type
of society. It is entirely in the hands of the big tannic-acid factories, where
the quebracho trunks are stripped and boiled, and their sap is concentrated
in a viscous resin. The lofty chimneys of these works rise above the forest
at intervals. Here the work assumes a capitalistic and industrial character
which it has not in other places. It is controlled by powerful concerns,
highly organized, which conduct it on a pre-arranged plan. It is true that the
works do not deal with the entire output of quebracho,48 but they almost
control the market, even as regards the unworked wood which is exported,
and they reserve a good deal of it for their branches in Europe. In order to
secure the heavy loans which the works represent, the companies that have
built them have been obliged to take over large forests, and they have come

to own these. The concentration of the area in their hands goes on daily, and
the number of companies is reduced by amalgamation or by the purchase of
rival concerns and their estates. On the territory of the Chaco, where the
administration of public lands was in the hands of the Federal Government,
some precautions were taken to prevent the monopoly of the country; but
the forests of the province of Santa Fé belong entirely to two firms.

The eastern Chaco has received from Europe, not only the capital that
was needed for the construction of works, but also a number of workers,
either for administration or for technical direction. These have proved more
exacting than the creoles of the Santiago saw-mills. Beside most of the
works there are now comfortable villas and brick towns for the workers.
The expense was quite prudently incurred, as the industry is less erratic in
this region. A tannic-acid factory cannot be removed like a saw-mill. When
the timber-supply is exhausted in the district, the works gets its material
from a distance, as long as the freightage permits. It depends on the railway,
not only for the carriage of its products, as the saw-mills do, but for the
supply of raw material.

The works are not all equally wealthy. They are scattered over about ten
degrees of latitude, north of 30° S. lat., within reach of the river, which
keeps them in communication with the world, and at the same time has
enabled them to tackle the full breadth of the forest. The quebracho is
particularly abundant north of Santa Fé and south of the Argentine part of
the Chaco, where it is the life and soul of the forest. The works which have
been set up there, in the midst of the denser forests, have plenty of capital,
and this enables them to nurse their supplies and buy timber at a distance.
The forest is still almost virginal at their gates, so that they have a long
future in front of them. On the other hand, the oldest works, on the southern
fringe of the forest, and that of Corrientes, on the left bank of the Paraná,
are already paralysed for want of timber.

The works are all at a short distance from the river; not only for
convenience of exporting their products, but because this is the only part of
the Chaco where one can find fresh water. And the tannic-acid factory needs
a great deal of fresh water. Along the river, in a belt about thirty to sixty
miles wide, we find a permanent hydrographic network such as is found
nowhere else on the plain. It consists of long series of marshes covered with
rushes (cañadas), and in places they become at their mouths regular streams
with well defined beds. The underground water also is generally fresh and
plentiful, whether it is due to the abundant rain or to infiltration from the
Paraná, and many of the works have successfully bored for it. In these parts
one suffers from too much water as frequently as from thirst. On these
immense and almost horizontal surfaces the water spreads from the cañadas
over the whole forest. The railway, and even the houses, then stand out of a
sheet of stagnant water, which takes months to disappear. Trunks which are
badly placed, lying in the stations to be removed—sometimes, according to
the market, lying there for years—are half buried in the mud. The waggons
find it hard to move in the roads. Mules, which pay very well in the dry
forests of the west, could not make the effort that is required here, and they
use oxen—the finest beasts for a muddy country. The long-horned, lean
creole cattle drag the waggons with difficulty, and a correntino, with long
slender legs, shod with mud, guides and urges them, looking like a crane
with his slow and cautious steps. The work of these drivers is much harder
than that of the wood-cutters. They earn nearly twice as much, and it is the
difficulty of getting enough men for this work that keeps down production.

The importance and stability of the large works has fixed the labour
market on the right bank of the Paraná, and there is no need to go to
Corrientes to look for men. They come of their own accord. A daily service
of small steamers brings them to all the ports which dispatch quebracho.
The left bank, on Argentine territory, has also no hiring centre, such as there
still are at Asunción and Concepción in Paraguay.

Even on its own land the works leaves the working of the forest to
contractors, from whom it buys the timber. But the obrajeros, whether they
work in the company's forests or their own, are very dependent upon the
works. The contracts vary according as they are owners or otherwise;
according to whether they undertake to deliver the timber at the stations or
leave it where it is felled; and according to whether they have the requisite
oxen and waggons or have to loan these from the company. They draw
advances from the company, and, on the other hand, they pledge themselves
to purchase what they require for their workers at the company's stores. The
profit of these sales increases the revenue of the works. The company
monopolizes all trade, both import and export. It exercises an absolute
sovereignty over the forest. It has merely deigned to grant the railway
company space enough to construct its lines and its stations.

The last forestry centre in modern Argentina is in the province of
Misiones on the upper Paraná. Posadas is its chief station, and protects its
southern outlet. Its influence extends beyond the Argentine frontier, over a
small part of Brazil and Paraguay. In Misiones there are two types of forest,
which differ a good deal from each other, while neither resembles the
quebracho forest. One is the forest of araucarias (pinos) which covers the
elevated tablelands at a height above 2,000 feet. The other is the tropical
forest, rich in essences and of perennial vegetation, which fills the bottoms
and slopes of the valleys. The pine, which is also much worked on the
Brazilian tableland, yields an excellent white wood, suitable instead of the
northern pine. It would find a ready market at Buenos Aires, but it has never
been worked on Argentine territory because of the great distance of the
woods from a navigable river. On account of its position on the tableland
the araucaria has to wait for the railways of some future date.49 As to the
leafy tropical forest it includes a number of useful varieties (timbo, lapacho,
etc.), but the most esteemed of all is the cedar. Its wood is rose-coloured,

scented, and fine-grained, and very suitable for furniture. At the time of
D'Orbigny's travels the inhabitants of Corrientes were looking out for
cedars from the mountains brought down the river when in flood. The
obrajes of cedar-wood now extend twenty miles or so on the Argentine
bank, and forty miles in the Paraguay bank, which is more even and better
for transport. The trunks are floated in rafts down to Posadas; as the cedar,
which is less dense than the quebracho, not only floats, but is improved by
parting with sap in the water. At Posadas the rafts are taken to pieces, and
the trunks are delivered to the saw-mills.

But timber is not the chief forest industry in Misiones, as it is on the
Chaco. Beside the obraje in the forest there is the yerbal, a works for
dealing with the maté (Ilex paraguayensis). It is well known that an
infusion of maté (a kind of tea) is an important element in the food of the
western States of South America. Gathering the leaves of the maté has been
a profitable occupation for centuries: a unique instance, perhaps, in the
forest industries of South America. It has never been interrupted, though it
has often changed its locality.

The plantations made by the Jesuits were abandoned when the
missionaries were dispersed. After the close of the eighteenth century
Paraguay became the chief area of production. Villa Rica seems to have
been the most prolific centre of the yerba. After that date, however, the
Jujuy basin, further north, was exploited, and the yerbateros, who came
from Curuguati, advanced eastward as far as the Falls of the Guayra on the
Paraná. In the nineteenth century the trade in Paraguay maté seems to have
suffered less than the tobacco trade from the policy of isolation adopted by
the Dictators of Paraguay. The descriptions given by Mariano Molas,
Demersay, and others, show that the business continued fairly actively. It
even extended northward, and reached as far as the Rio Apa. Villa
Concepción became a rival yerba market to Villa Rica. The monopoly

exercised by the Paraguay Government, however, and the restrictions put
upon the navigation of the river, led to the development of the yerba
industry in the eastern Misiones on the left bank of the Uruguay. Itaquy
served as port of embarkation. In the last third of the nineteenth century the
yards moved from the left to the right bank of the Uruguay. Since 1870 the
Paraná has supplanted the Uruguay, and the yerba trade has concentrated at
Candelaria. This meant the resurrection of Misiones. In 1880 San Javier, on
the Uruguay, worked up 800 tons of yerba, and Candelaria more than 1,000
tons. The yerbales round San Javier began to run out, and the yerbateros
had to go further and further up the Uruguay, toward the yerbales of the
tableland of Fracan and San Pedro. Candelaria was mainly fed by the
yerbales of the right bank of the Paraná, on Paraguayan territory. Posadas
has now succeeded Candelaria, and the yerbales that depend upon it are
scattered over both banks up the Paraná.

The yerbales of Misiones lie outside the tropical forest proper. They are
on the lower fringe of the pine-forest, and begin at some distance from the
river, with which they are connected by muddy and difficult mule-tracks.
Maté can bear a cost of transport that would be fatal to timber. At the point
where these tracks reach the river, the river-steamers stop at the foot of a
shed that is almost hidden in the foliage. These are the "ladders" of the
yerbales.

Work in the yerbales lasts six months out of the twelve. The pruners who
collect the bunches of leaves and bring them to the furnaces, where they are
dried, include Brazilians, Paraguayans and Argentinians. The Brazilians go
to the yerbal to offer their services. The Paraguayans and Argentinians,
nearly all from the province of Corrientes, are recruited at Posadas and the
sister-town of Encarnación, which is opposite to it on the Paraguay bank.

The hiring at Posadas is done according to a traditional custom that does
not seem to have changed for more than a century. The description given by
D'Azara is not yet out of date. "The people of Villa Rica," he says, "depend
mainly on being hired for the yerbales. The yerba industry is sometimes
profitable to the masters, but never to the natives, who work cruelly without
any profit. Not only are they paid in goods for the yerba they gather, but the
goods are put at so high a price that it is terrible. They have even to pay for
the hire of a bill for cutting the maté.... The natives contract as much debt as
they can before they start for the yerbales, and as soon as they have done a
little work, they say good-bye to the yerbatero, who loses his money. And
the yerbatero in turn is exploited by the merchants who control him."
Before he starts for the yerbal, says Robertson, the contractor (habilitado)
gets an advance of four or five thousand piastres. With this he hires about
fifty workers, supplies their needs, and gives them two or three months' pay
in advance. The three essential and inseparable elements of the maté
business are the yerbal in the forest, a shop at Posadas for hiring and paying
wages in advance, and a yerba mill at Rosario or Buenos Aires.

The forestry industry in its various forms is not a definite occupation of
the soil by man. After having stripped the forest, it leaves, and the land is
open for colonization. Nearly everywhere there is a complete separation
between forestry and permanent colonization. They do not employ the same
workers; the wood-cutter (hachador) and the charcoal-burner are not the
men who clear the soil. The clearing away of the stumps, which must
precede agricultural work, is not their business, but the work of diggers. At
Tucumán, where most of the workers in the cane-fields are Santiagueños,
Italians and Spaniards are used for clearing the soil. The gangs of
Mendocinos who go to cut crops in the bush round Villa Mercedes will not
sign on for clearing the ground in order to plant lucerne.

The history of forestry
and colonization is one of
the most diversified
chapters in the general
economic history of
modern Argentina. Round
the region of the Pampas,
the first point where
agricultural colonization LORETO. THE RIO PINTO
came into touch with the IN THE DRY SEASON.
forest belt is the district of
One of the arms through which the flood of
the older colonies of Santa
Fé. There it found the the Dulce flows.
Photograph by the Author.
forestry industry already
long established, on the
Click to view
banks both of the Salado
and of the Paraná. The larger image.
export of timber and
charcoal to Buenos Aires
and the lime-kilns of Entre
Rios was at this time one
of the few elements of
economic life which Santa
Fé had preserved. The
colonists did not enter the
forest, and did not mingle
with the charcoal-burners,
but they profited indirectly
LA BANDA (SANTIAGO
from their presence by DEL ESTERO).
selling them maize. Later,

agricultural work spread Irrigated lucerne fields on the left bank of the
over the Central Pampa Rio Dulce. Zone of modern colonization: a
and the province of contrast with the older farms of the flood-
Córdoba, as far as the edge zone.
of the scrub in all parts of Photograph by the Author.
the prairie. Wood-cutting is
carried on there, on a small Plate X.
scale, everywhere, at Toay
as well as at Villa
Click to view
Mercedes and Villa Maria. larger image.
The price of the wood he
sells is a small supplementary income to the farmer, and clearing the soil
helps to fill up his time during the dead season for agriculture. The lands
covered with brushwood remained for a long time at a lower price than
cleared land. They thus formed a sort of reserve which partly escaped the
speculations in land, and on which small owners can find a footing more
easily than on the Pampa. There is to-day a movement of Santa Fecinos
eastward and southward in the belt of scrub to the south of Mar Chiquita
along the line from Lehmann to Dean Funes.

The forest area of the Chaco, in northern Argentina, between the Andes
and the Paraná, seems on the other hand to be intended for pastoral
colonization. In point of fact, the forest of the Chaco, as well as the lighter
scrub which is its southern extension, can be used for breeding without
preliminary labour. The Indians have fed cattle and horses on it since the
seventeenth century. The herds find food on every side, both in the very
numerous clearings (abras) which cross the forest and in the forest itself,
where the underwood and the herbaceous carpet grow fairly thick beneath
the scanty foliage of the mimosas and quebrachos.

Over a good deal of the western Chaco pastoral colonization is earlier
than the forestry. In the district of Santiago del Estero the farmers had
advanced far beyond the wood-cutter and the railway; beyond the Salado,
almost as far as the existing line from Añatuya to Tintina, where there are
sheets and wells of fresh water. The old ranches go as far as Alhuampa. The
old pastoral population has taken very little part in the forestry industry. It
has been content to profit by it by renting the scrub to the obrajes. It was a
sheer gift to them, as the felling of a few trees does not in the least lower
the value of the pasture. The forestry has not entailed any change in the
ownership of the land or in the breeding methods. The obrajes are merely
passing guests whose traces are quickly obliterated.

In the eastern Chaco, however, the wood-cutters are real pioneers. It is
they who have made the conquest of the forest, often in direct touch with
the Indians, and the ownership of the land fell to them. They have
themselves played an essential part in the actual development of breeding.

Leaving the river and travelling toward the forest on the west, one first
crosses a narrow belt of estates which form an almost unbroken line from
San Javier to Resistencia. These are old colonies, mostly founded about
1870, at the same time as the first colonies in the centre of Santa Fé. They
had the advantage of being within reach of the river-route, the network of
railways that serves the colonies of Santa Fé not being constructed until
after 1880. They have not shown the same capacity for extension as the
colonies on the prairie, but they are firmly rooted, on high and well-drained
land, very different from the clays of the Chaco, where the alluvial beds of
the Paraná alternate with stuff that seems to come from the left bank. They
grow flax, earth-nuts, sugar cane, and cotton. Behind this slight agricultural
façade are the large estates of the factories. In the division of the land the
industrial firms sought the districts which were richest in quebracho.
Buyers of land who had no industrial plans—foreign capitalists and

Porteños—and who obtained large concessions in little-known regions, sold
back to the factories the plots where there was plenty of wood, after they
had taken stock of their property. They converted the remainder into
estancias (ranches). The district to the north of the Central Norte Railway,
from San Cristobal to Tostado, where the forest, which will presently yield
to the plain, breaks into patches and looks like a park, includes a number of
these modern estancias, in which lucerne is beginning to replace the grasses
of the natural vegetation.

When one passes to the
interior, the pastoral
industry at once assumes a
more primitive character.
The quebracho concerns
themselves go in for
breeding, in order to make
use of their large estates,
Click to view
when the timber has been larger image.
removed but the works
have not yet been set up.
They need a large number
of cattle, both for moving
the timber and feeding
their workers, and they
endeavour to meet their
needs themselves. In this
district the forest is
capable of feeding a far
heavier herd than is the QUEBRACHO TRUNKS
more arid scrub of the LYING AT THE STATIONS.
eastern Chaco. There are

often a thousand head of Eastern Chaco, on the Resistencia line
cattle to 2,500 hectares. To (Santa Fé province). Here the quebracho is
the north and west of that exploited for tannic acid, not sleepers.
part of the forest where the Photographs by the Author.
big companies have taken
over the whole of the land, Plate XI.
in the province of Chaco, a
fairly large number of
Click to view
estates has been created. larger image.
Further still, on either side
of the Bermejo, cattle from Corrientes and the Paraguay have been put on
the public lands by men with no rights. As their future is uncertain, they
cannot do any expensive work, such as making wells, reservoirs, and
enclosures. Sometimes they are compelled by drought to fall back upon the
river.

Conditions are quite different in the forests of Misiones. The damp forest
of Misiones does not lend itself to breeding. While the forest-workers on
the west of the Paraná eat fresh meat, thanks to the proximity of the
breeders, in the yerbales and obrajes of Misiones, the use of dried or
"jerked" meat (carne seca), which is brought some distance, has remained
the common practice, as it is in most parts of tropical America. On the other
hand, there is now developing in Misiones an agricultural colonization of an
original kind, quite distinct from the ordinary Argentinian type. This is
because Misiones is a province apart in Argentina. It really belongs, by its
geological structure and its climate, to the Brazilian tableland. The colonies
in Misiones are merely an extension into Argentine territory of the great belt
of colonies of southern Brazil, which stretches from the neighbourhood of
Santa Catalina and the Rio Grande do Sul to the River Paraguay. The
Brazilian type of colonization is based upon work with the hoe, in clearings
that have been made in the forest by the axe and by fire. Ordinary farming

would be impracticable between the large stumps which the clearers have to
leave in the ground, to rot there slowly. It would, moreover, be useless, as
the land, though rich in humus, is light and aërated. The red soil, a
decomposition-product of the diabases which are at the root of all
agricultural wealth in southern Brazil, covers a great part of Misiones. The
economic inferiority of this agricultural colonization in the forest to the
Pampean type which has conquered the grassy plains of the Rio de la Plata,
is twofold. On the one hand, the surface that a man can develop is very
small. The plots of the Brazilian colonies are ten times smaller than the
average estate on the Pampa. On the other hand, it is difficult to get about in
the forest, and this hinders the export of the produce.

The colonies in Misiones are still confined to the edge of the great forest,
into which they will advance as the agricultural population grows. They
form two groups: one on the river above Posadas (Candelaria, Bonpland,
Corpus, San Ignacio, and Santa Ana), the other on the slopes of the hills,
above the line from Posadas to Uruguay (San José and Apostoles).
Foodstuffs, tobacco, fowl and eggs, which they now send by rail as far as
Buenos Aires, are their chief resources. As it is possible for them to reach
the big markets of the Pampas, by river or rail, they have a certain
advantage over the Brazilian colonies. On the other hand, the various
elements of their population are inferior. They are very mixed, comprising
aboriginals—relics of the ancient Indian or half-breed population of
Misiones who have got land but are in no hurry to cultivate it—Poles
(grouped in a few villages, such as Apostoles and San José), and German-
Brazilians from the left bank of the Uruguay. At the present time there is a
constant stream of German-Brazilians through the province of Misiones, to
embark at Posadas, sail up the Paraná, and settle, further north, in Matto
Grosso. No doubt it would be possible to induce part of them to settle on
Argentinian territory by offering them suitable land.

These peasant clearers of the land rarely find means to sell their timber.
The tropical forest has an immense variety of species, but only a few of
these are of value. The obrajero does not cut down the whole forest; he
chooses his victims. In the waste land of the colonist it is by no means
possible to utilize everything. Even in the area where the forestry industry
flourishes, trunks with no faults, felled in order to make room for farming,
are pitilessly burned and destroyed.

Yet the indirect advantages of the forestry to agriculture are numerous.
Just as in the whole of southern Brazil, it affords a good market for
agricultural produce. The crops from the colonies are stored in the shops at
Posadas, and from there they go to the obrajes and yerbales. In addition, the
industry finds work for more men. On the Rio Grande do Sul, and later on
the Paraná, the wages paid for collecting maté have long been the surest
resource of the colonies, and it is this that enabled them to subsist during
the difficulties of their early period. In Misiones the attraction of the
yerbales is not so strongly felt by the inhabitants. There are comparatively
few colonists who are willing to leave their plots and hire themselves for
distant work. The yerbales find their recruits, not amongst the immigrants
from Europe, but amongst the ancient pobladores; that is to say, men who
hold land without a title, whose position was recognized when the colony
was formed—a floating population, not deeply rooted in the soil.

Agricultural colonization in turn will react upon the forestry industry in
developing the cultivation of maté. Large plantations of ilex have already
been established above Posadas. Already they enter the common life. They
are scattered either over the estates of the national colonies or over the
larger estates of the richer colonists; for planting demands a considerable
expenditure. Some of them belong to dealers who also work natural
yerbales elsewhere. They are, if possible, set up in the forest, or at least on
the fringe of it, in order to have a good supply of wood to dry the leaves.

Thus the primitive industry of collecting maté is undergoing transformation
while the natural growths are disappearing.

CHAPTER V
PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes—The first
settlements on the Patagonian coast and the indigenous
population—Extensive breeding—The use of pasture on the
lands of the Rio Negro—Transhumation.

The northern limit of the Patagonian region passes to the north of the
Colorado, in the latitude of the Cerro Payen and of the ridge which leads
from Malarüe to the Rio Grande in the sub-Andean zone (36° S. lat)., and to
the Sierra de Lihuel Calel in the southern part of the Pampa province. South
of this line, from the Andes to the Atlantic, on the territory of the Neuquen,
the Rio Negro, the Chubut, and the Santa Cruz, is the region of the sheep
farms, their refuge since more profitable branches of farming have driven
the sheep from the Pampa. The extensive breeding practised on these poor
lands is not profitable enough to justify much expenditure, and is therefore
all the more controlled by the physical conditions. It is true that cattle-
breeding was once undertaken in the Spanish settlements of the lower
Negro, and still exists in western Patagonia at the foot of the Andes, but one
never finds there the particular combination of cattle-breeding and sheep-
breeding which is characteristic of the Pampean region, in which the main
function of the cattle is to improve the pasture and make it ready for sheep.

The climate is trying. The west winds are violent during the greater part
of the year, especially on the coast, and merely relax a little in the winter.
The mean temperature on the Atlantic coast falls nearly one degree for each
degree of latitude (14.6° at San Antonio, below 41° S. lat.; 8.5° at Santa
Cruz, below 50° S. lat.; and 5.3° at Ushuaia, below 55° S. lat.). The summer
temperature falls even more steeply, but the difference is less notable in
winter (21.4° at San Antonio, 14° at Santa Cruz, and 9.2° at Ushuaia). The
low summer temperature does not allow cereals to ripen south of the
Chubut. In the sub-Andean valleys the summer is comparatively warm (16°
in January at Diez y seis de Octubre at a height of 1,800 feet), but there is
severe frost, especially at the beginning of the winter, and no month of the
year is quite free from it.

Rain is plentiful in the Cordillera, and on its western border: 800
millimetres at Junin, nearly two metres at San Martin (which the wet
westerly winds reach by the gap of Lake Lacar), and nearly a metre at
Bariloche, on Lake Nahuel Huapi. It diminishes rapidly, however, as soon
as one leaves the mountainous region and goes further east over the
tableland. The whole tableland has a rainfall of less than 200 millimetres
(Las Lajas 180, Limay 150, San Antonio 180, Santa Cruz 135). It is only
south of the Rio de Santa Cruz that the rainfall rises once more (Gallegos
400 millimetres, Ushuaia 500 millimetres). Hence Patagonia as a whole is,
with the exception of a narrow belt at the foot of the Andes, a semi-arid
region with a sub-desert climate. In the Patagonian Andes the rain falls, as
on the coast of Chile, mainly in winter. Between Mendoza, which has the
summer-rain feature of central and tropical Argentina, and Chosmalal, in
the Neuquen Andes, the contrast is absolute. The summer months there
(January and February) are dry, and the rain is confined to the winter
months, from May to August. It is the same further south, at Bariloche and
at Diez y seis de Octubre. On the Atlantic coast the winter-rain feature is
less regular and uniform. At San Antonio the heaviest rains fall in autumn

(April and May). There is a secondary maximum in August, and a few more
showers in the spring (September and October). South of San Antonio the
winter maximum, which is always marked, is cut by a short dry period (July
and August at Camerones, June at Deseado and Santa Cruz).50 In the
interior, on the other hand, the winter-rain system remains unchanged. The
predominance of the precipitations of the cold season is of great importance
to the breeders. As a rule, they come down in the form of snow, which melts
slowly, and the small quantity of moisture is at least all absorbed in the soil.
South of the Santa Cruz the humidity increases, but the rainy season alters.
At Gallegos the wettest month is December; at Ushuaia, the rains last from
September to March. The snow-season (May-August) is the dry season, and
the snowfalls are not heavy enough to interfere with breeding.

The surface of the Patagonian tableland is very uneven, though it bears
traces of having been much worn by the agencies of its desert climate,
which seems to have lasted through the whole Tertiary Era. Going up the
Rio Negro, one sees the grey sandstones and Tertiary tufas which form the
cliffs, on both sides of the lower valley. They give place higher up to the
variegated marls and red sandstones of the Cretaceous which form the
tableland at the foot of the first Andean chains. The core of ancient granites
and porphyries crops up at places from under the mantle of Cretaceous and
Tertiary sandstones. The horizon of the peneplain passes from the Tertiary
and Cretaceous tableland to level masses of crystalline rock, the contour of
which has been almost entirely effaced. Volcanic eruptions have occurred
until quite recent times, and so eruptive areas are the salient features of the
tableland, at Añecon and at Somuncurra, south of the district of the Rio
Negro, in the ridge on the left bank of the middle Senguerr, in the Chubut
province. The basalts have spread out in sheets, the surface of which seems
to have cooled not long ago. Basalt flows are found as far as northern
Patagonia, south of Valcheta and Maquinchao; but their chief seat is in

eastern Patagonia. They cover the inhospitable tablelands to the east of
Lakes Buenos Aires and Pueyrredon. The Rio Chico and the Santa Cruz
cross them for the upper two-thirds of their course, South of Coile and
Gallegos they spread almost to the coast, and the Tertiary Pampas in this
part are dominated by an archipelago of small volcanic cones.

The tableland is crossed from west to east by deep and broad valleys,
enclosed between high cliffs, often strangled by ridges of basaltic or
crystalline rock, and very little ramified. The ravines (cañadones), which
make breaches in their cliffs on both sides, go only a little way into the
sandstone Pampa or the lava tableland. Only a certain number of these
valleys are occupied by important rivers (the Rio Negro and the Santa Cruz,
for instance) which are born in the Andes, but receive little addition from
the light rains of eastern Patagonia. Most of the valleys have only
intermittent streams (Sheuen, Coile) or are altogether dry and sown with
salt lakes (Deseado). The west wind is now the ruler of this network of
fossil valleys. It carves their slopes, and brings into them sand, with which
it makes dunes.

We must not confuse with these dead valleys the long depressions, with
no outlet, which are scattered over the granite and sandstone tableland
(bajos, valles, cuencas). Some have obstinately, but wrongly, sought in
these the traces of rivers that have disappeared; and the bajos of Gualicho
and Valcheta have wrongly been regarded as the former bed of the Rio
Negro and the Limay. Erosion by wind seems to have had something to do
with these depressions. Their persistence, at all events, is one of the effects
of the aridity which prevents normal erosion from moulding the surface of
the tableland. The chief of them are centres for collecting running water.
There is a group of valleys all round them, and alluvial beds accumulate in
them.

The climate determines the character of the soil in Patagonia. The
rounded pebbles of granite and eruptive rock, so often described since the
time of Darwin, sometimes free and sometimes embedded in red sand or
limestone,51 are spread over the tableland like aureoles round the masses of
rock, and they are particularly abundant in the coast region. On the Rio
Negro they seem to be confined to the vicinity of the valley; they disappear
as one goes away from it. The progressive reduction in the volume of the
Rio Negro gravels, as one goes downward, has been observed to begin in
the Andean zone, and it is from the Andes that they come. South of Santa
Cruz, in a moister climate, in which the circulation of the water is less
localized, the bed is more continuous, and it covers the Tertiary sandstones
and clays. It is of fluvio-glacial origin, and comes from the destruction of
the old moraines, before the excavation of the actual valleys. But it is the
wind that explains the concentration of the gravel at the surface. It separates
the pebbles from the more mobile material about them. Wherever the
outcrop-strata contain pebbles, the wind eventually converts the place into a
field of shingle. It has done this with the terraces of the Limay. The Tertiary
marine deposits of the coast region also are rich in pebbles torn from the
rocky promontories of the shore; hence the extent of stony soils in the coast
region. The wind similarly strips naked the angular stones, of local origin
and incompletely worn, round the isolated rocks of the desert tableland or
on the flanks of the secondary ravines.

On the other hand, the bedding action of the wind creates deposits
consisting of small and uniform elements from the sands of the dunes to the
finest dust. The lightest particles, caught up repeatedly by the squalls and
carried to a great height in the atmosphere, go beyond the Patagonian region
and reach the bottom of the Atlantic or the plain of the Pampa. Some of this,
however, is deposited in the depressions of the tableland, where the
moisture fixes it and prevents the wind from regaining it. These æolian

deposits in the depressions, a dark-grey clay, which hardens when it is dry,
but is softened by water, form two entirely different kinds of soil. If the
depression is closed in, or if the circulation of the water is too slight, there
is a concentration of the mineral salts; this is the salitral, either naked or
sustaining a halophytic vegetation, which the saline efflorescences cover
with a white coat during the dry season. If on the other hand, the
underground waters have a free course, the æolian clay forms the mallin.
Bushes and fine grasses grow on it, and, as they decay, gradually give it a
darker shade and modify its composition. The soil above the mallin is rich
in organic elements. It covers the bottom of the valleys between low
terraces, covered with faceted pebbles, and dominated by the vertical cliffs
of tufa and lava. The contrast between the verdure of the mallin and the
arid, dusty, yellow steppe of the tableland is one of the most characteristic
features of Patagonian scenery. The area in which mallin has been formed
coincides with the most humid districts in the vicinity of the Andes and
round the higher hills. On the road that runs along the right bank of the
Limay, at some distance from the river, on the surface of the tableland, the
limit between the country of the salitrales and that of the mallinas passes
between Tricaco and Chasico, a hundred miles south-east of Neuquen; it
almost tallies with the curve of a 200 millimetres rainfall.52 Though the
word mallin is not used at Santa Cruz, similar æolian soils are found in the
western part of the tableland up to this latitude. Further south glacial
deposits, clays with moraine-blocks, fill the valleys, and from Gallegos
onward, cover the greater part of the tableland.

On the eruptive flows of recent date the rock is naked. The wind carries
away the products of its decomposition, and the dust accumulates only in
the fissures. Traffic is difficult, sometimes impossible.

Toward the west the tableland is separated from the Cordillera by a
longitudinal depression, though the continuity of this has been exaggerated.
This depression, which outlines the contact between the folded zone of the
Andes and the flat zone of the tableland, is very important from the point of
view of colonization. Just at the frontier of the steppe and the forest, it is the
most hospitable part of Patagonia, the richest in natural resources. Amidst
the glacial lacustrine deposits which are accumulated on it there rise masses
of different kinds of rock which break it up into compartments, granitic
ridges of laccolites exposed to view, eruptive structures that have been
dismantled. In the south the sub-Andean depression forms a broad passage
between Lake Maravilla and Puntá Arenas, about two hundred miles long,
enclosed between the basalt cliffs of the tableland on the east and the
mountains of the Brunswick Peninsula and William IV Land. The bottom of
it is a singular glacial landscape, sown with lagoons, punctuated by
scattered hills, with an impermeable soil of drift and mud. From Lake
Argentina to Lake Buenos Aires the elevated tablelands, which rise to a
height of 5,000 feet, back upon the Cordillera, and the sub-Andean
depression is interrupted. Similarly, between Lake Buenos Aires and Lake
General Paz the contour of the Patagonian tableland is not very marked
above the sub-Andean zone. The glacial alluvia at the foot of the Cordillera
rise to the level of the tableland, which sinks steadily eastward toward the
Genua and the Senguerr. To the north, between Carrenleufu and Lake
Nahuel Huapi, the retreat of the lakes has left long narrow beds right in the
Cordillera, such as the Valle Nuevo del Bolson, the bed of which has been
taken over by the Futaleufu west of the Cerro Situación. Further east the
topographical features of the edge of the tableland (the valleys of the
Chubut, Tecka, and Norquineo) lie from north to south. Hence within a
space of little more than a hundred kilometres the sub-Andean zone has a
series of parallel roads, communicating with each other by means of broad,
transverse gaps, which at one time were occupied by the lower lobes of the

glaciers. The sub-Andean depression does not go north of Lake Nahuel
Huapi.

The morphological features of the Patagonian Andes begin at 36° S. lat.53
The edge of the Cordillera, in the Malargüe depression, below 35° S. lat.,
still presents the typical scenery of the central Andes. The dejection-cone of
the Atuel resembles that of the Mendoza. The fringe of torrential deposits,
distributed in cones over which the waters spread, is due to the rapidity of
the disintegration of the rocks in a desert climate. Keidel has pointed out the
part played by the summer rains in transporting mobile elements, which the
water drops as soon as the slope diminishes; the amount of precipitation
being too slight to permit the formation and spread over the plain of a
regular network of streams. From the Rio Grande onward the dejection
cones disappear. The streams tend to become permanent, and sink into
narrow valleys. The summer rains cease, and the water produced by the
melting of the snows has only a feeble capacity for transporting stuff. The
soil of the Cordillera is protected by a denser vegetation. The first thickets
of molle appear in the valleys, the first scattered cypresses on the slopes, at
the Rio Agrio, a tributary of the Neuquen. Then the forest invades the
mountain: at first, from 38° S. lat. to 39° 30′ S. lat., a resinous forest of
araucarias. At length, at Lake Nahuel Huapi, the forest assumes the general
appearance which it has as far as the Magellan region. It is chiefly made up
of different kinds of beeches. The coihue (Notofagus dombeyi) is the most
conspicuous for about three quarters of a mile, rising above an impenetrable
undergrowth of bamboo. Higher up the domain of the lenga (Notofagus
pumilio) extends as far as the fringe of the Alpine forests. The forest does
not reach the eastern limit of the lakes. In the sub-Andean depression it is
reduced to thickets of ñirre (Notofagus antarctica) and mayten and clumps
of calafate (something like myrtles).

It is on the Alumine, about 39° S. lat., that we find traces of glacial
erosion, as they spread over the landscape. At present there is no ice on the
mountain except on the peaks of Lanin and Tronador, but from the Rio
Puelo onward (42° S. lat.), glaciers clothe all the summits which rise above
6,500 feet. North of the Aisen they form a narrow, but almost continuous,
line. From the Aisen to the Calen fiord, and beyond the gap of the fiord as
far as 52° S. lat., the ice spreads in a considerable sheet which in some
places attains a breadth of eighty miles. The tongues of the glaciers reach
the Pacific below 46° S. lat., and Lake San Martin on the Argentine slope
below 49° S. lat. In Tierra del Fuego the snow-line is at 2,300 feet, and the
glaciers which the snows feed, reach as far as the fiords and Lake Fagnano.

Lake Carri Lauquen, on the Barrancas (36° 20′ S. lat.), which was almost
entirely drained in 1914 through the breaking down of the natural dam of
soft earth which confined its waters, is not a glacial lake.54 The chain of
glacial lakes stretches from the Alumine to the Seno de la Ultima
Esperanza, and is continued southward by Skyring Water, Otway Water, and
Useless Bay—genuine lakes in communication with the Pacific by means
of narrow channels. The lakes sometimes lie in a narrow and deep glacial
valley, the bottom of which they fill; sometimes they branch out into the
neighbouring valleys; at other times they advance eastward beyond the zone
of the mountains and spread into round basins surrounded by circles of
moraines. The largest of them include groups of ramified fiords, which
represent their western half, while the eastern half spreads between lower
banks.55

Pastoral colonization has now spread over almost the entire surface of
Patagonia. The parts that are not yet occupied are of slight extent; they
consist only of the most desolate regions in the south of the Rio Negro
district and north of Santa Cruz. The expansion of white colonization began
only about 1880. Until then the interior was abandoned to the indigenous

tribes and was almost
entirely unknown. The
Atlantic coast alone had
been explored. The travels
of Villarino along the Rio
Negro and the Limay as
far as Lake Nahuel Huapi
had left only a faded
memory.56 North of the
YOKE OF CREOLE OXEN
Rio Negro, Woodbine USED FOR THE
Parish (1859), making use
TRANSPORT OF TIMBER
of the notes left by Cruz,
who had crossed the Andes ON THE EASTERN
and the Indian territory CHACO, OR CHACO OF
between Antuco and
Melincue in 1806, was the SANTA FÉ.
first to publish definite On the Central (or Santiago) Chaco mules
information, to which no are used for transport.
addition would be made Photograph by the Author.
during the next forty
years.57 Click to view
larger image.
The settlements founded
on the coast by the
Spaniards at the close of
the eighteenth century (S.
José and P. Deseado) were
ephemeral. Only one of
them maintained an
obscure existence, Carmen

de Patagones, some miles
above the mouth of the Rio
Negro. One of its chief
resources was the export of
salt. Expeditions for this
purpose began on the
Patagonian coast about the
middle of the eighteenth
century (Journey from San
WORKS AT TARTAGAL
Martin to Puerto San (EASTERN CHACO) FOR
Julian about 1753, Coll. de
MAKING TANNIC ACID.
Angelis, V). After the
revolution, Buenos Aires These works, built by powerful firms, are
finally abandoned these permanent centres, drawing timber from a
costly expeditions by land great stretch of forest, while the saw-mills of
to the salt districts of the the Central Chaco move about freely, to be
Pampa, and was supplied near the felling sites.
with salt by schooners Photograph by the Author.

from Carmen. During the
Plate XII.
war with Brazil and the
blockade of the Rio de la
Click to view
Plata, Carmen, protected
by the bar of the Rio larger image.
Negro, and the Bay of San
Blas were the harbours in which Argentine, English and French privateers
concealed their prizes and did their repairs after the storms of the Gulf of
Santa Catarina. D'Orbigny visited Carmen during this period of equivocal
prosperity. One of the most curious effects of the hospitality offered to the
privateers was the unloading upon the Patagonian coast of blacks, intended
for Brazil, who were taken from the slave-traders. Thus an unforeseen eddy

brought to the south of the Pampean region part of the current of the slave-
trade intended for the sugar-cane plantations in tropical America. A number
of the Carmen ranches had coloured workers at this time.

Breeding, in fact, was just beginning to spread in the neighbourhood of
Carmen at the time. The cattle had been brought by land from Buenos
Aires, and had multiplied along the coast and the river above Carmen.
South of Carmen, at San José, the cattle had run wild after the fort was
abandoned. The Carmen herds were estimated, before the revolution, at
40,000 head. They disappeared during the revolutionary period, but were
reconstituted immediately afterwards, and even during the war with Brazil
there was an active export of hides and salt beef. Carmen profited mainly
by trade with the Indians. It lived in terror of them, and had garrisons to
give the alarm on the routes by which they could approach. But this state of
chronic warfare did not prevent trade. Near Carmen there was a group of
peaceful Indians who served as intermediaries with the tribes of the interior,
who were jealous and hostile. Guides and interpreters were found in this
colony, and through it came the first news of the interior. The traffic with
the Indians continued for a long time to be of great use to the colonists. In
1865 the Welsh colony established on the Chubut, which had many
difficulties at first, was saved from complete disaster by its trade with the
Indians.

The indigenous population comprised two groups: the Tehuelches, or
Patagonians proper, men of tall stature, and the Araucans, the Ranqueles,
the Pehuenches and the Pampas. There was no fixed geographical limit
between them. The Tehuelches lived in southern Patagonia; but the
Araucans advanced eastward as far as the Pampas region and southward
beyond the Chubut. The Indian population of the valley of the Genua and
the Sanguerr, south of the colony of San Martin, comprised in 1880,58 and
still comprises,59 a mixture of Araucans and Tehuelches. The Araucans were

acquainted with agriculture, but, once they had tamed the horse, they
became mainly a pastoral and hunting people, like the Tehuelches.

In so far as they were hunters, the Indians of Patagonia were nomadic.
The taming of the horse only made it easier for them to shift from place to
place, and gave them a greater range. Their nomadism has too often been
regarded as an aimless wandering. They had laws, settled by the physical
conditions; and we can gather a few of these. They kept away from the
coastal districts except in winter; that is the season when the rains provide
water-courses there. It has been observed that names of Indian origin are
lacking on the coast of Patagonia. The Spanish navigators who landed there
during the summer found the country deserted and the camps abandoned.
On the other hand, the share of the Indians in giving names is very
considerable in the interior, as far as the foot of the Andes. During the
summer the Indians approached the mountains, where they found good
hunting grounds. In particular they chased the young guanacos in the
breeding season, December and January. Popper has indicated similar
migrations amongst the Onas of Patagonia; they approach the coast in
winter, and leave it in summer, to hunt in the interior.60 The district of Lake
Nahuel Huapi and Collon Cura had some attraction from afar. The forest of
araucarias produced seeds (pinones) which the Indians went to gather; and
they also liked the wild apples which ripened on the former estates of the
old Jesuit missions. The clusters of bamboo on the Cordillera provided the
lances of the Aucas and Tehuelches.

Lake Nahuel Huapi is the first stage of the busiest of the routes used by
the Indians. It came from the lower Santa Cruz, went up the Rio Chico, and
from there northward followed the foot of the Cordillera. D'Orbigny was
told about it: "All the Indians who live near the Andes go along the eastern
foot of the mountains in their journeys, because they find water there,
whereas they would find none if they went by the coast; in that way they

travel from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro." The Indian track only
left the sub-Andean depression between the Rio Chico and Lake Buenos
Aires, in the district where the high basalt mesetias extend as far as the
Cordillera, and on the Pampa of the Sanguerr.

From Lake Nahuel Huapi the Indians of the south descended the Limay
and the Rio Negro, and reached the island of Choele Choel, some 230 miles
above Carmen, where they met the Aucas and Puelches. There they
exchanged their guanacos hides for woollen fabrics made by the Aucas.
Choele Choel was the only large, purely indigenous market; the whites
never visited it. Geographical reasons fixed the site of this market of the
nomads. In the latitude of Choele Choel the Rio Negro approaches the
Colorado and the archipelago of the Sierras of the southern Pampa, which
mark so many stages on the routes from the Pampa to the Andes. To the
south the coast-route, less exposed to snow than the sub-Andean track,
began from Choele Choel. The Indians followed this to reach the Gulf of
San Jorge and the Santa Cruz in winter, during the rainy season. Darwin
notes the importance of the site and the ford of Choele Choel. Villarino had
suspected it, and had, as early as 1782, pleaded for the building of a fort
there. By holding this point, he said, they could prevent the tribes from
attacking Buenos Aires, or from approaching the Patagonian coast in the
district of San José.61

As far back as we can go, the life of the Indians seems to have been
deeply influenced by their relations with the whites. The Aucas brought to
Choele Choel, not only the products of their industry, but also objects stolen
or bought from the Christians on the Pampa. The report of Musters, who
followed a Tehuelche tribe from Santa Cruz to the country of the Manzanas
("land of apples"), shows clearly that the attraction of the Nahuel Huapi
region for the Indians was less due to its natural resources than to the

presence of the Chilean settlements at Valdivia, from which came across the
passes of the Cordillera certain quantities of brandy.

The Indian never took to cattle-breeding. His herd never consisted of
more than mares and a few sheep. But trade in stolen cattle quickly became
the chief occupation of the tribes. It would, however, be a mistake to
imagine that the thievish Indian was merely and always a dreaded enemy of
the ranches of Carmen. They sometimes had recourse to his services and
profited by his misdeeds. After the Revolution, it was the Indians who
helped to fill once more the ranches of the Rio Negro, bringing runaway
cattle which had remained in the San José district. Later, Carmen bought the
cattle stolen by the Indians at Buenos Aires. From 1823 to 1826 the number
of the cattle sold by the Indians to the colonists on the Rio Negro is
estimated at 40,000. Hence the breeders of Carmen had, as regards the
Indians, alternate periods of armed conflict and complicity.

But Chile was always the great market for stolen cattle. Raids (malones)
and the crossing of the Cordillera by convoys began in the eighteenth
century, and continued throughout the nineteenth, until 1880, when the
consolidation of Argentine authority on the eastern side gave a more regular
form to the cattle-trade. The convoys came to a halt at Antuco and Chillan
from which the Chilean buyers sometimes accompanied the Indian tribes as
far as the tolderias on the edge of the Pampa. The trade in stolen cattle
made use of all the passes of the Cordillera, from the Planchon pass below
35° S. lat., which Roca had covered in 1877 by the fortress of Alamito, to
the source of the Bio Bio. The one most used was the Pichachen or the
Antuco pass. On the tableland the cattle-tracks formed a regular network
with innumerable strands, spreading over a width of about two hundred
miles. The most northern route started east of the Poitague district and, after
fording the Salado and the Atuel, and passing the aguadas of Cochico and
Ranquilco, entered the Cordillera at the bend of the Rio Grande. Another

track ascended the Colorado and then reached the high valley of Neuquen.
A third crossed from the Colorado to the Rio Negro, and, above the
confluence of the Limay, to the Rio Agrio or the Alumine.

The first exact information about the range of the Patagonian Indians is
supplied by a group of bold travellers who followed their tracks from 1870
to 1880: Musters, Moreno, Moyano, Ramon Lista, etc. Their discoveries
had already outlined the geographical survey of Patagonia when the
campaign of 1879-1883 opened it to colonization.

The story of white colonization since 1880 shows us several distinct
streams of population. The first, starting from the region of the Pampa, went
from north to south along the Atlantic coast, and gradually extended its
sphere toward the interior. The breeders used the sea-route, the ancient
Indian track with recognized sources of water, to convey their first herds. In
1884, the only spot inhabited on the coast between the Rio Negro and the
Deseado was the Welsh colony on the Chubut. In 1886 Fontana reports
ranches in the Puntá Delfin district, south of the Chubut.62 About 1890 the
whole district round the Gulf of San Jorge was occupied; and a little later
the stream from the north met the stream from the south about San Julian
and Santa Cruz. The expansion of colonization was less rapid in the interior.
Ambrosetti tells us of the establishment of the first ranches round the Sierra
de Lihuel Calel in 1893,63 and at the same time Siemiradzki still found few
traces of colonization on the Colorado.64

The second stream of colonization came from the Magellan region. It
started in Chilean territory, about Puntá Arenas. It was about 1878 that
sheep-breeding spread round Puntá Arenas, and between 1885 and 1892
was the most rapid growth of the ranches of the Magellan district. North of
the Straits they occupied the lowlands round Skyring Water and Otway
Water, then the plateau south of Gallegos. They spread along the Atlantic as

far as the Santa Cruz. In 1896 the limit of the sheep-region was on the Santa
Cruz about forty miles from the coast.65 To the west, Puerto Consuelo was
founded in 1892, and in 1896 colonization came up against the mountain
barrier which the Cerro Payen and the basalt tableland of the Cerro
Vizcachas interpose between Lake Argentine and Ultima Esperanza fiord.

The spheres of primitive colonization in southern Patagonia on the coast
still differ from each other in regard to density of population. But breeders
in search of unoccupied land have not hesitated to push beyond. In 1895
and 1900 they passed west of the Gulf of San Jorge toward the basin of the
Sanguerr and the Genua, (establishment of the Sarmiento colony, south of
Colhuapi, 1897: establishment of San Martin on the Genua 1900). Since
1900 the population has also advanced up the Santa Cruz and the Rio Chico
as far as the zone of the Andes, and the lagoon which still existed twenty
years ago, between the district of the Sanguerr and that of Lake Argentino,
and is easily recognized on the maps of the Frontier Commission, has been
almost entirely filled up.

The story of colonization in the northern part of the Patagonian Andes is
more complicated. Immediately after the campaign of 1883 the valleys of
the Neuquen were invaded by Chilean immigrants, half-breeds of the
frontier, who cannot always be easily distinguished from pure Araucans. A
certain number of Chilotes, and even Germans from the southern colonies
of Chile, were mixed with the half-breeds. This stream of immigration had
begun before the conquest. As early as 1881 Host notices that there are at
Chosmalal various families of Chilean farmers who held their lands from
the Indian cacique. During the summer they took care of the migratory
herds from the Chilean plain. Once the country was pacified, they grew
rapidly in number. It was they who provided the manual labour for the
placer miners of the Neuquen, where gold began to be worked in 1890. The
area of Chilean colonization extends from the Rio Atuel, where Villanueva

found Chilean immigrants in 1884, to the south of Lake Nahuel Huapi,
where Chileans were still met by Vallentin in 1906, on the Rio Pico, close to
44° S. lat.66 South of Nahuel Huapi there is no regularly used route across
the Cordillera.67 The Chilean colonists of the southern zone came from the
north, therefore, along the eastern foot of the Andes. Bailey Willis
calculated that there were 2,000 Chileans in a total population of 3,500 in
the sub-Andean area from Nahuel Huapi to Diez y seis de Octubre. The
total number of Chilean immigrants may be about 20,000. It is not on the
increase, as immigration from Chile was suspended from 1890 to 1895.
Since the reconstruction of the frontier the Chilean Government has tried to
bring back part of the emigrants to its own territory. Many have gone to
settle in the valley of the Lonquimay. In 1896 Moreno saw traces
everywhere in the valley of the Collon Cura of the departure of Chilean
colonists who had left the country.

At first it was only the Argentinians of the western provinces, San Juan
and Mendoza, who vied with the Chileans for the soil. It is they whom
Furque found in 1888 at Roca, on the Rio Negro. But beginning with 1890-
95, immigrants of various nationalities have settled on the Neuquen and the
Negro.68 Foreign capitalists organized their first ranches there. In 1888, on
the other hand, the Welsh of the lower Chubut, led by Indian guides, went
from the coast to the sub-Andean region, and settled in the valley of Diez y
seis de Octubre. Between 1895 and 1900 the neighbouring valleys began to
be inhabited, and the colonization areas of Nahuel Huapi and the Sanguerr
came into contact.69

The most striking feature of colonization in Patagonia is the very low
density of population. The Census of 1914 gives 81,000 inhabitants
altogether for the territories of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, the

Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. A well-kept ranch of 25,000 square
kilometres has only a staff of about a hundred men at the most, counting
strangers, settled on its land; three hundred inhabitants, or scarcely more
than one to ten square kilometres. This population falls into two distinct
classes. One is the class of proprietors with regular titles: a rooted and
stable class. At first the Government granted enormous concessions, which
were taken up especially by English buyers, but it now seeks to break up the
land, and the plots which it puts on the market for new pastoral colonies
have not more than 625 hectares. This is too small for breeding, no matter
how good the situation may be, and there will inevitably be, one would
think, a concentration of estates in the hands of a few proprietors. The other
part of the population occupy lands which they do not own. They are
displaced steadily as the regular concessions are sold to new ranches. They
live, so to say, on the margin of colonization, and are more and more
restricted to the poorest lands. Sometimes these intrusos or pobladores get
hospitality for their herds on the land of some ranch in return for their
services. They have little capital, and never make material improvements.
They take no care to nurse the pasture, and it matters little to them if it is
impoverished.

The climate divides Patagonia into two distinct regions. In the west, the
moist Andean zone is suitable for cattle-breeding. About 1870 the Chileans
of Valdivia hunted wild cattle in the Nahuel Huapi district. Similarly the
Frontier Commission met large herds of wild cattle on the shores of Lake
San Martin, which were not yet occupied. Sheep do not get on well in the
moist zone, where the rains have washed out the soil and carried away the
salts which seem to be indispensable to the sheep. It is the arid tableland
that is the land of the sheep. There it has displaced cattle, even in the area
which the early breeders at the end of the eighteenth century had filled with
cattle. Between the sheep-area and the cattle-area is a mixed region, where
the two are combined. It extends more or less according as the transition

from a moist to a desert climate is gradual or sudden. It is especially
important in the districts where colonization is already old, as in the
Fuegian and Neuquen regions. It is lacking in districts where the
colonization is recent (Chubut and Santa Cruz), where the sheep-breeders
have had a free run as far as the Andes. The ranches of the Cordillera,
which specialize in cattle-breeding, all have small flocks of sheep for their
own use, their staff being so small that it does not pay to kill the cattle.

The sheep-area is by far the more extensive of the two. The patches of
agricultural colonization are very scattered and small on its surface. They
are restricted to the river-oases of the Rio Negro and the Chubut. These
small tilled districts have preserved a remarkable economic independence
as regards the pastoral zone, in which they seem lost. Thus the farmers on
the Chubut exported their wheat to Buenos Aires until about 1900, and they
still send their bales of dry lucerne there. Some of the ranches have tilled
small oases in suitable places, but these are merely intended to increase
their stores of fodder; not for their flock of sheep, but for the saddle-horses
used in watching the estate and the draught-horses used for transport.

The pastoral capacity of the Patagonian scrub is, on the average, from
800 to 1,200 head of sheep to 25 square kilometres: less than a tenth that of
the prairies of the eastern Pampa. The ranch fixes its residence in the best
part of the estate, where there is least fear of a shortage of water, and where
pasture is most plentiful. To this the sheep are brought periodically to
receive disinfecting baths against the scab, and for shearing. These
incessant movements toward the centre of the ranch cause an almost
permanent strain on the pasture, and this is one of the chief anxieties of the
breeder. The area of the estate is divided as soon as possible into sections
(potreros) by steel-wire fences, which enables them to watch over the
reproduction and improvement of the flock and make the best use of the

pasture. Fencing is more advanced near the Cordillera, as timber for the
posts is found there.

Certain districts are still uninhabited on account of the lack of water.
Some of the sources of water are permanent. The water issues at the base of
the volcanic rocks, when the underlying rock is impermeable, and above the
various levels of the marl in the Patagonian swamps; for instance, in the
cañadones round the Gulf of San Jorge. Besides this, the rain and melting
snow leave on the surface of the tableland a great number of pools, which
evaporate in the dry season. These are temporary supplies, the manantiales,
to which the breeders are reduced over large areas of the tableland. Most of
the stagnant sheets of water which are permanent are saline. The proportion
of salt in them is very variable, and changes in each case according to the
cycle of dry and wet years. The water of the Carilaufquen was fresh in
1900, and in 1914 it had become brackish, though it could still be used for
the flocks.

Finding permanent sources of water is the first concern of the breeder. In
some districts he has succeeded in tapping sheets of fresh water by means
of wells. There are none of these wells in the crystalline zones, the closed
hollows, where the sheets of water are often large, but they are always
saline. Neither are there any in the red sandstone district, the dryest of all.
In the western region the wells are sunk in the arid valleys, along the track
of the underground stream. Thus the Picun Leufu, the visible course of
which is lost seventeen miles above its confluence with the Limay, may be
traced by a continuous line of wells. It is especially in the coastal districts
that the wells have transformed the conditions of breeding. Water was first
discovered at the foot of the dunes, along the coast itself (district of
Viedma, San José, etc.). Since then deep borings have been made over the
whole of the Tertiary platform on both sides of the lower part of the Rio

Negro, north of San Antonio. There every ranch has its sheet-iron tank,
sheltered by a clump of tamarinds, with a windmill to fill it.

All pastures are not equally available in every season. Those which are at
a height of more than 4,000 feet in the north, and 2,300 to 2,600 feet in the
south, are covered in winter with a thick mantle of snow. These are summer
pastures. During the winter the animals are brought down to the principal
valleys or to sheltered cañadones below the level of the tableland. The
mallin is, as a rule, a winter pasture. When it is too wet, however, it is
treacherous, and the animals are buried in it. They have to wait for fine
weather before going into it. The pastures, too, which have no permanent
water supply, or have only manantiales, which dry up at the beginning of
summer, can only be used during the winter. Hence each ranch has to have,
besides its assured water supply, a suitable combination of summer and
winter pasturage, and it is far from certain that this will be found on every
estate, cut up geometrically for colonization, as they were, by the
administration of lands.

The constitution of the
flock and the first
occupation of the land
have compelled breeders
to undertake difficult
journeys, and more than
one of these proved
disastrous. The earliest
arrivals, driving their THE VOLCANO
sheep along little-known PUNTIAGUDO.
tracks, could not avoid
On the Chilean side, to the north of the road
losses in crossing the arid
from Lake Nahuel Huapi. The glaciers come
parts of the tableland: parts
down lower on the western side, as the moist
which D'Orbigny,
winds come from the west, and the rain
translating literally the
becomes less and less frequent as one goes
Spanish word travesia,
eastward toward the Patagonian tableland.
calls "crossings."70 When
the ranch is established, Click to view
the breeding does not
necessitate any further
larger image.
movements of the flocks to
a great distance, apart from
certain special migrations,
or "transhumations," which
I will consider later. It is
on each ranch, sometimes
on each group of ranches
combined in a single
estate, that they pass

alternately from winter to CERCAS ON THE LIMAY
summer pasture. The only
transport necessary is that (RISING IN LAKE NAHUEL
of wool. The fleeces, HUAPI), NEAR THE
which the west wind has
heavily laden with dust,
CONFLUENCE OF THE
are collected in the sheds TRAFUL.
belonging to the ranch, or,
Here the Limay enters the sub-desert
in the case of the intrusos,
tableland. Last trees (cypresses) in the valley
on the premises of certain
in the foreground.
small traders (bolicheros)
Photograph by Bailey Willis.
who are scattered over the
tableland even at its Plate XIII.
extreme limits. Convoys of
wagons then take them to Click to view
the ports on the coast.
larger image.
For some years now,
however, wool has ceased to be the sole product of the ranches. A little
before 1895 the first slaughter-houses, for killing the older sheep that were
no longer fertile, were erected on the Straits of Magellan. Refrigerators
have succeeded these, and were opened at Puerto Callegos and San Julian.
A third refrigerator is being constructed (1915) at Puerto Deseado. In
southern Patagonia, also, part of the flock is sent to the refrigerators or to
the slaughter houses of the Pampean region. The creation of the refrigerator
has compelled breeders to adapt their work to the new economic conditions.
The merino breed is being eliminated by the Lincoln in all districts which
feel the influence of the refrigerator; the Lincoln is of greater weight and
quicker growth, but the merino survives in arid northern Patagonia.

Besides this, the establishment of the refrigerators has caused important
movements of transport. The flocks which are to go to the refrigerators or
the northern railways are moved in the good season, after the shearing, from
November to April. The routes they take are not invariable. One of the most
frequented, leading from the sub-Andean tablelands to San Julian, follows
the Santa Cruz valley. When the land was cut up, there was no reason to
foresee these movements, and nothing was done to facilitate them. The
roads cross the ranches, which are compelled to allow it. It is a serious
burden for some of them, unless they can make a profit out of their situation
on the road by hiring pasture for the flocks as they pass.

The Andean zone itself is still mainly pastoral, but it is nevertheless far
more varied and richer in possibilities of development than the tableland.
Agriculture is already combined with breeding in that area.

The name vegas, which in the Puna and at San Juan means alpine
pasture, is applied here to tilled patches in the Andean valleys. They are
found in the north in the valley of the Neuquen, round Chosmalal. In the
south, the valley of the Rio Pico marks the limit of cultivation. Irrigation is
almost always necessary north of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where the vegas
have, as a rule, a soil of coarse alluvia or permeable tufa, which dries up
quickly. Water is plentiful, it is true, and increases in quantity rapidly as one
travels southward. The chief obstacle to the extension of cultivation is the
frequency of frost in spring and summer. The deep hollows of the sub-
Andean depression south of Lake Nahuel Huapi, the height of which drops
to 1,000 feet at the Bolson, and 1,600 feet at Diez y seis de Octubre, have
no frosts in summer, and they sustain small agricultural communities. At
higher levels, in the basin of the lake or on the vegas of the Traful and Lake
Lacar, at an altitude of about 2,600 feet, the distribution of the summer
frosts is closely related to the contour and lie of the land, which may
facilitate or impede the circulation of the layers of cold air, and the play of

what has been called atmospheric drainage. The valleys which are very
open from west to east, at the outlet of the lakes, where the west winds have
a free passage, are little liable to frost. Wherever frost is frequent,
cultivation has to be restricted to fodder plants. The more favoured cantons,
which grow wheat, rye and potatoes, help to feed the local pastoral
population, and export part of their produce to some distance on the
tableland.

Cattle-breeding is, like sheep-breeding on the tableland, practised both by
the pobladores on public lands and by ranchers who have settled on regular
concessions, which they have worked up and fenced round. The high alpine
pastures, above the fringe of the forest, are partly used, from December to
March, as summer-pasture. The forest also serves for pasture; it is a sort of
common land, available both in winter and summer. Below the height of
3,500 feet the clumps of bamboos in the underwood provide shelter during
the winter and fodder which is not buried under snow. The fires lit by the
breeders have changed part of the primitive forest into a scrub which has
been invaded by a leguminous climbing fodder, and it has superior pastoral
capacity to the forest. East of the forest, the prairie, which is too much
exposed to the winds, is not generally suitable for winter-pasture. The cattle
take refuge in sheltered valleys and in the mayten thickets which follow the
depressions. Bailey Willis puts the pastoral capacity of the virgin forest at
400 cattle to each 2,500 hectares, 600 for the burnt forest, and 350 for the
sub-Andean prairies. The essential problem in connection with the question
of completely developing the pastoral resources of the sub-Andean region is
the problem of transit. There are no roads from one district to another and to
the higher prairies. The fallen trunks which lie about the forest obstruct the
way of the cattle. Collecting the animals for sale and watching them are
both difficult.

It seems that the profit of exploiting the timber must necessarily be small.
The forest, thinned by fire and difficult of access, is partly composed of
trees that are too old. The libocedrus has disappeared from one-third of it.
The larch, which is the most valuable, passes into Argentine territory at few
places. Saw-mills are not so numerous on the eastern slope of the Andes as
they are in the Magellan area.

The essential function of the forest is, according to Argentine experts on
forestry, to control the water-circulation. In this land of glacial erosion and
recent captures, where the water-courses have always a great variety of
form, and there are lakes to make their output more regular, it is particularly
easy to make use of hydraulic power. "White coal" will, Bailey Willis says,
make a great industrial region of it, and plant an urban life in it. Bailey
Willis, whose optimism and prophetic gift will not fail to surprise the
European reader, has drawn the plans in detail of a future town of 40,000
souls at the eastern end of Lake Nahuel Huapi. The Patagonian land will
supply the raw material of its industries; timber, leather, and wool.

One, at least, of the indispensable conditions of the development of urban
life is fully realized in the district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Limay. It is
a remarkable meeting-place of natural roads, and its economic value will
increase in the future. It is the point where the road from eastern Patagonia
by the sub-Andean depression, from the Gulf of San Antonio on the
Atlantic, and from the Rio Negro by the Limay, and the roads that lead to
Chile across the Cordillera, meet. The whole zone of the Andes between
36° S. lat. and 42° S. lat., the latitude of the southern part of the Chilean
plain, has numerous and easy passes. There has always been close
communication between the two slopes, and people have emigrated freely
from one to the other. But north of 39° S. lat. the passes are rarely lower
than 5,000 feet. They are covered with snow in the winter, and can be used
for traffic only in certain seasons. It is not the same south of the volcano

Lanin. That is the beginning of the glacial valleys which go to the heart of
the Cordillera, some of them crossing the mountains from east to west.
They have not yet been entirely explored. The Bariloche pass, south of the
Tronador, by which the Chilean missionaries reached Nahuel Huapi in the
eighteenth century, is no longer used. The Cajon Negro pass, west of Lake
Traful, through which Bailey Willis traces the line of a southern trans-
Andean railway, was only recently discovered, and the valleys which run
into it on the Chilean side are not yet well known. The two best-known
trans-Andean routes to-day are the Perez Rosales road, which leads from
Chile to Nahuel Huapi by the north of the Tronador, and further north, the
road from Lake Lacar to San Martin. Both these have received some
attention, and the lakes are connected by telegraph or telephone. The
frequent need to unload and reload makes the traffic costly, but it is
permanent and is not interrupted in winter. The reduction of the export of
cattle to Chile has cut down the traffic for a time, but it is sure to recover.
The permanent importance of it is one of the facts most clearly written by
nature upon the soil of South America.

It is not easy, in the absence of documents, to attempt to give for
Patagonia as a whole a detailed description of the pastoral industry, and to
follow step by step on the spot its efforts to adjust itself to the natural
conditions. But the analysis may be attempted in regard to the region
between San Antonio and Lake Nahuel Huapi south of the Rio Negro,71 the
valley of the Rio Negro, and the tableland which stretches westward
between the Neuquen and the Limay. This part of Patagonia is now easily
accessible, and it is entered by two parallel railways. One starts from San
Antonio on the Atlantic, and goes westward to Lake Nahuel Huapi. It has
(1914) reached Maquinchao, on the tableland, mid-way across the Andes.
The other starts from Bahía Blanca. At Choele Choel it enters the valley of
the Rio Negro, and ascends it as far as the confluence of the Neuquen. Then

it goes 130 miles westward as far as Zapala, at the foot of the first sub-
Andean chains. Each of these lines is ambitious to attract the trans-
Andeans. At all events, they are in a hurry to reach the humid zone at the
foot of the Andes, which could maintain a busier traffic than the desolate
tableland.

The railway from San Antonio, and the road which is a continuation of it
west of Maquinchao, cover a distance of 320 miles from the Atlantic to the
Andes, and cross five distinct regions. The first is the coastal plain,
composed of horizontal marine Tertiary sedimentary rocks, both of sand
and clay. The plain rises slowly toward the west, and it attains a height of
650 feet at a distance of seventy miles from the coast. This coastal platform
divides, on the north-west, the enclosed hollow of the Bajo del Gualicho
from the Gulf of San Antonio. Its surface is very even. The gravel on it has
formed a sort of conglomerate, and in spite of appearances, this gravelly
soil is not bad for vegetation. It quickly absorbs the rain-water, which thus
escapes evaporation. The vegetation is comparatively rich. There are no
springs, but the autumn rains sustain manantiales in the marly surface, and
these do not dry up until the spring. During the summer the plain is
deserted, and there is no water. But the flocks return in the winter and
remain there until spring. There is very little snow, as the temperature is
moderate. In spite of the density of the pastoral population in winter, the
pasturage is not injured. The grass grows plentifully amongst the thickets.
This is because the flocks leave the district before the season when the
grasses flower and reproduce, so the next generation is secured. Part of the
flocks which winter on the coastal plain pass the summer in the south-west,
on the high basaltic tablelands of Somuncura. However, the whole of the
surface of the tableland cannot be used permanently, or during the entire
summer. There is plenty of water in spring, when the snows have melted. In
the middle of the summer the flocks collect round the permanent springs,

and they scatter once more over the mountain pastures during the autumn
rains, before they return to the plain.

The second region is that of Valcheta. From Aguada Cecilia to Corral
Chico the railway follows for sixty miles the edge of the outpour of lava
from the south, which covers the Tertiary clays. In front of the basalt cliff
the land dips in the north toward a closed depression, the Bajo de Valcheta,
the bottom of which consists of clays impregnated with salt. Tertiary marine
strata surround this hollow in the west and north, where they divide it from
the Bajo del Gualicho, but here they form only a thin skin which covers the
crystalline platform. The line of contact of the basalt and the Tertiary marls
is marked by a series of good springs, and these give rise to permanent
streams, such as the Arroyo Valcheta and the Nahuel Niyeu. At first they
flow in a narrow valley crowned by basalts, with peaty prairies at the
bottom, then over Tertiary marls, and, in the latitude of the railways, they
pass into a gorge cut through the granites before losing themselves to the
north in the salitral. A small agricultural oasis is sustained by the waters of
the Valcheta.

The site of Valcheta has an exceptional importance in the story of
Patagonian colonization. It marks a necessary stage in the Indian track from
the Atlantic to Nahuel Huapi, which is now followed by the line of the
railway. Musters halted there. The track from Choele Choel, on the Rio
Negro, to the southern coast and the Santa Cruz also passed by there. It was
so much used, says Ezcurra, that the hoofs of the horses had hollowed it.72
The Argentine village dates from 1890. At first it lived by supplying fodder
to the convoys of wagons which carried the wool. The railway has
suppressed this traffic, and the only outlet of the oasis to-day is the small
port of San Antonio, where the wool is shipped, and where the district is
unsuitable for any kind of cultivation.

Like the coast region, the Valcheta district seems marked out by its
moderate altitude to serve as winter pasture. In point of fact, it is used
during the whole year. The springs do not dry up in summer. The streams
which flow from the south toward the Bajo de Valcheta are permanent. In
addition, a few wells have been bored in the Tertiary strata. Contrary to
experience on the coast, therefore, cattle can be kept here during the
summer. There is less chance for the grasses to reproduce, and the pasture
tends to become impoverished.

The third zone, 130 miles from the coast, is that of the tableland of the
Cerros Colorados, where low masses of red granite rise like an archipelago
amongst the Tertiary formations deposited in the intervening depressions. In
the west its altitude rises from 650 to 1,300 feet. It is one of the poorest
parts of the tableland, and the size of the flock is reduced to 600 head to the
square league. The naked rock crops up, not covered, as it is further east, by
a bed of gravel. In the valleys there is little water, and it lies very deep.
There are no periodical removals of the animals. Winter and summer they
remain within range of a few poor springs, which are caused by various
outcrops of lava of limited extent; and they leave these, and wander over
the tableland, only in the rainy season.

Beyond the Cerros Colorados the line rises rapidly, and at Maquinchao it
reaches the basin of Lake Carilaufquen. This occupies the bottom of a
closed depression, at an altitude of 3,000 feet, dominated on every side by a
plateau of lava, toward which, in the south, a number of important valleys
run (Nahuel Niyeu, Quetriquile, Maquinchao). These valleys rise in the
south in the basalt plateau, at a height of 4,000 and 4,700 feet, and have no
running water except at their upper ends. South of Carilaufquen they open
upon a broad plain, round which there is a sombre cornice of lava, about
350 feet high. Water has collected on the plain, which consists of alluvial

beds redistributed by wind: angular pebbles from the terraces, fine dust
from the mallinas, and sand from the dunes round the lake.

This region is much better than that of the Cerros Colorados. There are
many springs at the base of the lava-flows, on the sides of the valleys, and it
has as yet not been necessary to look for the subterranean sheets which
accompany some of the valleys. The elevated basin of the Quetriquile,
though it is only occupied by intrusos, seems to have a particularly high
pastoral density, and, I am told, feeds 500,000 sheep. In the western part of
the region the spring is late, and there is risk of snow during the lambing
season. There are, however, no rams there; the lambs are brought from
Maquinchao. This arrangement of special zones for the multiplication of the
flock enables them rapidly to improve the breed. Here again there are no
removals of the animals to a great distance in order to use the pasture. The
vegetation of the valleys suffered from the continuous presence of the
flocks during the years of drought before 1914; the reproduction of useful
grasses was prevented. There is, however, less danger here than on the
Cerros Colorados, because the mallinas are extensive, and they suffice for
feeding the sheep during the periods when the manantiales of the tableland
dry up, and the animals are confined to the valleys.

The fifth region comprises the high ridge which divides the basin of the
Carilaufquen from Nahuel Huapi, the water of which flows northward
toward the Limay and southward toward the Chubut: successive eruptions
have covered the surface with lava and ash, which at Añecon rise to a height
of 6,700 feet. The granite platform which emerges in the north, at the Cerro
Aspero and the Quadradito, rises to a height of 4,400 and 4,700 feet, and in
some places presents a bold and rejuvenated aspect. The whole has been cut
up in all directions by erosion, and it affords comparatively easy means of
getting about, which the Indian tracks have followed. Below the higher
slopes the valleys deepen into gorges, and these broaden out in the soft tufa

and are lost at the cross-streams of lava or the outcrops of the granite. In so
varied a land, with such marked differences of altitude, the winter and
summer pastures are always close together. Precipitation is more plentiful
than at a distance from the Cordillera; the pasturage is richer, and the size of
the flock rises to 1,600 sheep to the league. The sheep pass the winter on
the lower slopes, where they are sheltered from the winds and the snow.
They descend to the mallin when the dry season sets in and makes the soil
firm. In summer they go on to the tablelands, where the pastures extend to a
height of 5,000 feet.

Bailey Willis, studying the improvements that might be made in the
pastoral processes, concluded that the essential point was to use each
pasturage in its best season, and establish a carefully considered rotation on
the various lands. This system, which alone would enable them to nurse the
natural resources of the scrub in the way of plants for fodder, is used to-day
in only a small number of districts—in the east, where the flocks winter on
the coastal plain and spend the summer on the Somuncura tableland, and in
the west, round the Añecon, where the summer and winter pastures are not
far from each other. The custom ought to be general. The area which ought
to be reserved for winter pasture comprises the coastal plains, the whole of
the low-lying district round Valcheta, and the lower part of the valleys to the
south of the Carilaufquen. They are less extensive than the available
summer pastures, but their capacity could be enlarged by developing the
irrigated areas in the Bajo de Valcheta, and sowing lucerne in the mallinas
of the basin of the Carilaufquen. The low valleys round the Carilaufquen
ought to be reserved for winter pasture. In the summer the sheep would be
taken south to the higher-level valleys, which afford permanent pasture.
From there they would spread after the melting of the snow, and after the
first rains in autumn, over the high tablelands which surround them.

This plan is obstructed in the first place by the actual terms of ownership,
which were imprudently fixed before the examination of the country in
detail had been concluded. Thus the Maquinchao ranch, in the lower valley,
does not own the upper valley with the summer pastures that ought to
belong to it. A more serious obstacle is that it is extremely difficult to
remove the sheep. It is not merely roads that are wanting, but a water
supply at the various stages.73

Between the railway that runs from San Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapi
and the Rio Negro, there is a desert region about seventy miles in width.
Red sandstone predominates in it, and it remains uninhabited. North of this
travesia the valley of the Rio Negro opens. Its width between Neuquen and
Patagones ranges from five to fifteen miles. Its slope diminishes gradually
toward the bottom (from 0.67 to 0.49 per 1,000 above Chelfaro; from 0.45
to 0.29 per 1,000 above Conesa).

The sandstone and marl cliffs which enclose it become gradually lower
as one goes downward. They dominate the valley at a height of 650 feet at
the confluence of the Neuquen, and are only 100 to 130 feet high at
Patagones. At the foot of them are broad terraces cut by dissymetrical
ravines, in which the beds of sandstone outcrop on the western slope,
exposed to the winds, while the eastern slopes are covered with gravel. On
the banks of the river there is a strip about two miles wide with abundant
herbaceous vegetation between lines of willows. This is covered by the
normal floods. The remainder of the river plain, to the foot of the cliffs, has
only a thin scrub, with dunes at intervals. Saline clays here overlie the river
gravels. The level of the underground water, which is fed by the river, sinks
lower as one goes from the banks toward the cliffs. Few parts of the
tableland have so desolate an aspect as the bottom of these great Patagonian
valleys, when they have not been transformed by irrigation. The pasturage

is poor. At Conesa, however, the valley (costa) is used as summer pasture
when there is a shortage of water on the surrounding tableland (planeza).

The water-supply is good, the volume of the river ranging from 200 to
900 cubic metres a second. Low water lasts from February to April (end of
the summer). From May to July the river has sudden and violent floods—an
effect of the autumn rains. The curve sinks again in August and September,
to rise once more in October and December, when the snow melts on the
Andes. The Limay, the upper basin of which contains large, lacustrine
sheets, is more regular than the Neuquen, which has very pronounced low-
water, as well as dangerous floods in the autumn. The first attempts at
irrigation date from 1885, when the canal of the Roca colony was dug.
Others were made lower down at a later date. The co-operative groups
organized for the administration of the canals have not been quite as
successful as might have been expected. The advance of agricultural
colonization has been slow. Costly preparatory work is needed to level the
ground and organize the drainage, otherwise saline patches form and spread
like leprosy at the expense of the cultivable areas. Lastly, the centre of the
valley is exposed to floods.74

The chief crops are
lucerne, cereals, and the
vine. All the efforts and
hopes of the colonists are
now centred upon the vine.
It is for the purpose of
extending the vineyards
Click to view
that they are endeavouring
to secure more workers. larger image.
These are a singularly
mixed lot, Chileans from

the Neuquen rubbing
shoulders with Latin
immigrants (Italian and
Spanish) from the region
of the Pampas.

The lucerne is made up
in bales and exported by
rail to Bahía Blanca and THE PATAGONIAN
Buenos Aires. The TABLELAND (NEUQUEN).
economic life of the
agricultural oasis of the Indigenous vegetation. Rocks eroded by
Rio Negro is no more wind.
connected with that of the Photographs by Windhausen, Mining Division.

pastoral tableland than is
Plate XIV.
life on the Chubut. Neither
sheep nor cattle are Click to view
fattened on the Rio Negro.
It is a curious contrast to larger image.
the spectacle offered by
the Andean regions of western and north-western Argentina, where for
generations there has been a close association between the breeding
industry of the scrub and the fattening on the lucerne-farms. This is because
the currents of the cattle-trade are not here as permanent and stable as they
are in the north. The time when the convoys of Pampean cattle bound for
Chile used the valley of the Rio Negro preceded the agricultural
colonization of the banks of the river. The conquest of Patagonia put an end
to this traffic. There was an interval of twenty-five years between the period
of the export of Pampean cattle to Chile and the export of cattle from the
Neuquen to Buenos Aires, to which I will refer presently. As to sheep-
breeding, it did not for a long time rear the animals for the meat-market,

and it is only a few years since it found transport necessary. The farmers of
the Rio Negro, who have little capital, and who sell and are paid in advance
for their dry fodder, have not yet been able to take advantage of the
reorganization of the cattle-trade.

West of the confluence of the Neuquen and the Limay the railway
ascends the sandstone tableland, from 1,700 to 3,000 feet high, and goes as
far as the foot of the first sub-Andean chain, the Zapala ranch. The eruptive
rocks here have thrown up the sandstone, and the profiles raised north and
south of Zapala, across the Sierra de la Vaca Muerta and the Cerro Lotena,
cut through folds of Mesozoic strata which have been reduced by erosion to
the level of the plateau. One already feels the vicinity of the Cordillera.
Pasture is plentiful, the mallin is thick, and springs abound. The sheep-area
stretches westward of Zapala, as far as the Rio Cataluin and the Rio Agrio.
East of Zapala, on the other hand, the desolate condition of the country gets
worse and worse. The supplies of water dry up in the summer, and the
entire zone that lies east of 70° W. long. is useless, on account of the lack of
permanent water, except as winter commonage. Hence, transhumation is
here indispensable. It has been practised for a long time on the Chilean
slope of the Cordillera from the latitude of Coquimbo and San Juan to the
north of Lake Quillen. At present it tends to disappear from the Andes of the
Neuquen.75 But there is still transhumation on the Argentine side. The sheep
of the plateau, driven from their winter pasture when the water dries up,
ascend the Cordillera. Sometimes the mountains are not yet free from snow.
In that case the journey is delayed, and the sheep feed on the way, to the
great detriment of the land they cross.

There are many routes, and frequently they coincide with those which
were formerly taken by the cattle of the Pampas in ascending to the passes
of the Cordillera. Groeber mentions a transhumation track south of the Rio
Barrancas and Lake Carri Lauquen. From the left bank of the Neuquen the

flocks ascend by Chosmalal and Butamallin to the pasture of the Pichachen
pass, or by Las Lajas to the Pino Hachado pass. From Zapala and the
tableland further south they go to spend the summer in the Cataluin
Cordillera, where the number of sheep in summer is calculated to be
70,000. Others go still further, to the source of the Alumine and the Arco
pass. The volcano Lanin almost marks the southern limit of the zone of
transhumation. The chief group of migrating sheep comes from the district
of the Coyunco, the Cañadon Grande, and the Picun Leucu.

Transhumation is practised only by the intrusos. They go from the
unowned lands of the tableland to the unowned lands of the Cordillera. The
renting of winter pasture to owners is quite exceptional. The concessions of
land granted by the Argentine Government are steadily reducing the area of
the migrators in the Cordillera, and also the ways of communication
between the tableland and the mountains. The proprietors do not care to
receive the migrating flocks, and they put obstacles in their way by
enclosing the land. The routes of the transhumation are now fixed by the
spaces which remain open between the enclosed ranches. Moreover, the
migrating intrusos are haunted by the fear of finding the winter pasture
occupied by others during their absence, and they have no proprietary title.
The splitting up of the land and the organization of ownership will before
long lead to the extinction of the practice of transhumation, and the greater
part of the winter pasturage will be turned into permanent pasture by boring
wells and nursing the water-supply.

The district round the Zapala ranch has become very busy since the
construction of the railway, which has deeply affected the conditions of life
there. It has made a sort of capital of Zapala. It is curious to contrast the
renaissance which has followed upon the appearance of the railway in this
district with the much less material changes which it has made at
Maquinchao. The life which the railway concentrates at Zapala includes not

only the wool trade, as at Maquinchao, but also the cattle trade. The herds
which are to be exported gather round the ranch at the same time as the
tropas of wagons, and a good price is paid for the right of pasturage. While
the Maquinchao line ends at the port of San Antonio, which is merely fitted
up for the export of wool, the Zapala railway feeds the refrigerator at Bahía
Blanca. It joins up with the network of railways of the Pampa. Sheep arrive
at Zapala, not only from the surrounding district and from the Neuquen, but
from a good part of the Rio Negro, and even the Chubut. The convoys of
animals coming from the south find it best to keep near the Cordillera,
where the pasturage is better. Only a few of them descend the Limay as far
as Senillosa. From Zapala to Senillosa there is no suitable road in
connection with the railway, and further east it is necessary to go as far as
Choele Choel to find tracks which lead to it. The exporting of the sheep
lasts five months, from November to March.

Zapala station is also a point of convergence of herds of cattle. There are
people at Zapala who still remember the time when the cattle brought from
the Pampa to go to Chile passed through their valley. Although these
exports of Pampean cattle to Chile ceased after 1885, the whole Andean
region of the Neuquen still lived entirely on the Chilean market until very
recently. The attraction of the Chilean market is one of the reasons for the
survival of transhumation. It was to the advantage of the Argentine breeders
to keep near the Cordillera and the passes through which the buyers came
from Chile in the summer. The life of the small centres in the upper valleys
which developed rapidly after the conquest (Chosmalal, Ñorquin, Codihue,
Junin, and San Martin) was bound up with the Chilean cattle trade, and was
reflected on the opposite side of the Andes in the prosperity of the
corresponding markets in Chile.

In the years immediately preceding 1914, a sudden revolution upset the
cattle traffic on the Neuquen, and the attraction of Buenos Aires took the

place of that of the Chilean market. The commercial influence of Buenos
Aires was first felt in the wool-market. The tropas of wagons which brought
wool to Zapala loaded up, in exchange, with the flour and salt that were
needed for sheep-breeding in the pastures of the Cordillera (pastos dulces).
The import trade followed the path traced by the export trade. The small
Chilean wagons which still cross the Cordillera now only bring to the
Neuquen the coarse flour of Chile, haricot beans, and wine. They return
empty to Chile. After the wool-buyers, the cattle-merchants of Buenos Aires
next found their way to the Cordillera. The centres where the sales of cattle
for Chile used to be held are now in decay, and have lost part of their
population. The cattle are sent to the fattening centres on the Pampa, or to
the Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires markets. Thus we have under our eyes,
unexpectedly, in the north of Patagonia a transformation that occurred
gradually half a century ago in all the western and north-western parts of
Argentina. In its many forms it is the essential fact in the modern history of
Argentine colonization. The more distant provinces are detached in
succession from foreign markets, and the whole national life is being
organized round the great economic focus which the region of the Pampas
has become.

CHAPTER VI
THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

The limits of the prairie—The rains—The wind and the formation
of the clay of the Pampas—The wind and the contour—The
zones of colonization on the Pampas—Hunting wild cattle
and primitive breeding—The sheep-farms—The ranches—
The region of "colonies"—The region of lucerne, maize, and
wheat—The combination of agriculture and breeding—The
economic mechanism of colonization—The exchanges
between the different zones of the Pampas.

The Pampean landscape is doubtless one of the most uniform in the
world. Its monotony is tiring to the eye; it is partly responsible for the
mediocrity of most of the descriptions of the Pampas. But this uniformity is
an advantage for the purpose of colonization. Attention has often been
drawn to the rapidity with which plants and animals introduced by
Europeans spread in the Buenos Aires district, and, pushing ahead of the
breeders and farmers, colonized the Pampas. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, when the whole extent of the plain beyond the ancient
Indian frontier was occupied, the development of it was so much easier
because it was possible to use simpler and more uniform methods of
exploitation. It needed neither large capital nor long personal experience on

the part of the immigrant. Basques and Italians who had only just landed
could take an active part in it almost without apprenticeship. The primitive
groups of population could advance from one zone of the plain to another
and take with them their own methods of farming and breeding, their own
form of rural economy.

A close study will, however, enable us to detect appreciable physical
differences in the Pampean plain. Neither climate nor soil is the same all
over it.

The name "Pampa" chiefly means a vegetal growth, a prairie. Its limits
are the frontier of the scrub (monte), and strange as it may seem, it is still
difficult to trace them exactly. North of Santa Fé, between the Salado and
the Paraná, the Pampa stretches as far as Fives-Lille, a little beyond 30° S.
lat.76 On the Central Norte and the Central Argentine lines the fringe of the
monte reaches to Fuertin Inca and Malbran, about 170 miles north-west of
Santa Fé. It then turns south-east and south, passing round the entire
depression of Los Porongos and Mar Chiquita; and the line from Santa Fé
to Córdoba crosses it at Francia and approaches the Rio Secundo. South of
the Rio Secundo it goes westward and joins the foot of the Sierra de
Córdoba south of the Rio Tercero (at the stream Tequia). From this point to
La Cambre, some sixteen miles east of San Luis, the prairie extends as far
as the edge of the sierras, and penetrates into the southern half of the
Conlara depression, between the hills of Córdoba and of San Luis (Pampa
de Naschel). The mimosa forest enters the steppe in narrow belts along the
Rio Quinto to within a few leagues below Villa Mercedes, along the Rio
Tercero as far as the confluence of the Saladillo, and along the Salado to the
south of Santa Fé. There are, in addition, many isolated clumps of chañares
and more extensive patches of wood in the north-west corner of the prairie
(Santa Fé province). The monte along the Salado is continued south of
Santa Fé along the Paraná, as far as the point where the chief arm of the

river reaches the cliffs on the right bank, at San Lorenzo. This is the domain
of the ombu, a tree with thick trunk and naked roots which is found
scattered over the prairie in the Paraná region as far as south of Buenos
Aires.

In the west, between San Luis and the mouth of the Colorado, the
transition from the Pampa to the monte is gradual. Just as at Santa Fé, the
approach of the monte is announced by the appearance of chañares, in the
south-west corner of the Córdoba province and on the southern slope of the
Sierra de la Ventana. The monte, properly so called, though impoverished,
invaded by the jarilla, and mainly composed (as in northern Patagonia) of
dwarf mimosas, covers the area of the Pampean sierras on the left bank of
the Chadi Leuvu and the Colorado. Between this area and a line passing
through Rancul, Anguil, Atreuco, and Bernasconi, where the naked prairie
begins, there is a mixed zone which one may call the calden zone. This
mimosa, a near relative of the algarroba, which has a wider range than the
other plants of the monte in this latitude, forms woods at intervals in the
south of the San Luis province and on the flanks of the parallel valleys of
the central Pampa. Between these woods the tableland is generally covered
by the prairie, with occasional patches of chañares. About twenty-five miles
east of Buena Esperanza the line from San Rafael touches the far corner of
a forest of caldenes, which stretches south-westward, and reaches the Rio
Salado about 35° 30′ S. lat. Beyond Buena Esperanza it keeps on the prairie
as far as the crossing of the Salado, which here marks the limit of the
monte. The Rio Negro line passes directly from the prairie to the Patagonian
scrub mid-way between Bahía Blanca and the Colorado.

Within these limits the prairie extends without a break. The sierras of the
Buenos Aires province have no arborescent vegetation.

The zone of the prairie, intermediate between tropical Argentina and the
sub-desert regions of western Patagonia, has a medium rainfall. It decreases
gradually from north-east to south-west. There is a rainfall of 1,200 to 1,000
millimetres on the lower Paraná, and only 400 to 600 millimetres on the
western edge of the Pampa. The zone which lies between the 800
millimetres and 600 millimetres average is more than 270 miles in breadth.
But what is most characteristic of the climate of the Pampa is the equal
distribution of the rain throughout the year, and the absence of a real dry
season. In this the Pampa differs from the surrounding regions, both in the
south-west and the north. At Buenos Aires the six months of the (relatively)
dry season yield, nevertheless, 44 per cent. of the total rainfall, and at Bahía
Blanca 40 per cent. This regularity diminishes in proportion as one
approaches the coast. At Rosario the six months of the dry season only yield
30 per cent. of the year's rain; at Villa Mercedes (San Luis province) 25 per
cent. When one goes beyond the limits of the prairies the ratio of rain in the
dry season decreases rapidly; it is only 20 per cent. at Córdoba and 18 per
cent. at San Luis. At Córdoba, the curve of the rainfall indicates a typical
tropical regime, with a summer maximum and a very low minimum in
winter. Passing south-eastward from Córdoba, at Bellville, Villa Maria and
especially Rosario, the dryness of the winter diminishes, and at the same
time a secondary minimum appears in the middle of summer (January-
February). At Buenos Aires, the form of the curve changes completely. The
summer minimum is almost as low as the winter minimum, and most of the
rainfall is in the spring (September) and the beginning of the autumn
(March).77

These various shades of the Pampean climate are of essential importance
in the history of colonization and the spread of cultivation. The belt of
summer rain is the belt of maize-growing, whereas the cultivation of wheat
requires spring rain and a comparatively dry summer.

While the isohyetic curves, which represent the precipitation for the
whole year, are orientated from north-west to south-east, the curves of
rainfall during the cold season, from April to September (dry season in the
north), cut diagonally across the preceding, and are oriented directly north
and south. Bahía Blanca receives in winter as much rain as Rosario, and
General Acha (in the district of the central Pampa) as much as Córdoba.
Unless one attends to this, one cannot explain the extension of wheat-
growing, in the south-west, as far as the 400 millimetre curve, and even
beyond it on the Atlantic coast.

The relief of the Pampean plain is known fairly accurately, thanks to the
observations made along the railways. The ground rises slowly toward the
west. The 100-metre curve describes a deep gulf some 300 miles west-
south-west of Buenos Aires. The belt comprised between 100 and 150
metres above sea-level is more than sixty miles broad in the latitude of
Santa Fé, and 130 miles in the latitude of Buenos Aires. Beyond the 150-
metre curve the land rises rapidly toward the west and north-west, and
reaches 400 metres in the Córdoba district and 500 in the Villa Mercedes
district. It is at the altitude of 150 metres, and the break in the inclination
which this marks, that the Rio Quinto is lost, near Amarga, south of General
Lavalle.

The ridge between the Pampa and the basin of the Salado in the south of
the San Luis province is about 450 metres above sea-level. South of the
province of Buenos Aires the Sierras de Tandil and de la Ventana are joined
together by a ridge which does not fall below 200 metres. Certain
irregularities of the surface, such as the depression of Mar Chiquita to the
east of Córdoba, the thrust of the plateau on the right bank of the Paraná,
south of Villa Constitución and San Nicolas, can, apparently, only be
explained by recent tectonic movements.

The Pampean deposits which cover the plain rest upon a rocky base of
which the salient representatives are the sierras of the province of Buenos
Aires and the hills at Córdoba and San Luis. This base also appears east of
the Pampean basin in the granite island of Martin Garcia, in the middle of
the estuary of the Plata, and in the hills on the coast of Uruguay.78

Underneath the even sheet of the alluvial deposits the surface of the sub-
Pampean platform is very irregular. Its shape has been discovered by deep
borings in search of arterial waters. It has been warped and cut up by faults,
some of these deformations being probably synchronous with the formation
of the Pampean deposits which have concealed them as they have been
produced. A subterranean rocky ridge continues the Sierra de Córdoba
southward and joins it with the sierras of the Colorado. The granite emerges
at Chamaico, on the western railway, and on both sides the borings have
passed through great depths of clay and sand.79 This ridge isolates the
eastern Pampa from the sub-Andean chains, and marks the limit of the area
with sheets of underground water. In the north of the Pampean region,
between the Sierra de Córdoba and the Paraná, the loose continental
formations are more than 2,000 feet thick at Bellville, and more than 3,500
feet north-west of Santa Fé (fodder farms of San Cristobal and El Tostado).
At Buenos Aires the granite has been found 985 feet below the surface.

The Pampean formation
consists almost entirely of
loose deposits, sand and
clays of various sorts.
There is no gravel.80 Even
in the vicinity of the
sierras the beds of gravel,
with round or angular

pebbles, are almost always THE PAMPEAN PLAIN.
covered by clay, and are
exposed only in the banks TRES ARROYES (BUENOS
of the streams. Olascoaga AIRES PRAIRIE BETWEEN
mentions the surprise of
the gauchos of General
THE SIERRA DE TANDIL
Roca's army when they AND THE SIERRA DE LA
found Patagonian pebbles VENTANA).
on the ground during their
stay at Choele Choel on Zone of wheat and oats on large scale. The
the Colorado, in the course Pampa is a tableland here (400 feet above
of the campaign on the Rio sea-level), with clay overlying the limestone
Negro. Officers and of the Tosca. The valleys are well marked.
soldiers dismounted to Photograph by the Author.

pick them up. Sand and
clay form a thick bed of Click to view
continental alluvia. The larger image.
Tertiary maritime
transgressions, which have
left their mark in the clays
and limestones of the left
bank of the lower Paraná,
and the layers of shells at
San Pedro on the right
bank, never penetrated far
into the interior of the
Pampean region, and one
finds no trace of them
THE PAMPEAN PLAIN.
when one leaves the coast
or the river. TOAY, ON THE CENTRAL

The source of the PAMPA (590 FEET).
elements which compose
the Pampean alluvia is The tableland, with a strong framework of
very uncertain. Their limestone Tosca, is cut across by well-marked
composition does not dry valleys which sink lower toward the east.
clearly show their origin. At the edges of the valleys the sand is the
The clays are prey of the winds. Here we are near the limit
comparatively rich in of the wheat belt.
calcareous matter, which Photograph by the Author.

seems to indicate that they
Plate XV.
do not come from tropical
America or the upper basin Click to view
of the Paraná. Wright and
Fenner insist upon the high larger image.
proportion of siliceous
glass of volcanic origin which they contain, which points to an intense
eruptive activity during or before their formation.81 Doering had already
noticed in the Córdoba region the prevalence of beds of volcanic ash, which
become thicker as one approaches the sierra. It is certain that the Pampean
sierras have had their share in the formation of the Pampean beds. But the
main mass is probably of Andean origin. However that may be, as soon as
one gets away from the fringe of the mountains, the only variety noticeable
in the lands of the Pampa is that which they owe to the conditions in which
they have been deposited.

River deposits strictly so called, estuary deposits, lagoon deposits, æolian
deposits, æolian deposits redistributed by water, river deposits redistributed
by wind—all these different types are represented in the Pampean
formation, but their relative importance is still disputed.82

When we confine ourselves to studying the actual conditions in which the
deposits were formed, we are first struck by the poverty of the hydrographic
network of the Pampa. It is slight except in the vicinity of the sierras, where
the slope of the ground is pronounced, and in the eastern area, on the right
bank of the Paraná and Entre Rios, where the climate is more humid, and
the streams flowing over an impermeable soil more numerous. The only one
of the streams born in the Pampean sierras that reaches the Paraná is the Rio
Tercero or Carcaraña. All the others dwindle as they descend, and disappear
in a low-lying district marked by lagoons which they only reach in time of
flood. The floods themselves never bring the Rio Cuarto and the Rio Quinto
and the Salado de Buenos Aires into touch with each other. The waters of
the northern slope of the Sierra de Tandil, and even those of the Sierra de
Curumalal, on the other hand, reach the Salado after the rains, either by way
of streams which drain the strings of lagoons, or by flood-sheets, which
spread over large areas.

The watercourses of the plain are unstable in their direction. The traces of
their wanderings remain in the form of stretches of alluvial sand crossing
the fine æolian clays. These river sands sometimes spread over extensive
areas, the distribution depending upon a hydrographic scheme which is now
partially effaced. The sands of the departments of General Lopez (south of
the Santa Fé province) and General Arenales (Buenos Aires province),
where the Salado is now developed, were probably brought by the Rio
Cuarto, and mark an earlier junction of the Cuarto and the Salado. These
sands run along the Salado as far as the confluence of the Saladillo, and the
contrast between the light soil and the clay of the bank of the Paraná is so
striking that the sand has long been regarded as a marine deposit, indicating
an ancient shore. Along the Saladillo also, north-west of the Guamini
lagoons, there is a sandy belt which corresponds with an important direction
taken by the actual flow of the river, crossing the Bolivar and Veinte Cinco
de Mayo departments.

While the agency of running water in transporting alluvia is confined to
certain sections of the plain, the action of the wind is seen over its entire
surface. The wind everywhere supplements or replaces running water. Like
running water, it classifies the elements it conveys, and selects them
according to their weight and size, the finest clays being deposited in the
moist eastern zone and the coarsest sands in the sub-desert zone of the west.
The mechanism of erosion explains this contrast. The grains of sand that are
driven by the wind travel at the surface of the ground as long as the
vegetation is too sparse to fix them. If one goes further east, to a moister
district with a thicker vegetal carpet, the grains of sand no longer move at
the surface of the ground, but the wind still carries fine particles of clay,
which it bears to a great height. The bed of clay does not at all imply an arid
climate, as is said sometimes, but corresponds to the region of the steppes,
with moderate rainfall. It is, however, during dry seasons that the deposition
of clay is at its greatest. Darwin mentions that after the droughts of 1827-
1830 in the area round the Paraná, the marks were buried under dust to such
an extent that one could no longer recognize the limits of the various lands.
Apart, however, from these sorts of floods or storms of dust caused by the
pampero, the summer atmosphere is clearly laden with dust, which colours
the skies in the east of the Buenos Aires province, as far as Entre Rios.

The contour of the plain bears, like the soil, the double marks of erosion
by running water and æolian erosion. The rivers of the Pampa, when they
leave the sierras, flow between high cliffs, the height diminishing as one
goes downward. Presently these barrancas become low, approach each
other, and at last merely mark the banks of a larger bed which the floods
fill. There is no trace of valleys. Bailey Willis, surprised at this weakness of
watercourses that have, nevertheless, an appreciable fall, attributes it to the
fact that the cycle of erosion opened by the last upheaval of the Pampa has
not yet had time to penetrate into the interior. In reality, it means that here

we are at the limit of the zone of erosion by running water, and that in this
climate the essential factor in shaping the landscape is the wind.

The region of the right bank of the Paraná (east of the Salado), which
alone has a complete hydrographic network, must be considered apart.
From the latitude of Rosario to that of Buenos Aires it is cut by flat-
bottomed valleys which are sometimes a hundred feet deep. The excavation
of these valleys is due to an upheaval which raised this part of the Pampa
above the base-level. The rapids of the lower Carcaraña also bear witness to
this resumption of excavation. Farther on an inverse movement has put the
bottom of the valleys below this level, and led to their being filled up
(lagoon deposits of the Lujanense of Ameghino). South of Buenos Aires the
upheaval has been less important, and the valleys are not so deep. Some of
them (middle Salado and its tributaries on the left bank) are now occupied
by long lagoons with steep banks, branching along the side-valleys, and
these owe their origin to the same negative movement, subsequent to the
excavation of the valleys. The upheaval did not extend to the eastern part of
the province of Buenos Aires south of the Salado, a low-lying flat area,
badly drained, exposed to floods, the contour of which has been minutely
studied in connection with the construction of a great network of drainage-
canals. North of Rosario, on the only slightly permeable clay, the water
circulates, after rain, not by means of valleys in the proper sense, but along
broad and almost imperceptible depressions (cañadas) where the current is
slow, and the water dries up in the dry season. Their general relations are
not yet known.

The loose deposits of the Pampean offer little resistance to erosion. The
cycles are run through rapidly, and the traces of earlier cycles are faint, and
are soon effaced.83

An ancient erosion-surface, dissected by the existing valleys, has
survived in the south-west of the Pampean plain, thanks to the presence on
the surface of a sheet of hard limestone, the tosca. The tosca is the result of
the concentration of calcareous elements contained in clay at the surface in
a dry climate. The formation of it implies a prolonged stability of the
surface on which it has accumulated. Like the deep decomposition-soils in
moister regions, it indicates a peneplain on which erosion has ceased. The
bed of tosca covers the whole district between the Sierra de Tandil and the
Sierra de la Ventana, the south-western slope of the Ventana, and most of
the area of the central Pampa. In the north it does not go beyond the line
from Buenos Aires to San Rafael. Its eastern limit goes almost by Ingeniero
Malmen, Monte Nievas, and Atreuco, where it joins the southern bank of
the lagoons of Carhue and Guamini in the east.84 In some places the tosca is
about forty feet thick.

To-day the region of the tosca forms a plateau cut by narrow valleys,
sometimes 200 feet deep, west of the Sierra de la Ventana and in the central
Pampa. These parallel valleys, with few ramifications, generally lying
south-west to north-east, open to the east upon the Pampean plain about the
frontier of the Buenos Aires province. On the other hand, the southernmost
of them begin at the foot of the Ventana, and seem to blend in the south-
west with a general depression that is still little known, though it appears to
end at the bottom of the estuary of Bahía Blanca. None of them has
permanent running water.85 The origin of the dry valleys of the tosca is one
of the most obscure problems of the morphology of the Pampean plain.
Perhaps they are due to æolian erosion, like the depressions which are
found on the plateau of the Colorado and the Rio Negro further south.

The action of the wind in shaping the landscape is more clearly seen in
the formation of the dunes. When one starts from Buenos Aires or Rosario,
and gets beyond the region of the level Pampas, the dunes are the first

feature to meet the eye on the surface of the plain. The first fresh dunes are
encountered at Carlota, on the line from the Rio Cuarto; at Lavalle on the
line from Villa Mercedes; and at Trenque Lauquen on the line from Toay.
The dunes spread northward as far as the latitude of Mar Chiquita, but do
not enter the Chaco. They are also found in parts of the scrub on the west,
but their proper domain is the western border of the steppe, the upper part
of the plain at the foot of the Sierra de Córdoba, the south of the San Luis
province, and the central Pampa.

Any accident that causes the vegetal covering to disappear, such as the
tread of cattle near a drinking place or an enclosure, is enough to set æolian
erosion at work. The wind raises the sand in a sort of tossing sea. Then the
dune assumes a circular shape. A depression appears in the centre, and it
deepens until it reaches the average level of the plain. Frequently there is a
little lake in it. From this point onward the deformations are less rapid. The
vegetation again creeps over the ground, and the dune falls a prey to the
rains, which slowly reduce its mass.

In the central Pampa, where the elevation is considerable, the dunes do
not form separate circular patches, but stretch in lines parallel to the valleys
—sometimes in the heart of the valley, at other times backing against one of
its slopes.

Far to the east of the zone of the quick dunes, in the south of the Córdoba
province and the centre of the Buenos Aires province, there are certain soft
undulations, covered with vegetation, with a sandier soil than that of the
plain around them. These are dead dunes. The district of the dead dunes is
characterized by the extreme irregularity of the surface-soil, the humus,
which gains in richness and depth, as a general rule, as one goes eastward,
because there it is in some places covered by recent æolian deposits.

The distribution of the dead dunes is connected with the stretches of river
sand across the Pampa, which have offered an easy victim to the winds. A
line of dead dunes follows the upper course of the Salado in the district of
Junin and Bragado. On the line from Buenos Aires to San Luis one crosses
it between Chacabuco and Vedia, and then one comes again upon the
horizontal plain, which has fresh dunes, only further west, at 120 miles
from Villa Mercedes. Its elevation is so conspicuous on the level plain that
the first breeders who used its pasturage gave it the emphatic name of the
cerillada. D'Azara correctly appreciated the nature of it. "It is," he says,
"only a dune of very fine sand." It is only a few yards high. The dead dunes
of the Bolivar and Veinte Cinco de Mayo departments, which Parchappe
described, have a more conspicuous relief, and in their disposition
sometimes remind us of the fresh circular dunes with a central lagoon. The
lines of coastal dunes in the eastern part of the Buenos Aires province
obstruct the proper flow of the water there, and form a group apart, which
must be clearly distinguished from the dunes on the plain.86

Thus the impression of monotony which the Pampa makes in us is
corrected to some extent by close observation. High and low land alternate
on it. Parchappe himself had noticed the contrast between the area that
stretches from Buenos Aires to the Salado, with its soft undulations and its
well-developed hydrographic network, the horizontal plains on the right
bank of the Salado, with their irregular dunes, and the southern plateau of
the tosca between the Sierra de Tandil and the Sierra de la Ventana.

We may now distinguish the following regions in the Pampa as a whole:

1. The central part of the Santa Fé province forms what is called the
district of the "colonies": that is to say, the domain of the colonies
established two generations ago, and the zone in which the type of

cultivation introduced by them took root. The chief crops here are wheat
and flax. Hedges of service trees (paraisos) surround the fields. In contrast
with the parts of the Pampa which have remained naked, the region of the
colonies seems a veritable grove. It stretches westward beyond the frontier
of the Córdoba province, and it reaches the fringe of the monte between San
Francisco and Mar Chiquita. For the north, Miatello gives 30° S. lat. as the
normal limit of the wheat-growing area; beyond this it suffers both from the
low rainfall of winter and the excessive rainfall in summer. As a matter of
fact, the large estates only reach this latitude on the line from San Francisco
to Ceres. On the Resistencia line, north of Santa Fé, they stop at 30° 30′ S.
lat. In the intervening district the limit of the region of the colonies almost
coincides with that of the department of Castellanos, about 30° 45′ S. lat.
The area lying between this line and the northern edge of the Pampa is
given up to breeding. In the south the region of the colonies stretches as far
as Las Bandurias and Irigoyen.

2. South of the region of the colonies, the tableland on the right bank of
the Paraná, west of Rosario and San Nicolas, is the maize region, the corn
belt of Argentina. Flax is generally cultivated as well as maize. It is the
agricultural country par excellence of Argentina. The soil, of fine clay, dark
red in colour and retentive of moisture, and the abundant summer rains, are
very suitable for maize. The limits of the maize region describe an arc of a
circle round Rosario with a radius of 60 to 100 miles. They do not quite
reach the frontier of Córdoba in the west, and they leave out the entire
south-western corner of the Santa Fé province. The maize belt touches the
Paraná between 32° S. lat. and the Baradero. In the north it passes suddenly
into the region of the colonies. In the south, on the other hand, there is at the
edge of the corn belt an extensive transition-area, where maize and wheat
occupy pretty much the same surface; it stretches as far as the Rio Salado
de Buenos Aires.

3. The region of the lucerne farms is much larger. It comprises the whole
north-west corner of the Buenos Aires province, from the Salado, in the
district of Junin, to the southern limit of the Nueve de Julio and Pehuajo
departments, and as far as the latitude of Guamini. The limit of the lucerne
farms does not include the lands of the central Pampa, but advances
westward and takes in part of the Pedernera department in the San Luis
province. The lucerne farms run along the San Rafael line to Batavia, and at
this point they reach the limits of the colonized zone. In addition, the zone
of the lucerne farms includes the whole south-eastern part of the Córdoba
province, as high up as the line from Villa Mercedes to Villa Maria, and the
southern part of the Santa Fé province. In the whole of this area, fifteen to
twenty-five per cent. of the surface is planted with lucerne. The conditions
required for its cultivation are a moderate depth of the underground water
and a light soil that allows the roots to penetrate easily. The eastern belt of
clays is not good for lucerne, which survives there for much less time than
in the west, where it may live fifteen or twenty years.

The lucerne belt is above all a great breeding area for horned cattle, as
sheep-pasturage injures the lucerne. It is not nearly so monotonous,
however, as the preceding regions. In the south-east, in the Buenos Aires
province, the creation of the lucerne farms was undertaken at a time when
agricultural colonization had already begun. We therefore find two types of
exploitation side by side. The cultivation of maize enters it in the south-
west, in spite of the comparatively unfavourable climatic conditions. The
centre of the lucerne area in the south of the Córdoba province is also a
great agricultural zone; but there agriculture is directly connected with the
creation of the lucerne estates. It is, in fact, entrusted to colonists who till
the ground for four or five years, and restore it to the owners sown with
lucerne at the expiration of their lease. The crops consist almost exclusively
of wheat and flax. Lastly, in the west (San Luis province and extreme south-
west of Córdoba province) the soil gets increasingly more sandy, and the

climate drier. A single tillage suffices to destroy the natural vegetation and
clear the place for lucerne. The lucerne fields have been created by the
breeders themselves, the sole masters of the region, without the aid of the
colonists.

4. Beyond the lucerne belt, at the point where the plain rises toward the
Sierra de San Luis and the Sierra de Córdoba, the subterranean water sinks
deeper. This zone at the foot of the ranges, unsuitable for lucerne, yet with a
soil comparatively rich in humus, has been taken up by agricultural
workers. The wheat area extends, in the San Luis province, as far as Fraga
and Naschel, in the Conlara depression. The maize area extends to
Oncativo, in the Córdoba province, between the Tercero and Secundo
rivers, where the summer rainfall is heavier. Thanks to the nearness of the
mountains, this area has a water-supply for irrigation, and this sustains
several small centres of good farms.

5. The south of the Buenos Aires province and the central Pampa are the
wheat zone. The bed of tosca, which is not far below the soil, does no harm
to the wheat except in years of drought. The valleys, where the tosca is
interrupted, and the dunes, where the soil is deep, are very carefully used
for lucerne fields of limited extent. Wheat-growing seems now, both in this
and the preceding zone, to have reached its limit, as the dryness makes it
improbable that there will be any extension westward.

6. Lastly, the east of the Buenos Aires province, the centre of which is
fairly indicated by the little town of Dolores, is the only part of the
Pampean plain which has not been reached by agricultural colonization.
The land lies low, and is badly drained. The only change that has taken
place in the vegetation is a progressive improvement due to the hoofs of the
cattle during their long stays there. This pastoral area is clearly limited in
the south by the Sierra de Tandil. In the north it is continued in the more

varied region that lies between Buenos Aires and the lower Salado, where
the alternation of winter pasture on the dry lands and summer pasture in the
valleys, encourages the best methods of breeding, and has made it the
region of the dairy industry.

In the Entre Rios province the limit of the large estates of wheat and flax
is marked by 32° S. lat. The part of Entre Rios which extends north of 32°
and the Corrientes province do not strictly belong to the Pampean region.

Extensive breeding was the first form taken by white colonization on the
Pampa. The word breeding is, in fact, hardly the correct name for an
industry that mainly consisted of hunting, and was wholly distinct from the
patient and advanced methods used at the same time in the northern
provinces.

"The real wealth of the province of Buenos Aires," says Dean Funes,
"was, and always will be, the trade in hides" (la pellejería).87 A good part of
the hides exported came from the hunting of the wild cattle and horses
which had grown numerous on the area of the Pampa beyond the Rio
Salado.88 It was mainly after 1778, when trade with Spain had been
authorized and there was an increased demand for hides, that the hunting of
these ownerless beasts was taken up. Two thousand Spaniards from Buenos
Aires, Santa Fé and Mendoza hunted every day, says D'Azara, killing an
animal for each of their meals in addition to those they killed for hides.
From 1775 to the Revolution, the Spanish Government made continuous
efforts to regulate and reduce the massacre of the herds. It laid down
penalties for every person selling hides that did not bear his own mark; it
farmed out the right to hunt animals with no mark, and organized the
destruction of wild dogs, etc. The ranches developed under shelter of this
legislation. Still, the Revolution did not witness the end of this cattle-

hunting. D'Orbigny took part in 1828 in two hunts of wild horses
(baguales) in Entre Rios. The Argentine gaucho long retained the ways of a
hunter rather than those of a breeder in the strict sense; witness Urquiza's
soldiers who, says Demersay, during the campaign of 1846, when they
could not find trees to which they could fasten their horses, killed cattle and
tied the reins to their horns.

Passing from the hunting country to the zone of ranches, one notices that
the main work of the breeder is to prevent his cattle from running wild.
"The ranches of this country," said Dean Funes, "having been set up on
immense plains, on which it was not easy to confine the herds within fixed
limits, it sometimes happened that the animals went vast distances in search
of water or pasture, and ended by being regarded as wild and ownerless,"
When D'Azara wants to show that the ranches of Paraguay are superior to
those of Buenos Aires, he is content to say that there the animals are tamer
(mansos). With the wild animal (alzado) is contrasted the de rodeo animal:
that is to say, the cattle which are rounded up periodically in the centre of
the ranch to be taken to the pasture where they must live (aquerenciar). It is
the difficulty of preventing the dispersal of the herd that fixes the price of
the rincones (surrounded by inundated areas) of Corrientes, in which the
animals are captives.

MacKann's description of pastoral life in the Buenos Aires province in
the middle of the nineteenth century give us a very clear impression of the
stage of transition between exploiting the natural increase of a herd that
multiplies without man's intervention, and breeding in the strict sense. The
value of a horse in the former case is almost exclusively the cost of
breaking it in. The breeder is actually anxious when he sees his horses
increase, as he fears he may not have the resources for breaking them in.
The most formidable of the dangers that threatened the feeble discipline of

the herd was drought. That in the year 1827 was a disaster. The animals left
the ranches in a body to go southward, where they mixed.89

Revolutions and wars interrupted the work of taming the cattle. When
Galvez went from the Córdoba province to Buenos Aires at the end of the
Rosas Government, he was struck by the condition of the ranches.90 Many
of them had been confiscated, or their owners driven into exile. Cattle were
no longer marked, and they had become wild. The troubles of the
emancipation-period were much less injurious to the Buenos Aires breeders
than to those of Entre Rios. The Entre Rios herd was almost annihilated
during the revolution, and some of the ranchers of the left bank crossed to
the right bank of the Paraná. After 1823 the pastoral wealth of Entre Rios
was rapidly restored, thanks to raids on Brazilian territory. They were so
profitable that the whole population took part in them. In 1827 the
inhabitants of Bajada went there in such numbers that the town was half
deserted. Every day thousands of cattle were collected on the bank of the
Uruguay, and crossed the river. Some of them were even taken beyond the
Paraná, to the Santa Fé province. Woodbine Parish confirms this rapid
restoration of Entre Rios, of which D'Orbigny was a witness. But this
period of prosperity did not last long. The war with Uruguay, under Rosas,
again ruined the Entre Rios ranches, and the drought of 1846 helped to
scatter the remaining herds. Extensive breeding is only lightly rooted in the
soil. The chief centres of production change their locality, as the political
circumstances change, from one part of the Pampean plain to another.

Primitive breeding
affords few examples of
periodical migration for
the better use of pasturage.
In 1822, in the course of a
journey amongst the

Sierras de Tandil and de la THE PAMPEAN PLAIN.
Ventana, Colonel Garcia
noticed that the Indians THE RIO BAMBA (IN THE
kept their cattle round the SOUTH OF THE CÓRDOBA
temporary lagoons of the
plain in the winter, and
PROVINCE, 500 FEET
went up to the mountain- ABOVE SEA-LEVEL).
streams in summer.
Small circular lagoons. The underground
Transhumation movements
water, which comes from the Sierras to the
of this kind were difficult
north-west, here reaches the surface. Zone of
for the creole ranchers,
lucerne farms.
whose fairly large herds
Photograph by the Author.
could not be handled
easily. The Chascomus Click to view
breeders, however, at the
close of the eighteenth larger image.
century, drove their cattle
to the low banks of the
Salado during the dry
season.91 Garcia also
notices the importance of
the Salado pastures for the
ranches of Salto, Areco,
and Lujan.92 The need to
remove the herds in the
dry season, and to find
THE PAMPEAN PLAIN.
invernadas within reach of
the former ranches, was BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN
due to the change brought
about in the natural

vegetation of the Pampa LUIS PROVINCE, 1,166
and the spread of the pasto
dulce. The annual herbs FEET ELEVATION).
which compose the pasto The plain is sown with quick and dead dunes,
dulce die and disappear often shaped in a circle round a lagoon. A
after fertilization. Until the dune invaded by vegetation.
autumn rain they leave the Photograph by the Author.
ground quite naked,
whereas the tough grasses Plate XVI.
of the pasto duro afforded
a thin but permanent Click to view
pasture. larger image.

The first improvements of the pastoral industry of the Pampa are
connected with the development of sheep-breeding. Exports of wool began
about 1840, and made great progress after 1855 (17,000 tons in 1860,
65,000 tons in 1870). From 1850 to about 1890 the economic returns on
sheep-breeding were far better than on cattle-breeding. During the whole of
this period the multiplication of sheep farms was only restricted by the
supply of workers. The first shepherds had been Basques, in the south of the
Buenos Aires province, and Irish, in the north. The owner settled them as
small farmers in the puestos on the edge of the ranch, the central part of
which was devoted to cattle. They could thus, while they guarded their
sheep, see that the limits of the estate were respected, and prevent the cattle
from roaming.

Wool was for a long time the only product of the sheep-rearing industry.
From 1866 onward it was decided to use the hides and tallow also. As the
material of the grease-works was cheap, they spread all over the sheep
zone. Many ranches had works of their own. From 1867 to 1877 the

saladeros that had been built long before for killing cattle undertook the
slaughter of sheep on a large scale. The number of sheep sold to the
saladeros rose to 3,000,000 a year. In 1880 the first cargoes of frozen
mutton were sent abroad. The creation of the grease-works had made no
difference to the breeding, but the building of the refrigerators brought
about a rapid transformation of the flock. The Lincoln breed, heavier and
more meaty, displaced the fine-wool Merinos. This substitution of Lincolns
for Merinos is now complete throughout the Pampean region.

Until 1880 sheep-rearing was concentrated east of the Salado, north and
south of Buenos Aires, beginning with a line that passes through Quilmes,
San Vicente, Pilar, and Campana, which marks the limit of the suburban
zone. In addition it had spread on the right bank of the lower Salado as far
as the foot of the Sierra de Tandil, in an area where the first stations date
from 1823, though the population did not make much progress until after
1855. About 1880, after the pacification of the Pampa, the sheep-farms
began to expand westward. It was then that the wool of the pasto fuerte
appeared on the Buenos Aires market. It came from the Azal district in
1870, from Olavarria in 1880, from Bolivar in 1885, and from Villegas in
1890. The Census of 1889 ascribes 51,000,000 sheep to the province of
Buenos Aires; that of 1895 gives much the same figure (52,000,000).
Detailed comparison of the two enumerations shows that the expansive
movement to the west continued, and was completed during this period.
The flocks in the north-west zone of the province (Lincoln, Villegas,
Trenque, Lauquen) more than doubled; the flocks of the south-west area
(Alsina, Puan, Bahía Blanca, Villarino) continued to grow, and increased by
a third. Those on the lands of the central Pampa increased threefold. On the
other hand, in the departments north and south of the Sierra de Tandil,
where colonization is older, sheep-breeding is stationary. The north-east and
south-east areas, between the Paraná and the Salado, have diminished: one
losing a fifth, and the other a half, of its flocks.

From 1895 onward the number of flocks of sheep on the Pampean plain
decreased rapidly. The number of sheep had sunk from 34,000,000 in 1908
to 18,000,000 in 1915 for the Buenos Aires province; from 2,800,000 in
1908 to 2,300,000 in 1914 for the central Pampa. The reduction was
general, and found in every district; but it was not equally great
everywhere, and did not begin at the same date in every district. Sheep-
breeding has almost entirely disappeared from the eastern belt, east of the
Salado, which was its cradle. South of Buenos Aires the sheep are giving
place to horned cattle, and they had almost disappeared by 1908. North of
Buenos Aires they survived long, but the reduction of the flocks has only
been the more rapid since 1908. This corresponds with the advance of
maize-growing. In six years the Bartolome Mitre and Pergamino
departments have lost, respectively, four-fifths and five-sixths of their
sheep. In the north-west of the Buenos Aires province the sheep began to be
reduced at the time when the lucerne farms were founded, about 1900. The
decrease has since gone on uninterruptedly. The actual flocks represent one-
fourth of the flocks of 1895. In the south-west (wheat belt) there was a rapid
shrinkage before 1908, but it seems to have almost been arrested since then,
thanks to the combining of sheep-rearing with wheat and oats. The actual
flocks are about one-half the flocks of 1895. Finally, in the area north of the
Sierra de Tandil the sheep retreat before the cattle, as they do further north,
but they are not so completely wiped out as in the lucerne belt, and the
flocks are still two fifths of the flocks of twenty years ago.

In the province of Entre Rios and south of Corrientes the number of
sheep continued to rise until 1908, but the increase is only in the northern
departments, outside the agricultural belt. The southern departments, which
are large growers of wheat and flax, lost one-third of their flocks between
1895 and 1908.

Cattle-breeding was restricted for a long time by the difficulty of
disposing of its products. The hides alone found ready buyers. The making
and export of salt beef dates from the eighteenth century, and it was to help
this industry that the expeditions to the salt-beds of the Pampa and the
journeys of salters to the Patagonian coast were organized. From 1792 to
1796 no less than 39,000 quintals of jerked beef were sent from the Rio de
la Plata to Havana. But the market for salt meat (tasajo) was always limited.
It consisted only of the Antilles and Brazil, and the saladeros never fully
exploited the meat-producing capacity of the Argentine herds. The crisis of
the saladeros occurred before the time when the refrigerators began to
compete with them. By 1889 there were only three left in the province of
Buenos Aires.

Although the price of cattle was not very remunerative, and provided no
incentive to improve the breeding; although the saladero was not at all
exorbitant, merely asking for animals in good condition, the improvement
of the herd by introducing selected pedigree-breeders had begun about the
middle of the nineteenth century. The Basque dairies established in the
district near Buenos Aires sold pedigree-calves to the ranches, and these
were used for breeding purposes.93 About 1880 the advance of sheep-
breeding pressed the cattle-ranches back and disputed the space with them
more and more, within the ancient Indian frontier. The smallness of the
market for cattle and their slight mercantile value were very favourable
circumstances for the occupation of the new lands, thrown open at this date
by the submission of the Indians. The herds which found no buyers were
sent to the campos de afuera. The ranches developed very rapidly. Daireaux
has very accurately described this period of pastoral colonization, and the
starting of convoys that were intended to give a population to the west of
the Pampa. Cattle were there several years before sheep. As a matter of fact,
breeders do not regard cattle as having a value of their own. They are

merely auxiliaries that must improve the pasture and prepare the ground for
sheep. The cattle themselves are preceded by troops of half-wild horses
which first take possession of the virgin field and begin the transformation
of it.

The number of cattle increases rapidly. In 1875 it was estimated that
there were 5,000,000 head of cattle in the province of Buenos Aires. In
1889 there were 8,500,000. Since that date the variations have been
comparatively slight. The Census of 1895 gives 7,700,000; that of 1908
gives 10,300,000; that of 1914 gives 9,000,000; and that of 1915 gives
11,300,000.94 But the value of the cattle has gone up rapidly. The exports of
live meat, which lasted from 1889 to 1900, were the beginning of the rise. It
was strengthened when the refrigerators ceased to confine themselves to
killing sheep and began to buy cattle. The exports of chilled or frozen beef
increased after 1898. The value of them rose to 10,000,000 gold piastres in
1904, double that in 1909, and more than quadruple in 1914.

The difference between the price paid by the refrigerators for pedigree-
cattle and the price of animals of creole blood, which the local market takes,
hurries up the transformation of the herd. In order to watch reproduction
and nurse the pasture, the ranches put up wire-fences. But the breeding
methods are especially modified by the introduction of lucerne. It spread in
the south of Córdoba and west of the Buenos Aires province from 1895
onward, and from 1905 onward in part of the San Luis province. There
were already small lucerne farms in the Buenos Aires province. A
description that was written at the end of the eighteenth century speaks of
lucerne farms round the town which were reserved for feeding draught
cattle.95 But the area from which the cultivation of lucerne started at the
close of the nineteenth century is the district of the Córdoba province that is
crossed by the line from Rosario to Córdoba, completed about 1870 to
Bellville and Villa Marina. The lucerne farms there were not created by the

breeders, and the lucerne was at first intended for export to Rosario and
Buenos Aires in the form of dry fodder. The trade in dry fodder has
remained good there. The 1908 Census gives 128 square kilometres of
lucerne for cutting in the Tercero Abajo department (Villa Maria) and 267
square kilometres in the Union department (Bellville).96

The lucerne spread
southward and south-
westward from this point;
and the improvement of
the herds kept pace with it.
I have shown elsewhere
how this improvement was
checked north of a line
along the course of the
Paraná, the northern
frontier of the Constitución
and General Lopez
departments, in the
province of Santa Fé and MAP III.—THE CATTLE-
on the Rio Cuarto, and in
the Córdoba province, by
BREEDING AREAS.
the presence of the The density of the herd is slight in the maize
garrapate, which belt. It is considerable in the centre and east
inoculates the cattle with a of the Pampean region, which supply the
dreaded disease, Texas refrigerators with pedigree stock of good
fever. The creole cattle are weight. The density is considerable also in
immunized against the the north of Mesopotamia, but the cattle
garrapate, but pedigree there are less valuable and are taken by the
cattle quickly succumb to saladeros of the Uruguay. The presence of the

it. In order to protect the tick, which inoculates cattle with Texas fever,
southern zone, where the is the chief obstacle to the improvement of
garrapate does not the herd in the north of Argentina.
reproduce, the Argentine
Government imposes Click to view
severe restrictions on the larger image.
transport of cattle from
north to south; the cattle
have to have disinfectant baths at the frontier-stations. This cuts pastoral
Argentina in two. While the Durham cattle of the south are intended for the
refrigerators, the creole cattle of the north still supply the saladeros, which
have disappeared from Buenos Aires, but survive on the Uruguay. Yet the
advantages of crossing with European breeds are such that the northern
breeders, in spite of the risk and the expense, have not given up all hope of
accomplishing it. The transformation of the herd, however, is bound to be
very slow. Pedigree breeders are brought from the south and kept in the
stable. Their progeny, born on the spot, resist Texas fever better and can be
put out to pasture. There has been more progress in the contaminated zone
on the right bank of the Paraná than in Entre Rios and Corrientes. Pedigree
animals have been introduced at Santa Fé, not only in the region of the
colonies, but further north, in the extreme northern corner of the Pampa
(San Cristobal department), colonized by ranchers from the north of Buenos
Aires and the south of Santa Fé, who were ousted by the progress of maize.
They have brought with them to the new lands the cultivation of lucerne
and the methods they followed on their former property. At Corrientes, on
the other hand, breeding is an historic industry. The staff of the ranches is
indigenous. The pastoral traditions are unchanged.

When we study the variations in the numbers of cattle in different parts
of the Pampa, by comparing the results of recent Censuses we find that the
number has risen rapidly since 1895 in the whole of the eastern area, north

of the Sierra de Tandil. The increase is particularly conspicuous north of the
Rio Salado, in the dairy district. (Mean density in 1915, 40 to 60 horned
cattle per square kilometre.) In the south-west region (wheat belt) the
density has always been low (12 per square kilometre), and it shows no
tendency to increase. In the north and western region of Buenos Aires
(lucerne belt) there has been a rapid increase, especially between 1895 and
1908 (creation of the lucerne farms), and it has not been interrupted since
(density 50 to the square kilometre). There is the same increase in the whole
area of the lucerne farms in the Córdoba, Santa Fé, and San Luis provinces,
where the herds doubled between 1895 and 1908. Only two regions have
suffered a reduction: the agricultural area of the centre (Chacabuco,
Chivilcoy), where there has been a decrease since 1895, and the maize
district (north of Buenos Aires), where cattle-rearing did not diminish until
after 1908.

Agriculture had begun to develop by the end of the eighteenth century in
the district round Buenos Aires. D'Azara admits the enormous
preponderance of breeding, but mentions that the right bank of the Paraná
exported flour to the left bank, which was exclusively pastoral. Barrero also
observes that between the belt of orchards and lucerne fields, about a league
in width, which surrounded Buenos Aires, and the area of the ranches,
which did not begin for six or eight leagues, there was an agricultural belt,
the district of the chacras de pan llevar. The main crop was wheat, and the
tillage was chiefly done in the rich soils at the bottom of the valleys, which
are called cañadas in the local dialect (cañada de Moron, cañada de Rio
Lujan, etc.).

It was, however, not at Buenos Aires, but in the Santa Fé province, that
modern agricultural colonization began in the nineteenth century. It goes
back to the foundation (in 1854) of the colony of Esperanza, west of Santa

Fé, from which it was separated by the strip of forest which follows the
course of the Salado. European immigrants—Swiss, French, and
Piedmontese—had settled there. The early years of colonization at Santa Fé
were difficult, and the colonies did not begin to develop rapidly until after
1870. About that date we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural
colonization at Santa Fé. The first group of colonies was settled in the
north, on the bank of the Paraná. In the centre the Esperanza group
advanced steadily westward. A third group of colonies lay along the Central
Argentine railway from Rosario to Córdoba.

The Esperanza colonists had at first grown maize, but the prosperity of
the colonies was mainly due to wheat. Zeballos, who visited the colonies in
1882, describes them as a vast lake of wheat. Wheat predominates, not only
in the department of Las Colonias, west of Santa Fé, where it survives in
full strength, but further north, at Garay, whence it has since been displaced
by flax and earth-nuts, and in the south, round Rosario, in the belt which is
now given up to maize. It is for the wheat that the mills of Carcaraña and
the granaries of Rosario have been built. The land sown with wheat at Santa
Fé rose in 1882 to 102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of
cultivated land.97 By 1889 the area of wheat was quadrupled. It spread like
a drop of oil, reaching Rafäela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the
advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has crossed the Córdoba
frontier, and spread round San Francisco and east of Mar Chiquita
(departments of San Justo and Marcos Juarez). The agricultural regions in
the centre of the Santa Fé province and those of the Central Argentine have
met, and the wheat has invaded the whole of the San Martin department. It
extends even south of the old colonies of the Central Argentine toward the
south-west of Santa Fé, in the General Lopez department.

The 1908 Census shows a very different state of things. The density of
the wheat-cultivation has continued to grow appreciably in the whole of the

northern region, and also in the south-west of the province, at some distance
from the Paraná (General Lopez department). On the other hand, it has been
reduced in the adjoining district of Rosario (departments of Iriondo,
Belgrana, Caseros, and Constitución), where maize-growing has developed.
Maize has won part of the wheat belt.

Wheat Area (in kilometres). Maize Area (in kilometers).
Departments.98
1889 1895 1908 1889 1895 1908
Las Colonias 1,307 1,621 24 31
} 1,623 { } 82 {
Castillanos 1,845 3,425 4 7
S. Jeronimo 854 849 15 264
} 664 { } 65 {
S. Martin 964 1,884 22 35
Iriondo 929 442 81 641
} 971 { } 65 {
Belgrano 1,137 638 37 296
S. Lorenzo 387 1,390 150 1,169
} 652 { } 178 {
Caseros 1,139 468 83 970
Gal. Lopez 888 1,370 373 1,558
} 12 { } 51 {
Constitución 227 165 575 736
S. Justo 732 2,345 7 34
} 12 { } 48 {
M. Juarez 1,504 1,442 53 92

Restricted in the south by the extension of the maize belt, the region of
the colonies has now a very distinctive character amongst the agricultural
areas of the Pampa.

This originality is not so much in virtue of its crops (hard wheat and flax)
as on account of the age of colonization and the division of property. Most
of the colonists are owners, and estates of 50 to 200 hectares are the rule.
The houses are comfortable; they are surrounded by orchards and kitchen-
gardens. Moreover, the rural economy has been complicated, and it has
assumed a familiar aspect for the European observer, owing to the

introduction of cattle-rearing on a small scale by the farmers. The number
of horned cattle doubled between 1908 and 1914 in the Castellanos
department, and increased by a third in Las Colonias. The area of lucerne
has extended in proportion. The farms have been multiplied on the low
lands (cañadas), unsuitable for wheat, which the older colonists had
disdained; but they are now regarded as the best bits of land. The recent rise
in the value of land in the region of the colonies is connected, not with an
increase of agricultural production, but a development of breeding. A few
co-operative dairy societies have been established. In general, however,
breeding is solely for the meat-market. The cattle-trade goes on very
different lines from those of the large estates and ranches. It has remained in
the hands of small dealers (Jews of Moïsesville).

Agricultural colonization in the Buenos Aires province was at first
entirely independent of the Santa Fé colonization. The crops of the
adjoining region of Buenos Aires never disappeared altogether. In the
period to which Daireaux's description of the economic life of the Pampa
refers (1880-89), the farmers disputed with the breeders a belt some ten
leagues broad round the capital. But sheep-breeding left no place for
agriculture in the next belt, which enclosed the first on every side, and
extended almost as far as the Salado. Agricultural colonization had found
free land only beyond the sheep-farm area, 170 miles west of Buenos Aires,
round Chivilcoy, Chacabuco, and Bragado. As early as 1872 the Chivilcoy
district produced 130,000 hectolitres of wheat; or nearly half the total
production of the Buenos Aires province. In 1889 it formed a comparatively
dense agricultural patch, the cultivated area being devoted half to wheat and
half to maize.

Wheat. Maize.
Chivilcoy 307 kms. 399 kms.
Chacabuco 155 " 164 "
Bragado 147 " 261 "

At that date the whole west and south of the Buenos Aires province was
exclusively pastoral. There were only two isolated nuclei of agricultural
colonization. The first was round Olavarria, on the old Indian frontier,
where Russo-German colonies had been established in 1878. The second
was in the Suarez department, at the extreme north of the Sierra de la
Ventana, where a group of French colonists settled five years later, at
Pigüe.99 The opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca ought,
one would think, to have prepared the way for agricultural colonization in
this section. However, the 1895 Census shows a check to these first
attempts at tillage in the south. It fell by one half at Suarez, and by three-
fourths at Olavarria. The Pigüe colonists have succeeded in keeping to their
lands, but those of Olavarria have abandoned them, and most of them have
emigrated to the Entre Rios province.

On the other hand,
colonization has kept the
land won in the district of
the middle Salado, and it
extends in a sporadic way
toward the south-west and
west. (Nueve de Julio, 252
square kilometres of wheat THE PAMPEAN PLAIN.
and 400 of maize: Veinte
Cinco de Mayo, 84 square
BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN
kilometres of wheat and LUIS PROVINCE).
218 of maize: Junin, 197
The first chañares.
square kilometres of wheat
Photograph by the Author.
and 204 of maize in 1895).
It has been maintained
ever since, with slow

progress, but without being Click to view
ousted by breeding. This is
one of the regions of the larger image.
Pampa where the most
different types of rural
exploitation are mingled
together. Agricultural
colonization has been
carried on both by small
proprietors and farmers or
tenants. Wheat and maize
seem to be permanently
associated, and the climate
is equally good for both; THE PAMPEAN PLAIN.
the maize crop being the JUNIN (150 MILES WEST
better if the summer is wet,
and the wheat crop when OF BUENOS AIRES, 330
the summer is dry. The two FEET ELEVATION).
cereals follow each other
on the same land, in The clays. A line of dead dunes crosses the
rotation, the wheat being Junin district, following the course of the
helped by the constant Salado. They are indicated by light, sandy
weeding and clearing soil, very different from the clays of the north
which the maize requires. of Buenos Aires province.
The colonists use oxen in Photograph by the Author.

the work, and fatten them
Plate XVII.
100
afterwards.
Click to view
Agricultural
colonization in the lucerne larger image.

region dates from 1895 to 1905:

Wheat Area (in kilometres). Flax Area (in kilometres).
1895 1908 1895 1908
Buenos Aires:
Lincoln 152 819 100
Pehuajo 106 727
Guamini 20 528
Trenque Lauquen 100 1,439 59
Villegas 4 812 1 84
Pinto 469 60
Córdoba:
Gal. Roca 1,009 89
Rio Quarto 5 1,156 172
Juarez Celman 144 1,679 183
Union 373 2,548 12 316

I have shown how this was bound up with the development of the lucerne
farms themselves. The extreme west of the lucerne belt (Pedernera
department and San Luis) is the only place where the cultivated area was
reduced. The contracts by which the ranchers entrust their lands to the
colonists, on condition of returning them sown with lucerne, were gradually
modified as the stream of colonization developed. The land was at first left
to the colonist rent free, the rancher being paid by the creation of the
lucerne fields. But in proportion to the increasing volume of the stream of
immigrants, and the keener competition of the colonists, the rancher asked
better terms. There are similar contracts in regard to the restoration of
lucerne fields which have been worn out by pasturage, so that the land has
to be ploughed up periodically. The men who clear the land in the lucerne
belt have mostly been recruited in the district of the old colonies of Santa
Fé, where the new generation had begun to feel the pinch. The crops which

they raise during the four or five years of their lease are chosen without any
idea of sparing lands which they are not to keep. Wheat succeeds wheat,
and the first and last crop is often flax. The proportion of flax is lower only
in the southern part of the lucerne belt. In the Buenos Aires province the
colonist grows lucerne on his own account, either to sell as dry fodder or for
breeding or fattening.

Colonization does not in these parts correspond with the division of
property. Not only does the farmer not become the owner of the soil, but he
does not live on it permanently; he is a veritable nomad. His house has a
temporary look that strikes one at the first glance. The area cultivated is
almost stable, if the region is considered as a whole. But cultivation passes
periodically from one section to another, and its removals cause sudden
alterations or crises in the railway traffic and the development of the urban
centres.

The lucerne belt has been peopled by Santafecinos, and it has in turn sent
colonists to the western agricultural belt at the foot of the Sierras de San
Luis and de Córdoba. They have less suitable climatological conditions, but
they have the advantage of greater stability, as the breeders do not dispute
the land with them.

While agricultural colonization has been an aid to pastoral colonization
in the north-west of Buenos Aires, it tends to displace breeding, or restrict
its sphere, in the north-east and the south. Maize-growing started on the
banks of the Paraná, where it was already paramount in 1889, between
Campana (north of Buenos Aires) and San Nicolas. In 1895 it advanced up
the Paraná as far as the Santa Fé province (Constitución) and spread over
the interior for some sixty miles in the Salto department. In the next few
years it made rapid progress toward the west and north-west, covering the

departments of Pergamino, Rojas, and Colon, and part of General Lopez,
San Lorenzo, and Constitución in the province of Santa Fé.

Maize Area. Flax Area.
1889 1895 1908 1889 1895 1908
Campana 67 45 22 15 31 17
Baradero 339 260 291 26 78 173
S. Pedro 398 353 420 5 73 235
Arrecifes 124 126 155 15 50 265
Salto 16 326 236 13 3 75
Gal. Lopez 373 1,538 70 752
} 51 {
Constitución 575 736 270 404
Pergamino 168 160 340 50 30 275
Rojas 86 81 247 4 23 275
Colon 44 126 14 78
S. Lorenzo 178 150 1,169 11 36 450
Caseros 83 990 13 319

Export of Argentine maize on a large scale began in 1895. Flax-growing
was not added to maize until 1900.

The heavy land requires a good deal of harrowing, and the weeding and
harvesting of the maize give employment to a comparatively large staff.
The estates are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership was not
divided at the period of colonization, the land, thanks to the breeders,
having already acquired so high a value that the colonists could not buy it.
On the lands which have been farmed out there has developed a rural, and
often far from docile, proletariat. It is in the maize region that the worst
agricultural strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners and the
colonists are the more prolonged because the sowing of the maize can be
put back to the end of the spring without much harm being done. The

adjoining zone of the Paraná produced some of the maiseros who have
scattered over the north-west. But the modern colonies include, in addition,
a large proportion of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy and
Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the wheat-growers. Each group
has its own area.

The increase of wheat-growing in the south dates only from 1898:

Wheat Area (in kilometres).
1895 1908
Alsina 45 1,296
Puan 52 1,321
Suarez 104 978
La Madrid 75 249
Pringles 13 724
Darrego 885
Terr. de la Pampa 1,731

Wheat first spread along
the line from Buenos Aires
to Bahía Blanca, west of
the Sierra de la Ventana,
then in the coastal district,
east of Bahía Blanca.
These two wheat-areas
became connected after
1904, when the opening of
the direct line from
Olavarria to Buenos Aires
facilitated the development
of the intermediate region

(Pringles-Laprida). From MAP IV.—DENSITY OF
Bahía Blanca it spread to
the west and north-west THE MAIZE CROP.
along the Toay line, and As it needs more heat and moisture than
southward as far as wheat, the maize does not go so far to the
Colorado on the coast. In west and south. It is concentrated for export
the whole area of the at the ports of the Rio de la Plata and the
Central Pampa it is still Paraná, especially at Rosario. The Argentine
possible to distinguish two "corn belt," the chief maize area, extends
strata of immigrants, of back of Rosario and San Nicolas to beyond
different dates, one Casilda and Pergamino.
superimposed upon the
other: the sheep-breeders Click to view
and the farmers. Round
larger image.
Toay the contrast between
the two elements of the
population is even more striking, because the first pastoral colonization,
which dates from 1890, was to a great extent the work of creole puntanos
(from the San Luis province). The actual agricultural colonies, on the other
hand, include recent European immigrants and colonists from other parts of
the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios.

The yield of the wheat grows less and less as one goes westward. The
harvest may be injured either by late frost or drought, or, especially, by hot
winds which scorch the plants and blight the half-realized hopes of the
farmers in the weeks just before the harvest. But the relative poorness of the
return is compensated by the extent of the farms and the cheapness of
labour. The harvest is often done with machines that peel and pack the
wheat, and the workers are not compelled, as they are at Santa Fé, to wait
for the threshing machine. The aridity does not permit flax-growing, but
oats can be grown, especially between the Sierra de la Ventana and the

Sierra de Tandil; and it is good to sow oats when the land has been
impoverished by consecutive crops of wheat. Exports of oats through Bahía
Blanca began in 1906.

The displacement of breeding by farming is less thorough than in the
maize belt. Oats, sown about the beginning of autumn, serve for fodder. The
animals are kept in the fields during the winter, and the oats are cut and put
into the mill, without being threshed, as a reserve fodder. Moreover, the
wheat farmers have themselves taken to rearing sheep, and the sheep feed in
the stubble and fallow.

From this short account of the history of colonization we draw certain
important conclusions. At the time when agricultural colonization began, it
was admitted that farming was the best way to exploit the soil, and that the
Pampa would sooner or later pass from the pastoral to the agricultural
cycle; or, to use the local phraseology, that the "colony" would replace the
ranch everywhere. This idea was wrong. The only area in which the facts
seem to give it any support is the corn belt. The general rule is, on the
contrary, that in its progress colonization develops a mixed type of
exploitation, combining farming and breeding; either one alternates with the
other in a sort of periodic rotation, as in the lucerne area, or both proceed
together, the farmers including breeding amongst their occupations, as in
the district of the Santa Fé colonies or in the wheat area in the south of the
Buenos Aires province.

It seems, moreover, that the development of colonization depends not
only upon physical conditions, but upon factors of a purely economic or
social character, which the geographer must not overlook. It will be enough
here to indicate the chief of these.

We have seen the part that has been played in the exploitation of the soil
by groups of colonists who swarm from one area to another. Whether we
think of the ranchers of the eastern part of Buenos Aires transplanting
themselves to Córdoba or north of Santa Fé, the sheep-breeders moving
westward, or the Santa Fé colonists settling in the lucerne area, they all take
with them their own habits and methods of work, and they take time to
adjust them to a new environment.

The colonist, whether
breeder or farmer, is not
left to himself.
Colonization is sustained
and directed by
speculation in land, and is
influenced by it.
Speculation discounts the
work of the colonist, and
attaches to the land a value
which is not based upon
the revenue it has
produced, but upon that
which the speculator MAP V.—DENSITY OF THE
calculates that it may
produce in the future. If WHEAT CROP.
the speculator is The wheat belt stretches in a broad section of
audacious, he does not let a circle from Bahía Blanca to Santa Fé,
himself be discouraged by which is now reached by maritime vessels.
initial bad experiences; it The cultivation of wheat crosses the line of
takes repeated checks to 600 millimetres of rainfall and even the 400-
exhaust his optimism. The millimetre line, in proportion as one passes
colonist, even if his

farming accounts do not from the area of summer rain to that of
show a profit, may spring and autumn rain.
nevertheless gain
something if the value of Click to view
his land goes up. The larger image.
increase of his capital
conceals from him the
smallness of his returns, especially as he can easily get advances on the
value of his property from the banks, and this enables him to draw upon his
wealth every year.

Speculation is concerned with new lands on the fringe of the area already
colonized, where the soil is, as a general rule, already in the hands of the
exploiters themselves. The speculators, having paid a high price for these
lands, try to organize the development of them. It is partly owing to their
influence that colonization continuously enlarges its domain, instead of
concentrating its labour in the older districts where it might sometimes be
more productive. In fine, speculation in land has a profound influence on
the conditions of colonization, making it more difficult for the colonist to
buy the land he is developing. The owner who grants him the use of the
land means to keep for himself any increment of its value. He rents, but he
will not sell.

Thus the history of colonization cannot be separated from the traffic in
land. The special features of this traffic in the Pampean region—its
concentration at Buenos Aires; the creation of a land-market resembling a
stock market; the practice of selling on the instalment plan, which enables
small capitalists to enter the market; the repeated transfers of pieces of land
which the buyers have never seen and which they know only from plans—
are one of the most original aspects of modern Argentina. They are partly
due to a fact of a geographical nature—the uniformity of the Pampean

plain, on which every piece of land is worth about as much as the adjoining
piece.

Colonization is easy and rapid in proportion as it requires less capital and
labour. The expansion of breeding in the west between 1880 and 1890 was
facilitated by the low market price of cattle at that time. Breeding has the
advantage over farming of not needing so large a staff, but it requires a
larger capital. Of the crops, assuming that the conditions of soil and climate
are equally favourable, wheat is better than maize for colonization, because
the preparing of the soil and the harvest can be done more speedily, and the
same number of hands can plant a larger area with wheat than with maize.

The action of the Argentine Government and the provincial authorities
has been restrained, apart from the earliest period of the establishment of
the Santa Fé colonies, both as regards the securing of immigrants, the
distribution of lands, and the administration of the colonies.101 Colonization
has been, on the whole, a private affair. The work of organizing
colonization has at times been undertaken by the proprietors themselves;
they leased pieces of land and got a good price for them, at the same time
increasing the surplus value of the plots they kept for themselves by
promoting the increase of population. Sometimes it was undertaken by
Colonization Companies, which bought land to divide and sell. More
frequently it was undertaken by merchants who advanced credit to the
colonists they settled, on condition that the colonists bought what they
needed of the merchants, and entrusted them with the sale of their crops.
The migration of the Santa Fé colonists was partly due to, and sustained by,
a corresponding migration of merchants who had acquired wealth in the
older colonies, and who thus got a larger body of customers. The merchant
who organizes colonization often acts as the intermediary between the
owner and the colonist, guaranteeing the owner a fixed rent for his land and
receiving so much per cent. of his harvest from the farmer. This system is

very widespread in the corn belt, but it is found all over the plain of the
Pampas. It tends to disappear when the colony is older and deeper-rooted,
as the colonist gradually earns his independence; he buys his lease, his
equipment, and his furniture, and controls the sale of his own crops. In the
districts where he has not become owner, the leases are generally variations
of two types: farming leases, where the colonist has capital enough for
working, and renting leases, where the capital is provided by the owner or
the middleman.

Lastly, colonization can make no progress unless it finds markets on
which it can put its produce. Up to the present western Europe has been the
chief market for the wool, leather, meat, and cereals of the Pampean region;
tropical America absorbs part of the output of the saladeros, flour, and dry
fodder; and North America has recently begun to compete with Europe for
wool, leather, and frozen meat. The facility with which the products of the
Pampa have found their way into the world's markets, as is seen in the
comparative stability of the returns, explains the continuous advance of
colonization and the short duration of the crises which have disturbed it.

The home market, however, has had an importance in connection with
colonization that must not be overlooked. When wheat-growing spread at
Santa Fé the crop was at first devoted to supplying Buenos Aires, and as
late as 1883 Zeballos thought that the essential result of agricultural
colonization was the fact that Chilean flour was beaten off the Argentine
market. Even to-day the districts on the outskirts of the cereal area depend
upon the home market. The Villa Mercedes mill supplies Mendoza.
Córdoba and Santa Fé send their flour to Tucumán. The price of cereals still
shows slight fluctuations in these parts as compared with prices in Buenos
Aires.

Table of Exports of the Chief Products of the Pampean
region (in thousands of tons):
1901 1905 1910 1913 1914
Wheat 904 2,868 1,883 2,812 980
Maize 1,112 2,222 2,660 4,806 3,542
Flax 338 654 604 1,016 841
Flour 71 144 115 124 67
Wool 228 191 150 120 117
Salted hides 28 40 61 65 63
Dried hides 26 24 29 21 14
Chilled beef 44 152 253 306 368
Chilled mutton 63 78 75 45 58

The heading "cereals" appears in the statistics of Argentine
exports in 1882. In 1900 the value of the agricultural
produce exported is equal to that of the products of breeding.
In 1904 it is higher.

Pastoral colonization, again, has not been entirely independent of the
home market. Martin de Moussy says, it is true, that the area which sent the
products of breeding to Europe in 1865 extended as far as the Sierra de
Córdoba. But this statement needs correction. The hides from the whole of
this zone were, in point of fact, sent down to the ports on the Rio de la
Plata, but live animals were sent to Chile from the whole of the north-west
of the Pampean region. It was for the purpose of selling cattle to Chile that
ranches were multiplied about 1860 in the neighbourhood of Villa Mercedes
and lower down, on the Rio Quinto. Jegou's description shows that even in
1883 the breeders of the San Luis province devoted themselves exclusively
to supplying the Chilean market.102 Buyers from Chile and the Andean
provinces still visit Villa Mercedes, and until a recent date they came to
Villa Maria, in the province of Córdoba. The Santa Fé ranches found their

customers, until the opening of the Córdoba line (1870) amongst the
troperos, who bought draught oxen for their waggons. The loss of these
customers and the crisis that followed are one of the reasons why
agricultural colonization met with so little resistance on the part of the
breeders, and was able to take root so easily at Santa Fé. In the San
Cristobal department the breeders who settled there after 1890 found their
first market in the obrajes of the neighbouring forest. The opening of the
railway to Tucumán afterwards enabled them to send their cattle to the
provinces of the north-west. The Buenos Aires buyers were late in this
remote canton of the Pampean plain. They did not arrive until 1911.

The importance of the Pampean region itself as a market of consumption
grew in proportion to the increase of its population. The extent to which it
absorbs the products of breeding and agriculture varies a good deal. For
some of them it is paramount. Horse-breeding, for instance, which is still
one of the great industries of the Pampa, has never contributed to the export
trade. It is the same with regard to potatoes, which are concentrated in two
strictly limited districts, round Rosario and north of the Sierra de Tandil.
Only a small part of the dry fodder is exported. As regards cereals, a
comparison of the statistics of production with the statistics of export shows
that the home consumption is about one-third of the production. It is almost
nil for flax, and nearly fifty per cent for wheat.

The average of production and export for the years
1912, 1913, and 1914, in thousands of tons, is:
Wheat. Maize. Flax. Total (including Oats).
Production 4,241 6,398 931 12,662
Export 2,140 4,227 790 8,038

As the chief centres of consumption are the ports themselves, it follows
that the commercial currents that have to supply them are confused with the
currents which maintain the exports. The exchanges between the various
regions of the Pampa are more interesting to the geographer. In their
tendency to specialize, these regions have ceased to be self-contained, and
they have to look to adjoining regions. The feeding of the mills necessitates
the transport of wheat in different directions. The chief mills are at Buenos
Aires, where they are suitably located to work both for the home market
and for export; and the mills in the interior have some difficulty in
competing with them. Some of these, however, are still active. They mix
hard wheat, bought in the district of the Santa Fé colonies, with the soft
wheat that is grown in the middle and south of Buenos Aires province.

But this inter-regional transport of cereals is a small thing in comparison
with the transport of cattle. The extension of the lucerne farms has
developed the fattening industry in many districts, while others still confine
themselves to breeding in the ordinary sense, and they feed the other
centres. The most specialized fattening district is that of Villa Mercedes and
the western part of the lucerne belt, while the eastern part of the province of
Buenos Aires and Entre Rios are still areas of production. The
differentiation of the pastoral zones can be gathered from a study of the
statistics. According to the 1908 Census, milch cows represent 53 per cent.
of the whole of the cattle in all the departments which form the heart of the
breeding area east of Buenos Aires, and only 45 per cent. in the departments
of the north-west of Buenos Aires and south of Córdoba and in the
Pedernera department of San Luis, where fattening is common.

According to the 1914 Census oxen are 24 per cent. of the herd in the
same departments of eastern Buenos Aires; 24 per cent. also in Entre Rios;
and the proportion rises to 31 per cent. in the lucerne area. Dolores
department (eastern Buenos Aires) has 64 per cent. milch cows and 21 per

cent. oxen. Pedernera department (San Luis, in the lucerne area) has 49 per
cent. cows and 38 per cent. oxen. General Roca department (Córdoba) has
48 per cent. cows and 34 per cent. oxen. Arenales (Buenos Aires) has 39 per
cent. cows and 46 per cent. oxen.103

Oxen intended for the refrigerators are bought either on the ranches or at
Buenos Aires, where beasts in good condition are consigned to buyers, but
oxen for fattening are bought at fairs which are held periodically in the
towns of the interior. Another transaction at these fairs is the trade in
pedigree breeders. The best known of them is held at Villa Mercedes
(province of San Luis), where 8,000 oxen are sold every month. At the
Mercedes fairs one may see Durham steers from the east of Buenos Aires
which are to be fattened and sent back to the refrigerators or the slaughter-
houses of Buenos Aires. There are also creole cattle from the north of the
San Luis province and Rioja which will later be eaten in Mendoza or in
Chile. There is, in fact, on the western frontier of the Pampa no line of
demarcation corresponding to that set up in the north by the limit of the area
contaminated by the garrapate, separating the district of creole breeding
from that of selective breeding. There is free communication here between
the two zones, and the lucerne fields for fattening at Villa Mercedes are
used in common by the breeders of the Pampa and of the bush.104

Cultivated Areas in the Argentine Republic (in square
kilometres, almost exclusively in the Pampean
region).
Wheat. Maize. Oats. Flax. Lucerne.
1896 25,000 14,000 — 5,600 8,000
1900 33,000 12,000 — 6,000 15,000
1902 36,000 18,000 — 15,000 17,000
1905 56,000 22,000 700 10,000 29,000
1910 62,000 32,000 8,000 15,000 54,000
1912 69,000 38,000 12,000 17,000 59,000
1913 65,000 41,000 11,600 17,000 66,000
1914 62,000 42,000 11,400 17,000 —

Exports for 1913, 1914, and 1915 at each port.
Wheat. Maize. Flax. Oats. Totals. Average.
782 1,757 275 13 2,829
Rosario 242 1,952 248 1 2,445 2,716
717 1,790 366 — 2,875

441 1,389 246 240 2,318
Buenos Aires 297 906 55 78 1,537 2,051
511 1,349 342 96 2,299

927 2 — 462 1,393
Bahía Blanca 241 — — 222 463 1,075
921 — — 442 1,364

5 910 74 — 989
S. Nicolas 1 430 60 — 492 651
5 420 48 — 474

333 358 14 170 876
La Plata 160 51 16 49 278 459
152 45 6 16 222

265 51 158 — 476
Santa Fé 7 23 128 — 159 278
114 7 77 — 199

CHAPTER VII
ROADS AND RAILWAYS

Roads on the plain—The salt road—The "trade route"—Transport
by ox-waggons—Arrieros and Troperos—Railways and
colonization—The trade in cereals—Home traffic and the
reorganization of the system.

The chapter devoted to primitive breeding and the transport of cattle
contains a sketch of the network of routes over the Andes. One cannot
expect to find in the scheme of routes over the Argentine plains the stern
and obvious influence of natural conditions. The surface of these plains is,
as a whole, broadly open to traffic. Still, the map of the roads bears much
evidence of geographical exigencies.

The hills which rise like islands out of the alluvial plain are not all
incapable of being crossed, and the roads do not always skirt them. The
road from Buenos Aires to Peru runs north of 30° 40′ S. lat. on the very axis
of the granite peneplain which forms the northern part of the Sierra de
Córdoba. The Dean Funes ridge, which begins with an altitude of 2,500 feet
between the Sierra Chica and these tablelands, has always been used for
communication between Córdoba and the north-western provinces. There
the railway has taken the place of the primitive track. Another important
track crosses the Sierra de Córdoba in the north of the Pampa de Achala,
and used to join Córdoba with Villa Dolores and the north of the San Luis
province. The southern part of the Sierra de Córdoba and the Sierra de San
Luis are, on the other hand, an insurmountable obstacle, which diverts
southward the high road to Chile via Achiras, San José, del Morro, and San
Luis.

The sierras of the Buenos Aires province are not so high and extensive.
They are, moreover, broken into isolated hills with the plain passing
between them. As early as 1822 Colonel Garcia pointed out the importance,
in connection with the migrations of the Indian tribes, of the passage

between the Sierra Amarilla and the Sierra de Curaco, that is to say, the
Olavarria ridge. It is there that the first railway between Buenos Aires and
Bahía Blanca crosses the line of sierras. It then skirts the Sierra de la
Ventana, to the north, by the Pigüe ridge, between the mass of Curumalan
and the Puan hills. The dunes of the western Pampa also are an impediment
to traffic, not so much because of their height as because of the looseness of
the ground. The strip between General Acha and Toay was very trying for
the stage-coaches. Travellers had to cross the dunes on foot during the
winter season, when the horses were in a bad condition.105

Natural supplies of water increase in number as one gets away from the
Andean zone toward the east. Still, the chief work, often the only work, to
be done in making a road is the arrangement of permanent supplies of
water. Martin de Moussy mentions the digging of wells on the new road
from Córdoba to Rosario, which was opened about 1860. The aiguade was
generally a represa, a reservoir, where the water accumulated behind a
barrier of earth raised across the course of an intermittent stream. The
upkeep of the represa is the chief duty of the post-master. The edge of the
sierras and the opening point of the ravines which come down them is a
good place for making represas, and the roads frequently keep to these
(variant of the road from Córdoba to Tucumán via Totoral, Dormida, Rio
Seco and Sumampa, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de Córdoba, etc.)
Long stages with no water supplies, the travesías, are not found on the
made roads, as a rule, except west of the meridian, of Córdoba. However,
the direct road from Santa Fé to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los
Porongos, which was used in the eighteenth century, seems to have been
abandoned afterwards, as much on account of the difficulty of supplying
water as because it was exposed to attack from the Indians.

The only difficulty which the caravans encountered on the roads over the
plain was the crossing of the rivers. They were forded. Fords with a muddy

bottom on the lower course
of the rivers, such as that
on the Saladillo near the
confluence of the Rio
Tercero, were more
difficult for wagons than
the fords with sandy
bottoms in the upper
course, near the fringe of
AN OX WAGON.
the mountains, such as Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

those of the Rio Tercero on
the Córdoba road, or of the
Click to view
Rio Cuarto on the road to larger image.
Chile. After rain, certain
parts of the plain are
flooded and impassable.
That is the case in the
district to the south of the
lower Salado, at the very
spot where Père Cardiel
notices the lack of water in
the dry season (1747). The
direct road from Buenos
Aires to the sierras was at
THE MAIL COACH.
that point exposed, The horses saddled with the cincha.
alternately, to drought and Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.
flood. The line of the
Southern railway, which Plate XVIII.
crosses this low district, is
still cut periodically on

both sides of Las Flores by Click to view
floods. The lack of an
organized network of larger image.
streams, the irregularity of
the rains, the difficulty of ascertaining the inclination, and the flow of the
waters over a plain which seems to the eye to be perfectly level, have led to
more than one miscalculation on the part of the railways, which were
constructed hurriedly, and before the general survey of the Pampa was
finished. Some lines, on the Pampa or on the Chaco, have had to be
partially reconstructed, and raised higher, after a series of rainy years.106

The colonization of that part of the plain which actually constitutes the
province of Buenos Aires was late. It belongs to the era of the railways.
There is only one historic road crossing this area, which remained until the
last third of the nineteenth century in the hands of the Indian tribes. This is
the salt road. We do not know exactly when it began to be used. In the
eighteenth century, in spite of the competition of salt from Cadiz and
Patagonia, imported by sea, the Pampa salt was the main part of the supply
of Buenos Aires. The salt road was not abandoned until after 1810. We still
have the diary of several journeys from Buenos Aires to the salt-pits. They
were military expeditions. Hundreds of wagons, with a strong escort,
collected at Lujan and Chivilcoy, and they reached Atreuco, west of the
Guamini and Carbuë lakes, after a fifteen to twenty-five days' march.

The itinerary was fixed in detail. In 1796 D'Azara noticed the wells sunk
by the salters, north of the Palentelen lagoon (Bragado), when they found
the lagoon dry. From Palentelen south-westward the salt road followed the
track used by the Indians of the south-west in their expeditions against the
ranches of the Buenos Aires frontier. Near Lake Epecuen, north of Carbuë,
it was joined by another track which came from Olavarria, the stages of
which were marked by the streams that came from the Sierra de Curumalan.

The Carbuë district, the cross-roads of the tracks, was one of the places
where the tribes collected. "This place," says the diary of the 1778
expedition, "is the first point where the hostile Indians meet and rest when
they leave the Sierra and on returning from their invasions. They not only
rest there, but have their winter pasture there" (in the dry season).107
Zeballos has described the Indian track, the rustrillada, between Epecuen,
Atreuco and Traru Lauquen, where the travesia on the road to Chile
began.108 It was not less than 1,000 feet in width. At the foot of the dunes
there were deep parallel grooves made by the feet of the raided cattle,
which were taken away by the "Chileños."

The two main roads of the colonial period are the roads to Chile and
Peru. On leaving Buenos Aires there was one road for a distance of about
320 miles. The "trade road" passed through Lujan, Areco and Sauce, and
reached the Carcaraña, or Rio Tercero, at Esquina. It therefore kept at some
distance from the Paraná (32 to 16 miles), on the tableland, crossing the
valleys which were embedded in it and represented so many bad parts. It
then ascended the Tercero on the right bank as far as the Paso Fereira, at the
spot where Villa Maria is to-day. At Esquina de Medrano (Villa Maria) the
road to Chile branched off to the south-east, reached San Luis by following
the Rio Cuarto, going through Achiras and San José del Morro, and, after a
travesia seventy-eight miles in length, came to the Rio Tunuyan at La Paz,
and ascended the river to Mendoza.109

From Esquina de Medrano the Peru road made for Córdoba in the north-
west. From the tablelands which continue the Sierra de Córdoba northward
it descended toward the Rio Dulce, which it reached west of Atamisqui, and
which it followed as far as Santiago del Estero, where it crossed to the north
bank. It crossed the Sali in the latitude of Tucumán, and, passing through
Tracas and Metan, followed the depression which separates the Andes from

the sub-Andean chains. From Salta it went north to Jujuy, and passed
through the Quebrada de Humahuaca to reach the Puna.

The influence of rivers is not much seen in the scheme of the primitive
roads. There were in the sixteenth century many routes from Peru to the
Paraguay, across the Chaco, but not a permanent road in the strict sense. In
the eighteenth century there was a direct road from Santa Fé to Tucumán,
by the north of the Los Porongos lagoon and the course of the Rio Dulce.
There was another from Santa Fé to Córdoba. These roads were not
exclusively used for conveying cattle. The river route which they joined at
Santa Fé provided them with a certain amount of traffic coming from the
higher provinces. Paraguayan maté reached the Andean regions by this
road, and in return the boatmen at Santa Fé loaded up with the wines and
dried fruit of the Andean provinces to take to Asunciôn.

The question of joining the road on to a river was not of very great
importance until the time when the Paraná began to be used for Argentine
imports and exports, and to maintain the communication of the interior
provinces with Europe. This question of connection with a river controls the
history of the construction of the railway system. But the great importance
of it can be seen from the first half of the nineteenth century. D'Orbigny had
a presentiment of it. Speaking of the future of Santa Fé, he says: "When
peace is restored, it is certain that the wares of Córdoba may, instead of
going by land from that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa Fé, where
shipping them to the Argentine capital will reduce to one-third the journey
by land, which is always more costly than going by water." Martin de
Moussy, foreseeing the making of a road across the Chaco from Tucumán to
the Paraná, in the latitude of Corrientes, calculates that Corrientes may later
serve as port for part of the west and north of Argentina. At the date of the
publication of his book, however, it was neither Santa Fé nor Corrientes,
but the new town Rosario, that began to play the part of interior port, and

led to the construction of a new system of roads. Traffic between Rosario
and Córdoba at first followed the old road from Buenos Aires to Peru,
which one struck after leaving Rosario and making a detour to the south-
west, on the right bank of the Carcaraña (at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary
was presently replaced by a direct road to the west-northwest, following the
line which the railways would adopt.110

In the greater part of Argentina transport was by means of wagons before
railways were constructed. The limit between the area of wagon-transport
and the area in which goods were conveyed on the backs of animals is quite
stable. It is still of some significance, in spite of the development of the
railways; wagons and mules are used at each station to collect and distribute
goods. The area of farming and of selective breeding on the Pampa, the
sheep-area in Patagonia, and the timber belt on the Chaco, still make use of
wagons; and goods are carried on the backs of mules in the Andean area.
The Peru road was, broadly speaking, fit for wagons as far as Salta, but it is
rough between Tucumán and Salta, and wagons that used it generally
stopped at Salta. In this way wagons avoided the ford of the Sali, which was
easier for mules. On the plain itself the water-sources were often so distant
from each other, and the stages so long, that mules had to be used instead of
wagons. Wagons could easily get to Mendoza by the road along which the
Tunuyan runs at its driest section, but all the convoys from Córdoba to San
Juan, or Rioja to Catamarca, were composed of mules. Hence Córdoba was,
like Tucumán, a station for changing on the road from Buenos Aires to the
north-west. Lastly, while the scrub presented no insuperable obstacle to
wagons, they could not enter the humid tropical forest, where the soil never
dries. On the fringe of the Misiones forest, the wagons that came from San
Tome unloaded at San Javier, and mules took the goods on to the yerbales.

The two areas of different kinds of transport were not sharply distinct.
The muleteers (arrieros) sometimes avoided the domain of the wagoners,

and competed with them as far as the banks of the Paraná. In 1860
(Hutchinson) the muleteers carried about a fifth, in weight, of the goods
from the interior to Rosario, and they got more than a third of the transport
from Rosario to the interior. They had, however, to offer to carry goods at
two-thirds the price charged by the wagoners. It appears that this invasion
by the muleteers is connected with a transport-crisis in the Andean area,
which left a number of the San Juan muleteers without work. It did not last.
By 1862 mule-back transport between Rosario and the interior was almost
over.

The wagons of the Argentine plain have often been described by
travellers. They were heavy vehicles, carrying 150, sometimes 180, arrobes
(1,725 to 2,070 kgs.), covered with a leather hood stretched on hoops. A
long spur decorated with ostrich feathers was balanced on a ring fixed in the
roof, and was used to guide the front pair of oxen. An earthenware pot
containing water enough for each stage hung between the rear uprights. As
a rule, three pair of oxen were yoked to it, one pair being in the shafts. At
Corrientes it was necessary to cross the marshes and esteros, and a special
type of wagon had been evolved. It had a sort of horizontal division
forming an upper story, and the driver sat in this. Everywhere, on the
Pampa as well as at Corrientes, the wheels were enormous; sometimes, as
Darwin says, ten feet in diameter. They were, therefore, able to get through
the bad parts. Mud was, as a matter of fact, the worst enemy of the convoys.
The soil of the Pampa is clayey and soft in the districts near the river. As the
road was not limited in width, the wagons turned to the right or the left
when the ruts became too deep, and the track in time covered a broad belt
of ground. This, however, could not be done in the vicinity of towns, where
the traffic was concentrated. Buenos Aires came to be surrounded by
formidable quagmires that dried up only in the summer. The paving of the
streets and environs was becoming a problem of national importance when
the construction of the railway began.

Wagons did not travel singly. The tropero, or contractor for transport,
organized caravans. In peaceful districts, where no military escort was
required, the convoys could be split up; they consisted, as a rule, of from
fifteen to fifty wagons. Besides the six oxen yoked to the wagon, there had
to be others for relief as well as horses for the staff. Usually they allowed
ten oxen to each wagon; in exceptional cases twenty.111 The convoy to the
salt-lakes in 1778 had no less than 12,000 oxen to 600 wagons. There was a
driver to each wagon, but there had also to be drivers for the starting
animals, and carpenters to make repairs. The leader of the caravan, the
capataz, was generally a master-carpenter. He looked after the interests of
the tropero. There were about three men to each wagon. The carreros were
an original type, nomadic, and very different in costume and character from
the gauchos (breeders) of the plain. At the close of the eighteenth century
Buenos Aires had more than a thousand wagons employed in the traffic to
Mendoza and Tucumán (Borrero).

The stages were rarely more than four or five leagues of five kilometres
each (thirteen to sixteen miles). At this rate it took a convoy forty to fifty
days to go from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, thirty days from Rosario to
Tucumán, three months (with the necessary rests) from Buenos Aires to
Salta.112 When water ran short, the journey might be greatly prolonged, as
the animals could do less work, or not work at all if the aiguades had dried
up. The season was a matter for consideration. In the Buenos Aires district
the winter made the ground sodden and traffic difficult. Farther north,
winter is the dry season, so that pasture was scarce, and it was difficult to
feed the tropas. The summer had difficulties of its own. In January and
February the floods of the Rio Dulce often made it impossible to cross the
ford at Santiago. The carriers preferred to start from the northern provinces
about the end of the summer, in April or May. The best season for leaving

Buenos Aires was the spring, from August to November. In this way each
tropa could make the double journey once a year.

There had been attempts to speed up the transport before the railways
were made. The galera (diligence), with its swarm of horses harnessed with
the cincha (saddle to which the lasso was attached), did not carry goods. It
did not replace the convoy of wagons, but the tropilla of spare horses which
travellers on the plain drove before them. The galera went from Rosario to
Córdoba in three days and to Mendoza in ten days, and from Córdoba to
Salta in fourteen days. About 1860 a quicker goods service was organized,
light wagons drawn by mules replacing the ox-wagons. They made the
journey from Rosario to Córdoba in six days. Similarly, on the Pampa, the
ox-wagons had been replaced before 1889 by quicker wagons, drawn by
horses, to convey wool from the ranches to the railway stations.

The cost of transport by wagon was, naturally, high. It also varied a good
deal, but we cannot possibly go into these variations here. It will be enough
to give, by way of illustration, the details which Hutchinson gives for the
year 1862. The freightage was fixed either for a complete load of 150
arrobes (1,725 kgs.) or so much per arrobe (11½ kgs.). Conveying a load
from Rosario to Córdoba cost forty to fifty piastres (eight to ten pounds).
The cost of carrying an arrobe from Rosario to Mendoza was five to six
reales (about two shillings to two-and-six); from Rosario to Tucuman nine
reales (three shillings and fourpence); from Rosario to Salta eighteen reales
(seven shillings and sixpence). The tropas were, therefore, quickly ousted
by the railways. In a few places they made a very unequal fight against the
railways. The Memoria del departemento de Ingenieros de la Nacion of
1876, quoted by Rebuelto, mentions the competition of the tropas with the
Andino railway, opened from Villa Maria to the Rio Cuarto in 1873 and to
Villa Mercedes in 1875. The merchants of San Juan and Mendoza continued
to use them. The railway had to sign a contract with the troperos by which

wagons were to bring goods as far as Villa Mercedes, where they could be
entrained. The total freight was fifty Bolivian centavos (about two shillings)
per arrobe from Mendoza to Rosario, and sixty centavos from San Juan. Of
this the share of the railway was fifteen centavos.

The first Argentine railway was opened in 1859, between Buenos Aires
and Maron, a distance of about thirteen miles.

In 1870 the Argentine railways formed two independent systems. The
first radiated fan-wise from Buenos Aires (Western line, open as far as
Chivilcoy in 1870, and Southern line, open as far as Chascomus in 1865).
Farther north a line (the Central Argentine) started from Rosario, and
reached Bellville in 1866 and Córdoba in 1870.

The political isolation of
Buenos Aires between
1852 and 1862, during the
time when the first
concessions were issued,
made upon the railway
system an impression that
would not be effaced until THRESHING ON THE
twenty-five years PAMPA.
afterwards. It was not until
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.
1886 that Rosario was
connected by rail with Click to view
Buenos Aires. The line to
Mendoza and Chile, begun
larger image.
in 1870 (F. C. Andino),
joins the line from Rosario

to Córdoba. It reached
Mendoza at the foot of the
Andes before going on to
Buenos Aires; and it was
in 1888 that the Pacific
railway was completed
between Buenos Aires and
Villa Mercedes, and SACKS OF WHEAT READY
established direct
FOR LOADING ON THE
communications between
the capital and the RAILWAY.
province of Cuyo. There are elevators only in a few of the ports.
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.
The line from Rosario to
Córdoba is, therefore, the
Plate XIX.
chief branch round which
the Argentine system Click to view
developed. It is remarkable
that at the time of the
larger image.
original concession in
1855 a westward extension was contemplated, and that there was some idea
of making it a stage in a trans-Andean. The first concessionaire,
Wheelwright, had made the oldest railway in South America, from Caldera
to Copiapo, in Chile in 1851. The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright
to extend the Córdoba line westward and link it with the Copiapo line.
When he opened the Córdoba station in 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering
himself to be discouraged at the slowness with which the line had crossed
the Pampa, still said that the goal was the Pacific, by way of Rioja,
Copacabana and the San Francisco pass. This ambitious programme
deserves to be recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former orientation
of the trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward the Pacific, and as a proof of the

importance, in the imagination of the men of that generation, of the old
trans-Andean roads from north-western Argentina.

Even before the Rosario line had reached Córdoba, it had been continued
northward as far as Tucumán. The work was pushed vigorously, and
Tucumán was reached in 1875. The Córdoba-Tucumán line was the first to
be constructed entirely in the region of the scrub, and quebracho sleepers
were then used for the first time. The earliest lines of the Buenos Aires
province and the Argentine had, on the model of the Indian railways, a
gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the Central Córdoba, from Córdoba to
Tucumán, had a narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods coming from
Tucumán had to be transferred at Córdoba. At the same time (1875) the line
from Concordia to Monte Caseros was opened, and this made it possible to
avoid the rapids of the Uruguay, which was to be a source of supply to the
whole Mesopotamian system. Its gauge was fifty-seven inches. Differences
of gauge are, and will continue to be, one of the characteristics of the
Argentine system.

During the period from 1875 to 1890 were constructed the main lines
which took the place of the old roads from province to province. The
Andean railway reached San Luis in 1882 and Mendoza and San Juan in
1885. Branches of the Central Córdoba reached Santiago del Estero in 1884
and Catamarca in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a new direct
broad-gauge line from Rosario to Tucumán; and almost at the same time the
narrow-gauge line of the Central Norte, from Santa Fé to Tucumán, was
finished further north. The Tucumán line was continued northward to the
foot of the Andes as far as Salta. In the province of Buenos Aires the Bahía
Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900 the railways have pushed on to
the frontiers and are linked in various directions with those of the adjoining
countries. The Cumbre tunnel on the Mendoza trans-Andean was completed
in 1910, and traffic with Chile by rail is now permanent. The Salta line was

continued in 1908 to the Bolivian tableland. In Mesopotamia, in fine, the
north-eastern line reached Posadas in 1911 and effected a junction with the
Paraguay line.

These details, however, give a very imperfect idea of the history of the
development of the Argentine railway system. It has not merely been
superimposed upon the old roads, but has, on the other hand, helped to open
up and develop new lands, which could not have been colonized without it.
As early as 1883 Valiento Noailles, examining the general plan of the
system, noticed the profound difference between the railways of Argentine
and those of Europe. "In Europe," he said, "the railways are constructed to
serve existing centres of production and consumption.... Our Argentine
railways are to facilitate colonization." Corresponding to each occupation of
a new area of the Pampean plain by the farmer or the breeder is the
construction in that area of a new network of lines which are fed by its
traffic and in turn help it to increase its production. The more productive the
region is, the closer are the meshes of this network. They are wider in the
pastoral than in the agricultural areas. The period of the development of the
southern lines in the province of Buenos Aires corresponds with the
expansion of breeding when the Pampa had been pacified. The railway
reached Azul in 1876. The Ayacucho branch was opened in 1880, and
continued as far as Tres Arroyos in 1887. The completion of the Bahía
Blanca line, via Azul and Olavarria, in 1884, is itself merely one of the
dates in this colonizing period. The great period of agricultural colonization
at Santa Fé and the construction of the system of lines that serve it begin a
little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (extension of the Central Argentine
system, the railways of the province of Santa Fé, and the narrow-gauge
railway from Rosario to Córdoba).

The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen in the
present completion of the system which has developed freely on the even

surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the port of Buenos
Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario and Bahía Blanca.
What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the railway map will be
found on closer examination to be less perfect; while the Atlantic coast
between La Plata and Bahía Blanca has no ports, the Paraná has quite a
number of suitable places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and
Villa Constitución are served by lines which cut across the lines going to
Rosario and Buenos Aires. This complexity of the system west of the
Paraná continues to the north of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa Fé
cut across all the lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the
southern frontier of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea,
etc.) have, unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the Paraná, all
their traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to
Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanco the crops of the districts they cross. They
are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not rival
lines.

When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a
regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized and
covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy of
colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos Mejia
has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since the
beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction of the
Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines penetrating
the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia and Formosa,
and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from the ports of San
Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add the line from
Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a
Government subvention.113 These lines, serving districts with little

population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time make any
profit.114

Hence railway construction must be regarded in modern Argentina as one
of the aspects of the problem of developing the soil. The railway companies
have been compelled to intervene directly in the work of colonization. In
1863 the Central Argentine received from the Government a strip of land
three miles wide on each side of the line it was making, between Rosario
and Córdoba, on condition that it colonized the land. The company had its
own immigration agents and its colonizing staff, and it opened its first
colonies west of Rosario between 1870 and 1872. This kind of concession
is exceptional in Argentina. On the other hand, the irrigation law of 1909
obliges the railway companies to undertake, on behalf of the Government,
the work that is necessary to develop irrigation in the areas they serve, such
work being immediately reflected in an increase of population and traffic.
In compliance with this law the Southern railway is constructing a canal
which will water the whole valley of the Rio Negro below the confluence of
the Neuquen. The Central Argentine and the Pacific also have undertaken to
construct dams on the Rio Tercero and Rio Quinto, in the provinces of
Córdoba and San Luis.

As it is the essential function of a railway to convey the produce of the
area it serves to the exporting port, the problem of the relations between the
administration of railways and the administration of ports is of primary
importance. The chief ports served by different companies, such as Rosario
and Buenos Aires, may maintain their independence, but a secondary port
will be at the mercy of the single line which conveys goods to it. In such
circumstances the ports have become, in many cases, mere dependencies of
the railways. The port of Colastiné belongs to the railways of the Santa Fé
province. The port of Bahía Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports
constructed by the different railway companies, and run by them. Each of

them ships the goods which it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which
belongs to the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, immediately
after the opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca. Puerto
Galvan belongs to the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port of the
line from Rosario to Bahía Blanca. At Buenos Aires the Southern Railway
Company has acquired control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock
Company. At La Plata it manages the docks.

The spread of agricultural colonization was at first hampered by the cost
of freightage which cereals could bear over an area with a radius of about
200 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by Girola in the
Investigación Agricola of 1904. The period 1895-1905 saw the birth of a
series of plans for making canals in the Pampean region for the purpose of
transporting grain in the area which the railway did not seem able to serve
economically. Not one of them was carried out, but the railways quickly
enlarged their sphere of influence in the interior. There is, however, a
reminiscence of this pause in colonization in what Argentinians call "the
parabolic tariffs." The Argentine railways practically, apart from cases of
competition with rival lines, use proportional tariffs up to a distance of 218
miles, and degressive tariffs beyond that limit. In this way the railways have
helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs have certainly played
a part in the spread of colonization during the years antecedent to 1912.
They have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land to the better land
in the east.115

The rise in the value of land and the advance of colonization led, at each
of those crises of development which characterize the recent history of
Argentina, to a multiplication of railway concessions granted by the
national Government and the various provincial authorities. These have to
be bought up by the leading companies, as each of them wanted to keep
exclusive control of the region in which it had established itself. This

concentration could not be
accomplished in a
perfectly methodical way,
and the various systems
now overlap, which is not
to the interest of the
companies. Thus Villa
Maria, on the Central
Argentine line from
Rosario to Córdoba, is also
served by a line belonging
to the Santa Fé railways
and by a line of the Pacific
Company which puts it in
communication with MAP VI.—THE RAILWAYS.
Buenos Aires. On the other
It is impossible to give the entire system.
hand, the Central
Only the main lines are given. Of the narrow-
Argentine penetrates to the
gauge lines of the Pampean region only those
very heart of the area of
which connect the system of northern
the Pacific at Junin.
Argentina with Buenos Aires are given. The
However, competition map shows the double direction of the Pacific
between the various system from Villa Mercedes, to Buenos Aires
companies has had the and Bahía Blanca. It gives only an imperfect
effect of dividing the idea of the way in which the lines ending at
Pampean plain into three the ports of the Paraná and the Rio de la
great spheres of influence. Plata (Santa Fé, Rosario, San Nicolas,
The first, in the north, is Buenos Aires and La Plata) overlap and
that of the Central cross each other.
Argentine and the Buenos
Aires y Rosario line. In

1908 the Argentine Click to view
Government officially
sanctioned the fusion of larger image.
the two companies, though
it had really been accomplished a few years before. The second sphere, in
the south, is that of the Pacific, the attraction of which was the line from
Buenos Aires to Villa Mercedes, and which in 1907 bought the line from
Villa Mercedes to Mendoza and the Trans-Andean, a natural continuation of
its system. Moreover, in 1904 the Pacific absorbed the line from Bahía
Blanca to the north-west, which has been linked up once more with its
original system at Villa Mercedes. It thus has two outlets, to Buenos Aires
and Bahía Blanca, and completely encloses the third sphere with its
branches. The third sphere, which comprises the centre and south of the
Pampean plain, is the domain of the Southern and Western Companies. In
1912 these two companies asked the Argentine Government to authorize
them to amalgamate. Although they withdrew their proposal in 1914, in
face of the conditions imposed upon them, they are still closely associated.
Part of the traffic of the western lines of the Western passes over Southern
lines at Carbuë, and is shipped at the port Ingeniero White. At Buenos Aires
also, and at La Plata, part of the Western Company's traffic in cereals and
cattle uses the premises of the Southern Company. The Western and the
Southern, jointly, bought in 1908, before it was finished, the narrow-gauge
Midland of Buenos Aires line at Carbuë, which was to cross their sphere of
influence. It was opened in 1911.

The importance of the transport of cereals in the life of the leading
Argentine systems will be seen from the following figures. In percentages
of the total of goods carried, both from the interior to the ports and vice
versa, the tonnage of exported cereals was:—

1913 1914 1916 Average.
Southern 31.0 34.3 32.5 32.6
Western 58.3 61.7 55.1 58.4
Pacific 29.0 41.8 33.8 35.0
Central 36.5 46.6 34.8 39.5

The figures are rather less for the Southern, which covers an area that has
remained chiefly pastoral and, by means of its Rio Negro line, serves for
part of the transport of cattle from Patagonia (cattle-transport on the
Southern, average for the years 1913, 1914 and 1916: 17.2 per cent. of the
total tonnage, 19 per cent. of total receipts; 1.4 per cent. of tonnage and 6.5
per cent. of receipts). They are higher for the Western, the only system that
lies entirely in the Pampean region and has no continuations beyond it, as
the Pacific has to Mendoza and the Central to Tucumán.

The share of each company in the total traffic varies from year to year
according to the harvest. Of the four to ten million tons of cereals carried
every year, the greater part—about a third—falls to the Central Argentine,
and one-sixth to the Southern. The Central Argentine carries the greater part
of the maize and flax, the maize alone representing 26 per cent. of the total
tonnage carried by the line, and the flax 5.6 per cent. Of the other lines the
Western alone carries any appreciable quantity of maize, which comes from
the Junin district (19 per cent. of its tonnage, but only 12 per cent. of its
receipts, because of the slight distances the stuff is carried). The transport of
wheat is about equally divided amongst the four leading lines, but the
proportion of it to total traffic is highest in the case of the Western (34.4 per
cent. of total traffic). The Southern is the chief carrier of oats (9.8 per cent.
of the total tonnage). The tonnage carried annually is particularly irregular
in the case of the Central, on account of the irregularity of the maize crops,
and the Pacific, because its lines north-west of Buenos Aires serve a wheat-

area that is exposed to drought (wheat carried by the Pacific in 1913, 15.9
per cent. of the total tonnage; in 1914, 27.2 per cent.).

The clearing of the cereals gives the Argentine railways a delicate
problem in the organization of traffic. The crops of flax, wheat and oats
must be cleared in the four to six months following the harvest (December-
January). The maize harvest, which is later, is also much slower; it lasts the
whole of the autumn. Hence the removal of the maize is spread over a long
period, and sometimes the work of one year runs into that of the next. This
gives the Central an advantage over the other lines. The wool also must, on
account of its great value, be transferred to the ports speedily after the
shearing; but this is only a matter of about a hundred thousand tons.116

Export, however, is by no means the one source of traffic on the
Argentine railways. Transport of goods for home consumption is chiefly a
question of a large part of the wheat crop. Building materials also—bricks,
lime and stone—are an important item on the various lines which link
Buenos Aires with the Sierra de Córdoba and the Sierra de Tandil. In 1913
the Southern line carried 1,134,000 tons of minerals, including 997,000 tons
of stone and 101,000 tons of lime from the Sierra de Tandil and 34,000 tons
of salt from the salt-mines of Lavalle, between Bahía Blanca and the
Colorado. In the same year, the Pacific, Central Argentine, Central Córdoba
and State railway carried 880,000 tons of minerals (half being lime) from
the Sierra de Córdoba.117 All the timber carried on the lines of northern
Argentina, except the quebracho from the banks of the Paraná, is for home
use: sleepers, fence-posts, firewood and charcoal are the chief items on
most of the lines in the scrub. The war has checked railway construction
and reduced the use of sleepers, but it has also deprived Argentina of
combustible minerals and increased the transport of firewood. Even on
railways like the Pacific and Central Argentine, which have very few of
their lines on the scrub, the tonnage of wood carried is 6 per cent. of the

whole (average for 1913, 1914 and 1916), and the proportion rises to 30 per
cent. of the total tonnage on the Central Córdoba. For several companies the
sugars of Tucumán and the wines of Mendoza are an important element of
their receipts, not so much on account of the tonnage as the high cost of
freightage and the great distance to the centres of consumption in the
Pampean region. The carriage of wine and casks brings the Pacific 38.3 per
cent. of its receipts (1913-14-16). The transport of sugar on the Central
Argentine in a normal year amounts to 5 per cent. of its receipts. On the
Central Córdoba the tonnage of sugar-cane and sugar carried amounted in
1914, a year of exceptional harvest, to 42 per cent. of the total tonnage, and
was still 20 per cent. in 1916, a year of very poor crop. The supplying of
meat to the market of Buenos Aires and the Pampean area, with its dense
population, means a good deal of long-distance traffic in cattle; the
refrigerators taking the better cattle of the adjoining region for the foreign
market, and the slaughter houses of Buenos Aires being forced to content
themselves with inferior beasts reared in the provinces and the adjoining
districts.

The importance of these currents of internal traffic has made itself felt in
the organization of the Argentine system. It has made it necessary for each
system to have not only an outlet to an exporting town, but a direct
connection with the chief centre of home consumption, Buenos Aires. The
narrow-gauge system, which until the end of the nineteenth century had
been restricted to the northern half of Argentine territory, north of the
latitude of Rosario, developed in the province of Buenos Aires after 1900,
and ventured to compete in the carriage of cereals with the broad-gauge
system (Company of the Province of Buenos Aires and Provincial railway
of La Plata). This system connected with the narrow-gauge lines of the
north. The Central Córdoba, which had reached Rosario in 1912 and so had
escaped the need to transfer its export-traffic at Córdoba to the broad-gauge,
began immediately afterwards to effect a direct communication with

Buenos Aires (Central Córdoba, extension to Buenos Aires, opened in
1913). The line from Rosario to Buenos Aires of the Province of Buenos
Aires Company also serves to carry trains of the Province of Santa Fé
Company, which is closely associated with it. The medium-gauge lines of
Mesopotamia also have effected a communication with Buenos Aires by
means of a ferry-boat that plies on the Paraná between Ibicuy and Zarate,
and by using a section of the Buenos Aires Central.

The concentration of narrow-gauge and medium-gauge lines seemed to
be issuing in a complete fusion of their interests in 1913. The Argentine
Railway Company got control of the lines of Entre Rios, Corrientes and the
Paraguay. It promoted the development and extension of the Central
Córdoba, and it also had large interests in the French companies of the
Buenos Aires and Santa Fé provinces. All the narrow-gauge lines would
have concentrated in its hands if it had been able to get the State railway.
The broad-gauge line from Rosario to Puerto Belgrano had, as its interest
conflicted with those of the great broad-gauge English systems, joined the
narrow-gauge group engineered by the Argentine railway. But the
amalgamation attempted by the Argentine railways did not succeed, and,
after its failure, the companies it had temporarily brought together resumed
their independence.

The river-route of the Paraná has sometimes been an auxiliary, at other
times a rival, of the railways.

Until the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was opened in 1886, the
navigation of the Paraná was the only link between the system of northern
Argentina and that of the Buenos Aires province. Before the line was
completed, the company had established a service of boats on the Paraná,
and in this way it kept up a traffic in goods consigned to stations on the
Central Argentine, to be transferred at Rosario. These combinations of

railway and river service disappeared when the line from Buenos Aires to
Rosario was finished.

In regard to export traffic the railways have not attempted to compete
with the river anywhere where it is open to maritime navigation; they have
merely been concerned to connect with it. On the other hand, the railway
and the river are rivals for the home traffic and the traffic of the upper
districts which sea-going boats do not reach. Before the time of the railways
the river had taken all the goods traffic, but had tolerated on its left bank a
post-road between Santa Fé, Corrientes and Asunción. The railway still has
the advantage over the river in regard to speed (in carrying passengers
between Rosario and Buenos Aires, and live cattle from the Chaco and the
Paraguay for Buenos Aires or the salting works of the lower Uruguay).
Even in regard to certain kinds of heavy goods—quebracho timber—the
river has not secured a monopoly, and there is a good deal of transport by
rail.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVER-ROUTES

The use of the river before steam navigation—Floods—The river
plain—The bed of the Paraná and its changes—The estuary
and its shoals—Maritime navigation—The boats on the
Paraná.

The problem of the use of the river-routes of the Paraná and the Paraguay
is not of interest to Argentina alone. It affects the whole history of
colonization in South America. The very name of the Rio de la Plata is a
reminiscence of the anxieties of the early navigators who landed there,
chiefly in search of a route to the mineral districts of the Andes [Plata =
silver]. It is remarkable that the Amazon, which opens a more direct and
better route to the Andes, was never used for reaching Peru. It was at the
most, and only occasionally, used as a return-route, whereas expeditions to
the Cordillera were organized on the banks of the Paraná during the whole
of the sixteenth century. The routes linking the Paraná and the Paraguay
with the tableland furrow the whole plain of the Pampa and the Chaco, from
the latitude of the estuary to about 16° S. lat. (expedition of Ñuflo de
Chavez in 1557). An especially close network starts from the river between
18° and 22° S. lat. and ends at Santa Cruz, the most northern centre

established by the Spaniards on the plain, at the foot of the Andes, as a
consequence of the use of the Paraná.118

Spanish colonization, however, did not succeed in making permanent
settlements on the Chaco. The Indians, who were masters of it, disputed
their passage, and the only practicable route was the southernmost of the
roads to the tableland, south of the Rio Salado, which ends at the estuary.
From this time onward the prosperity of Buenos Aires eclipsed that of
Asunción. The river ceased to be a great continental route.

The division of the Paraná between the Spanish and the Portuguese was a
check upon the full development of the river-route. The Portuguese held the
upper part of its basin, which now belongs to Brazil. They expelled the
Spanish missionaries from the upper Paraná about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and made themselves masters of the Paraguay north of
20° S. lat. Their forts at Coimbre and Albuquerque prevented any from
ascending. D'Azara insists that it would have been Spain's interest to disarm
these forts; it would have enabled them to go up the river as far as the
Spanish missions to the Mojos and the Chiquitos. On their side, the
Portuguese only used the upper section of the river, where it is joined by the
Paulist road north of the Coimbre, as a means of access to the gold mines of
the Matto Grosso. Even now, although the Paraná is open to every flag, the
development of the river-route is not independent of political conditions. In
making the railway from Saint Paul to Corumba, and so creating on its own
territory a means of direct communication with the upper Paraguay, Brazil
diverts from the lower districts part of the traffic which ought normally to
go there. Again, the ports of southern Brazil and the lines which go to them
try to attract to the Atlantic the produce of the basins of the Uruguay and the
upper Paraná, which would have followed the thread of the river to foster
the trade of Buenos Aires if the frontiers had been fixed otherwise.

Before the Revolution the river-trade was confined to exchanges between
the Misiones and Paraguay on the one hand, and Buenos Aires and the
Andean provinces on the other. After the extinction of the missions
Paraguay was the chief centre of traffic on the river. At the close of the
eighteenth century it had a fairly large population. According to D'Azara, it
amounted to 97,000, and 47,000 for the area of the former Missions
(Misiones), while Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Entre Rios and Corrientes had
not more than 103,000 inhabitants collectively. Paraguay exported tobacco,
maté and timber by the river. The Buenos Aires Estano received 800 tons of
tobacco a year. The exports of maté from Paraguay to Peru, Chile and the
interior provinces amounted to 1,725 tons, and 2,250 tons went to Buenos
Aires. The timber came mostly from the Tebicuary, where the angadas
(loads of timber) were formed. The chief constructive sheds also were on
the Tebicuary. Boats of twenty to 200 tons were launched there; and they
had armed boats, when they went down the river, to detect ambushes of the
Indians, who were masters of the right bank north of Santa Fé.

The development of navigation on the Paraná during the first half of the
nineteenth century was checked by the disturbances and wars of the period
of the emancipation and unification of Argentina. The river was blockaded
several times and traffic interrupted. Only a few smuggling schooners
succeeded in getting through the side branches, which the ships stationed in
the river could not watch. Robertson escaped the Spanish vessels in this
way. The picture which D'Orbigny has given us of the life of the river
belongs to the year 1827. At that time the estuary was blockaded by the
Brazilian fleet in the whole area of the delta as far as San Pedro. Piracy was
so rife, and the insecurity so great, on the Uruguay and the Paraná, that few
ventured as far as Buenos Aires, the ships being linked in convoys. Up
stream, Corrientes was the limit of navigation. The dictator Francis closed
the Paraguay, and even the small boats no longer sailed on the upper
Paraná, along the frontier of Paraguay. The Correntinos, who spoke

Guarani, could merely get permission at rare intervals to send a few boats
up river. Armed boats convoyed these as far as Neembucu, and they
returned with hides and maté. Corrientes thus became the market-centre of
the upper river and replaced Asunción in the trade. The flotilla on the
Paraná included flat-bottomed barges, which were only used in coming
down, and strong keeled ships—schooners, sloops and brigs—with their
ropes made of leather. Down stream there was a little more diversity in the
traffic. The island sent cargoes of firewood and charcoal to Santa Fé and
Buenos Aires. The orchards of the delta provided Buenos Aires with
oranges and peaches. Hides for export were shipped at Goya and Santa Fé.
But the chief freight was lime from La Bajada, which was burned in the
kilns on the Barranca, at the outcrops of the beds of conchiferous limestone.

The navigation was
fairly easy, the journey
from Corrientes to Buenos
Aires (675 miles) lasting,
as a rule, from fifteen to
twenty days. Going up, the
time was more irregular.
CONFLUENCE OF THE
They had to stop when
there was no south wind, YGUASSU AND THE
or a little progress was PARANÁ.
made by hauling (silgar).
D'Orbigny took a month to In the foreground is the left bank of the
Yguassu, on Argentine territory. The right
travel up.119 In 1822,
bank is Brazilian territory. At the back, on
before the war with Brazil,
the right bank of the Paraná, is Paraguayan
there were 651 boats
territory.
entered at Buenos Aires for
coasting trade on the rivers Plate XX.

and 1,035 at San Fernando Click to view
or on the Tigre, the
advance port of Buenos larger image.
Aires. In 1833 Isabelle put
at one thousand the number of vessels at work on the Paraná and the
Uruguay.

In 1841 Rosas forbade navigation on the river. There was then a double
blockade checking the trade of Argentina. The Franco-British fleet closed
the Rio de la Plata and blockaded Buenos Aires, where the Government of
Rosas was established. In addition, Rosas's troops on the barranca of the
right bank prevented any from going up the Paraná, and cut off the interior
provinces from the rest of the world. The injury then done to interests which
were already fully self-conscious may be gathered from the agitation
provoked by the decision of France and England in 1845 to break the
blockade of the river. A convoy was at once organized at Montevideo,
consisting of no less than ninety-eight ships, of 6,900 tons in all
(MacKann). It went up the Paraná under the protection of war-ships, which
removed the chains slung across it by Rosas. The convoy dispersed up river
as soon as it was out of range of Rosas. But it had needed so great an effort
that the attempt could not be made again before the fall of Rosas.

The closing of the Paraná compelled a diversion of the trade of Paraguay
toward the south-east. It crossed the isthmus of Misiones, between the
Paraná and the Uruguay, and passed down the Uruguay. At this time the
whole commercial activity of Paraguay was concentrated at Itapua, on the
upper Paraná. The prosperity of the Uruguay was some compensation for
the misery that reigned on the Paraná. The populations of Paysandu and
Montevideo greatly increased.

In 1852, at the fall of Rosas, the modern period began for the Paraná. The
river-population changed rapidly. It ceased to be exclusively creole.
Basques, and later Italians, had settled upon the Uruguay ten years before,
and they now spread along the Paraná. In 1850 MacKann found fifty
vessels, of 20 to 100 tons, belonging to Italians at Santa Fé. This wave of
immigration coincided with the development of relations between the
Paraná and the port of Montevideo. From 1852 to 1860 Buenos Aires was
isolated, and it remained outside the economic life of Argentina.
Montevideo took its place. Urquiza's administration sought, in addition, to
establish direct maritime communication between over-seas ports and the
ports on the river: Gualeguy in Entre Rios, and Rosario in Santa Fé. Under
a system of preferential duties (1857-59), which reduced the burden on
goods carried by the river, Rosario grew rapidly, and between 1853 and
1858 increased its population from 4,000 to 22,700. The period from 1852
to 1860 was also the time when steam-navigation was developing, and this
doubled the value of the river-route. From 1860 onward Buenos Aires was
connected by regular services of steamboats with Rosario, Santa Fé,
Corrientes, Asunción and Cuyaba. On the upper Paraná goods (timber,
tobacco and oranges) were still carried by sailing boats between Corrientes
and Apipé, where they stopped at the commencement of the rapids.
Steamboats did not sail up the rapids of Apipé until 1868.120 From 1850 to
1860 there were repeated explorations of the Salado and the Bermejo, as the
interior provinces hoped to be able to find a connection with the vivifying
artery of the Paraná (voyage of Page on the Salado from Salta in 1855, and
of Lavarello on the Bermejo in 1855 and 1863).

In 1860 the entry of Buenos Aires into the Confederation re-established
the normal condition of free competition between Buenos Aires and
Rosario. From that time the life of the river reflects the advance of

colonization in the Pampean region. The Paraná became the highway for the
export of cereals.

The two rivers, of which the Rio de la Plata forms the common estuary,
differ considerably in their features. The Uruguay has irregular floods,
especially in autumn (May) and at the end of the winter (August-October).
Low water is in summer (January-February). Its basin belongs to the
temperate zone, and does not extend northward as far as the area of tropical
summer-rain. The Uruguay also differs from the Paraná in its low capacity
for transport and alluvial deposit. While the Paraná has built up a vast
deltaic plain, the Uruguay ends in an ordinary estuary, with rocky or sandy
bed and clear water. The estuary of the Uruguay is 130 miles long and five
or six miles wide. The eastern shore is rocky and broken. The Argentine
shore is low. It is formed in the south by the deposits of the delta of the
Paraná, while further north, from Gualeguacha to Concepción, the hills of
Entre Rios are hidden behind a screen of flat islands covered with palms,
formed by the stuff brought by the streams of Entre Rios. The river-floods
are lost in the great sheet of the estuary. The tide in the estuary or a flood in
the Paraná is enough to turn the current.

Maritime navigation goes beyond the estuary and beyond Paysandu, as
far as the rapids which prevent further advance at Salto. The twin towns of
Concordia (right bank) and Salta (left bank) mark the limit of navigation on
the inner course of the river. It begins again above the falls, at Monte
Caseros, from which the river-boats go to San Tomé and occasionally to
Concepción. Small ships go higher, as far as Salto Grande in Misiones (27°
20′ S. lat.).121

The navigable system of the Paraná is four times as large. The first
survey of the river was made about the middle of the nineteenth century by
the British Navy. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Argentine

Government took up the study of the bed and the peculiarities of the Paraná,
and the Ministry of Public Works published a map, on the scale 1:100,000,
of the course of the river between Posadas and San Pedro, at the beginning
of the delta. A precise survey was made, and twenty-six fluvio-metrical
scales were established, the zero of which represents mean low-water.122
Transverse soundings were taken at equal distances of 670 and 1,000 feet,
the distance being reduced to 160 and even 80 feet at critical points. Thanks
to this work, the Paraná is now, no doubt, the best known of all rivers of
that size.

Its output is estimated at 6,000 cubic metres a second at mean low-water,
in the latitude of Rosario, and 25,000 to 30,000 cubic metres a second
during flood at a height of six metres above low-water.123 Its features bear
the mark of its tropical origin. The tropical character is typical on the
Paraguay, which is, by its situation in the central South-American plain, the
real continuation of the lower Paraná. The slightness of the fall of the
Paraguay, however, and the extent of the marshes over which it spreads in
Brazil and Paraguay, have the effect of regulating and retarding the flood,
which only attains its maximum at Asunción in May. The flood of the
Paraguay extends the period of high water on the lower Paraná until the end
of autumn. The upper Paraná has most of its basin in the tropical zone of
summer rain. But its behaviour is also influenced by the spring or autumn
rains of the southern part of the Brazilian tableland. Its floods are sudden
and violent. They reach a height of sixty or seventy feet in the region of the
confluence of the Yguassu. They sweep rapidly down stream, and reach the
lower Paraná before the flood of the Paraguay, which they hold back.

From Posadas the flood-waves reach Corrientes in five days (235 miles).
From Corrientes they reach Paraná in eight days (380 miles), travelling
about two miles an hour. That is one-third the speed of the current, as the

flood is retarded, and more or less absorbed, by the ramifications of the
broader bed in which it moves.

At Bajada Grande the lowest water is in September. The flood appears in
December or January, though sometimes in October or November. The
maximum is in March or April. The rise is rapid at first, but it gradually
moderates, and the level of the water is raised about one metre per month
during three months. It then sinks in corresponding order. The ebb is often
interrupted in June, and sometimes as late as August, by a sudden leap
upward of the curve, representing an ascensional movement of the water
three times as rapid as that of the main flood (one metre in ten days). The
level reached in this late flood is sometimes higher than that of the normal
flood in April or May. The range of the ordinary flood-movements is from
ten to sixteen feet. Exceptional floods rise to a height of twenty-three feet
above the low-water mark.

The curves established for the years 1908 to 1910 by the Argentine
hydrographical service enable us to analyse the mechanism of the flood
with a good deal of confidence. The beginning of the flood at Bajada
Grande in October corresponds to the first flood of the upper Paraná.
During this first phase the curve of the Bajada is parallel (thirteen days
later) to that of Posadas. There is the same parallelism in November,
December and January. If the summer rains are light on the upper Paraná,
the flood is late on the lower Paraná, and the water is still low there in
December (0.20 below the low-water mark on December 31, 1910). At the
beginning of March, before the maximum of the flood, the curve of Bajada
Grande differs from the curve of Posadas. It is the time when the flood of
the lower river is caused by the rise of the Paraguay. The secondary floods
of June and July again have their origin in the upper Paraná, but, as they are
added to the flood of the Paraguay on the lower river, they reach a higher
level there than at Posadas; the difference gradually disappears as the flood

of the Paraguay subsides. It is the addition of the late floods of the upper
Paraná to the flood of the Paraguay that causes on the lower river the
abnormal floods that occur there at irregular intervals (in 1825, 1833, 1858,
1878, 1905 and 1917).

Below the Bajada the height of the floods progressively declines. On the
estuary they are no longer perceptible; variations of level are due entirely to
the tides. In the channels of the delta of the Paraná the tide does not reverse
the current as it does in the estuary of the Uruguay, but it causes a slight rise
of the water; and this has been observed sometimes, at very low water, as
far as Rosario.

It is near Corpus, about forty miles above Posadas, that the upper Paraná
escapes from the restraint of the Brazilian tableland, which imprisons its
valley, from the falls of the Guayra, in a deep fissure between lofty basalt
cliffs. Below Posadas the river leaves the region of hills and red earth.
Below Corrientes it flows everywhere over its own alluvia. Even above
Corrientes its form has surprising characteristics of youth. The precise
survey done on its banks has brought to light a very distinct break of its fall
above Villa Urquiza, about 400 miles from Buenos Aires. The fall, which
from Corrientes onward remains between sixty and forty millimetres per
kilometre, sinks suddenly to thirteen over a stretch of twenty-five miles, and
then rises again to thirty to forty-five millimetres.124 Below Rosario the
mean descent is twelve millimetres to the kilometre, below San Pedro only
six.

Above Corrientes the width of the main arm of the Paraná varies, as a
rule, from 2,600 to 6,500 feet. The width of the river-plain over which the
floods spread is still more irregular. Between Santa Fé and Paraná, where it
is especially narrow, it is still ten miles wide. Lower down it gradually
broadens to a width of sixty-five miles at the head of the estuary. The

scenery is not the same in all sections of it. The vegetation on the islands is
richer and more varied up river, and tropical essences (laurel-timbo) are
found below the Bajada, forming clumps of trees covered with creepers.

But the different scenes
of the river region are most
of all due to different
conditions of erosion and
formation. Above Rosario
the configuration is due to
floods. Each succeeding THE PARANÁ AT
flood alters it and leaves CORRIENTES.
some trace of itself in the
topography. The beds of Banks and islands partially fixed by
sand that it lays down are vegetation.
fixed by rushes and Photograph by Widmayer.

floating weeds, then by
willows (Salix
Click to view
humboldtiana). This screen larger image.
of vegetation encourages
accretion, and the edges
tend to rise higher. In the
middle of the island are
low, marshy lands. The
irregularity of the alluvial
deposits causes marked
undulations in the whole
region of the river, and
everywhere gives rise to
alternate beds of clay and
THE BARRANCA AT
sand. Below Rosario the PARANÁ (ENTRE RIOS),

river gradually loses its LEFT BANK.
power. The islands become
more stable and flatter. It is composed of clays and of beds of
Clumps of willow and conchiferous terrestrial limestone, which
spiny ceibos (Erythrina have supplied the lime-kilns for more than a
cristagalli) still cover the century.
edges of them, and Photograph by Boote.

sometimes spread over the
Plate XXI.
interior. But as the climate
is now less humid, the Click to view
vegetation fixes the soil
less firmly, and the wind larger image.
becomes the chief sculptor
of the landscape. It heaps up the sand during the low-water season, and
makes dunes which rise above the level of the greatest floods. These dunes
form an unbroken line along the land in the southern part of Entre Rios, in
the north of the main arm, with ridges at right angles, advancing toward the
south, which rest upon the river clay; like the one which the Ibicuy railway
follows across the floodable area. The cattle of the district take refuge on
the dunes during floods. During periods of drought, on the other hand, they
retain a quantity of water, and this is drawn from surface-wells at their base.

The limits of the zone of the river are clearly marked on the whole of the
lower Paraná. It is enclosed on both sides by high barrancas (cliffs),
vertical in places where the main current washes their feet, but sloping
slightly where there is only a secondary arm with little erosive power. The
cliff is broken only at the confluences of small valleys, the flat, filled-up
bottoms of which are on the level of the alluvial plain of the Paraná. The
cliffs are at their highest in the district of Villa Paraná, where they rise in
places to a height of 300 feet. On the right bank the cliffs show a section of
the upper layers of the Pampean clays. On the left bank there are æolian

clays only at the top of them. Below these are Tertiary marine strata (marls
and sandstones with beds of shells). The cliffs of the left bank stretch
northwards, with a few breaks, as far as Corrientes, and even into Misiones.
Their height gradually diminishes, and the Tertiary marine strata are
replaced by granitic red sandstone.125 On the right bank the height of the
cliffs gradually diminishes up river. They are still conspicuous at the
confluence of the Carcaraña, but at Santa Fé they rise only about thirty-four
feet. North of 31° S. lat., and for some distance beyond Pilcomayo, the
plain of the Chaco is very low, and it is impossible to define exactly the
limit of the alluvial zone of the Paraná. The fine clays, grey and white,
which form the soil of the Chaco, reach the left bank north of Corrientes, in
the esteros of Neembucu. The red sandstone hills of the Asunción district
rise like an archipelago out of this level bed of lacustrine deposits.

There is no obstacle to navigation in the entire stretch from Posadas to
the falls of the Guayra on the Paraná and the Salto Grande on the Yguassa.
Sixteen miles below Posadas the Paraná passes through a series of
graduated rapids for about sixty miles (1,467 kil. to 1,558 kil. from Buenos
Aires) wrongly called the Salto de Apipé. The current then rises to a speed
of eight knots, and the depth is three feet at low water. These rapids are due
to beds of melaphyre, which emerge amongst the granitic sandstone, and
the water makes its way between large rocky islands. At Ituzaingo (1,455
kil.) the current loses force. There is, however, still a rocky bottom lower
down, for ninety miles, at a depth of five feet. Below this the rock only
appears on the left bank, and in a few ridges near the bank, or in isolated
reefs which it has been easy to mark with buoys.

From Corrientes to La Paz the river flows from north to south at the feet
of the Corrientes cliffs. These line the main stream between Corrientes and
Empedrado, and for thirty-five miles south of Bella vista. In the latitude of
Riachucho, especially about Bellavista, the cliffs form a series of creeks and

capes, in which the west winds create a heavy sea that was dreaded by ships
of light draught coming down the river. North of Bellavista, and for more
than a hundred miles south of Goya, the main stream is separated from the
cliff by a series of alluvial islands; behind these are lateral arms (riachos)
into which pour the rivers of Corrientes. These arms were much used by the
early navigators.

Between Esquina and La Paz the main bed, which is not in touch with the
land on either of its banks, flows in a meandering path for some seven
miles, the scale of the bends being double that of the meandering of the
Paraguay north of the confluence. The islands are very small, and are strung
in a rosary at the top of each bend. The depth is sixty feet at the top of the
bend. The shallows are in a line with the islands at the point where the
current runs evenly again before the next curve. The depth here is seven,
and sometimes even five feet.126 These shallows change their places
quickly, and it is not always the same bad spot that determines the
maximum draught for ships that are to be used in this section. This
migration of the shallows is very different from the permanence of the
rocky bottom of the stretch between Corrientes and Posadas.

From La Paz to Paraná the main course is outlined by the Entre Rios
cliffs. There is no further meandering. The cliffs of hard rock offer far more
resistance than the soft alluvia over which the river wanders freely. The
permanence of the bed in front of the cliffs leads to a depth of as much as
eighty feet. Only here and there a fringe of alluvial stuff separates the
channel for a time from the cliff. These curves seem, as a rule, to coincide
with the confluence of rivers, which bring a heavy load of clay from the
tableland; as, does, for instance, the San Feliciano, north of Hernandarias.
They are marked by shallows, in strong contrast to the great depths of the
straight sections. The San Feliciano paso, which is twelve feet broad to-day,
was only six feet broad in 1908. It appeared on Sullivan's map in 1847.127

Below Paraná, as far as the estuary, the careful observations that have
been made since 1903 on the movement of the river have enabled us to
learn some of its laws.128 We can distinguish four sections of unequal
length. From Paraná to Diamante the river remains in touch with the cliffs
of the left bank. It is not straight; it describes a series of linked crescents of
equal radius, which seem to be traces of so many meanders. Only one in
two of the windings of the cliff is followed by the channel. The wandering
of the river is confined within limits as in a fixed mould. The Paracao
shallow, which for a long time prevented ships from reaching Santa Fé
(gradually deepened by dredging from eight to nineteen feet between 1907
and 1911) is at the angle where two of these curves meet. On the right bank
the secondary arms continue to follow the river (Paraná viejo, Riacho de
Coronda).129

Below Diamante the river leaves the cliff on the left bank and slants
across the alluvial plain to the cliff on the right bank, which it reaches at
San Lorenzo. Over the whole of its thirty miles width it resumes the
freedom and regularity of features which it had above La Paz. A comparison
of the successive maps of the river shows that the scheme of its movements,
which one would be tempted to draw up with a regular migration of the
islands and loops down river, would not be accurate. The changes of the bed
of the river are essentially due to variations in the volume of the different
arms, which are constantly changing their size and adapting their shape to
the body of water that flows in them. The radius of the curve of each arm is
proportional to its volume. A long island is formed between two arms of
equal size which both describe symmetrical curves. If the volume of one of
them is reduced, its original curve is replaced by sinuosities of smaller
radius, and these nibble the edges of the island and give it an irregular
shape. If the volume increases again, the winding bed is abandoned and
becomes a dead bed, and a larger meander begins. The track followed by