The Argentine Republic, its development and progress;

THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC

BY PIERRE DENIS

BRAZIL

Translated, and with an Historical
Chapter by Bernard Mi all.
With a Supplementary Chapter
by Dawson A. Vindin,
a Map and 36 Illustrations

Cloth, 151- net. Third Impression

"Altogether the book is full of infor-
mation, which shows the author to have
made a most careful study of the
country." — Westminster Gazetts.

T. Fisher Unwin Ltd London

THE FALLS OF THE YGUASSU.

Thirteen miles above the confluence with the Parana. Like the Parana at the Salto
Xjuayra, the river cuts through a layer of basalt intercalated in the red sandstone. The
jorest of the province of Misiones has a tropical character near the river. The araucarias
.jcover only the higher parts of the tableland.

J?LATE I.

Frontispiece,

THE ARGENTINE
REPUBLIC • ITS DE.

VELOPMENT AND PROGRESS

By PIERRE DENIS, D. es L.

Agrege d'Histoire et de Giographie
Translated by JOSEPH M'^CABE

/ ^ ^ 5 6" 2

p^. 9P5

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON; ADELPHI TERRACE

First published in English in 1922

iAU righfs r^fcrvetf^

INTRODUCTION

In the following chapters I have endeavoured to indi-
cate 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

6 INTRODUCTION

people of Argentina, the creators of the greatness of
the country. It is true that I have deliberately re-
frained 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 191 2 : Rosario — Region of the colonies of
Santa Fe — ^Forestry-industries of the Chaco Santiagueno —
Baiiados of the Rio Dulce — Salta — Jujuy — Sierra de la Lunx-
brera.

November-December 191 2 : Tucunidn — Valley of Tapi — Santa
Maria to the west of Aconcagua — Cafayate (Valley of Calchaqui).

December igi2-January 1913 : Catanaarca — Andalgala — Valley
of Pucara — C6rdoba — ^Villa Maria.

January-February 1913 : Region of the Pampas (Province
of Buenos Aires, south of C6rdoba and of S. Luis, district of
the Central Pampa).

March 191 3 : Corrientes — Posadas — Asunci6n — Forest-indus-
tries of the Chaco of Santa Fe.

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

INTRODUCTION 7

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 Exhi-
bition at San Francisco, of which several chapters
were published in my absence by the University of
Tucuman (Pierre Denis, Modern Argentina : Chapters
of Economic Geography. Publications of the University
during the Centenary of the Congress of Tucuman
of 1816. Buenos Aires, 1916).!

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 pub-
lications were available to me until 1914. Since then

^ I take the opportunity to thank M. J. B. Teran, who undertook
to edit these chapters, and to express, with him, my satisfaction that
events have falsified his rather pessimistic predictions as regards
the author.

J

8 INTRODUCTION

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, more-
over, 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 Riva-
davia 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 Repub-
lic continues to send its cereals, meat, hides and wool
to Europe ; and there is no reason to suppose that

INTRODUCTION 9

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 emi-
gration 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 extraordin-
arily favourable balance of trade has led to the storing
of an ample reserve of capital in the country. Argen-
tina has, in a very short time, won a financial inde-
pendence which, in normal conditions, would have
entailed long years of work and prosperity.

However it may seem, these two facts— the inter-
ruption of immigration and the accumulation of capital
— cannot be considered independently of each other.
The inquiry opened by the Social Museum of Argentina
{La immigracion despues 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

10 INTRODUCTION

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
\J accumulation of capital to which the war has condemned
the country.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA . . . . I7

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 36

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

TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA . 68

Tucumdn and the road to Chile — The climate and the culti-
vation of the sugar-cane — The problem of manual labour —
Irrigation at Mendoza — Water-rights — Viticulture — Protec-
tion and the natural conditions.

CHAPTER IV
THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS .... 96

Manual labour on the obrajes — The land of the baHados and
the agricultural cantons of Corrientes — The timber-yards

of the Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Parani

The exploitation of the maid — The forestry industry and
colonization.

U

12 CONTENTS

CHAPTER V

PAtt

PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING II9

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 161

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 209

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

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVER-ROUTES 234

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

CHAPTER IX

THE POPULATION 260

The distribution of the population — The streams of emigra-
tion to the interior — Seasonal migrations — The historic
towns — The towns of the Pampean region — Buenos Aires.

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . ' 277

INDEX 291

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

I. THE FALLS OF THE YGUASSU . . . FfOflUspiece

FACING PAOl

II. THE ARID ANDES —

PUNTA VACAS, ON THE TRANS-ANDEAN

RAILWAY 22

QUEBRADA DE IRUYA 22

III. THE PATAGONIAN ANDES 38

IV. VEGETATION OF THE INTERIOR VALLEYS (ANDES

OF THE NORTH-WEST) 48

FOREST ON THE OUTER SLOPE OF THE SUB-ANDEAN

CHAINS 48

V. DRY SCRUB OF THE CENTRAL CHACO ... 58
MARSHES (ESTEROS OR CA5JaDAS) OF THE EAST-
ERN CHACO 58

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

MOUNT ACONCAGUA 70

THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA . . . . 70

VII. THE OASIS DEL RINCON, BELOW SAUJIL (ANDAL-
GALA LINE, PROVINCE OF CATAMARCA) . . 82

THE MONTE AT EL YESO 82

VIII. A VINEYARD AT SAN JUAN 92

A VINEYARD AT MENDOZA 92

IX. THE LAND OF THE BANADOS .... lOO
LORETO : FARMING BY INUNDATION ,,,100

14 ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE

X. LORETO : THE RIO PINTO IN THE DRY SEASON . 112
LA BANDA (SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO) . . .112

XI. QUEBRACHO TRUNKS LYING AT THE STATIONS . Il6

XII. YOKE OF CREOLE OXEN USED FOR THE TRANS-
PORT OF TIMBER ON THE EASTERN CHACO, OR

CHACO OF SANTE FE 128

WORKS AT TARTAGAL (EASTERN CHACO) FOR

MAKING TANNIC ACID 128

XIII. THE VOLCANO PUNTIAGUDO I42

CERCAS ON THE LIMAY (RISING IN LAKE NAHUEL

HUAPl), NEAR THE CONFLUENCE OF THE
TRAFUL 142

XIV. THE PATAGONIAN TABLELAND (NEUQUEN) . . 154

XV. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN —

TRES ARROYES (BUENOS AIRES PRAIRIE BE-
TWEEN THE SIERRA DE TANDIL AND THE
SIERRA DE LA VENTANA) .... 166

toay, on the central pampa (59o feet) . 166
xvi. the pampean plain —

the rio bamba (in the south of the
cordoba province, 50o feet above

sea-levbl) 182

buena esperanza (san luis province, i,l66

FEET elevation) 182

XVII. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN —

BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE) . 194

JUNIN (150. MILES WEST OF BUENOS AIRES,

330 FEET ELEVATION) . , , , . I94

ILLUSTRATIONS

15

FLATB
XVIII.

FACING PAr.E

. 210

AN OX WAGON

THE MAIL COACH 210

XIX. THRESHING ON THE PAMPA 220

SACKS OF WHEAT READY FOR LOADING ON THE

RAILWAY 220

XX. CONFLUENCE OF THE YGUASSU AND THE PARANA 236

XXI. THE PARANA AT CORRIENTES .... 244

THE BARRANCA AT PARANA (ENTRE RIOS), LEFT

BANK 244

XXII. THE PARANA ABOVE THE ESTUARY . . . 250

XXIII. THE OLDER INDUSTRIES OF THE PAMPA—

DRYING HIDES , 262

DRYING SALT MEAT 262

XXIV. A HERD OF CREOLE CATTLE .... 268
A HERD OF DURHAM CATTLE 268

MAPS

I. ARGENTINA I THE NATURAL REGIONS

II. IRRIGATION IN THE WEST AND NORTH
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 thres-
hold 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 Parand, 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 hke

2 "

18 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

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 Parand and
the Uruguay, which Argentinians call " Mesopotamia."
While aeoUan clays form the soil of the Pampa on the
right bank of the Parand, fluvial deposits — sands and
gravel, in which it is impossible to distinguish the
contribution of the Uruguay from that of the Parana —
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 Parand
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 Parana, 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
Parana, 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,

THE ANDES 19

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

20 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

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, pohshed their sides, and
deposited at the point where they open out the amphi-
theatres 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

MAN AND THE SOIL 21

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 aeolian 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 fiuvio-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 condi-
tions, 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 milhmetres 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 tj^pe to overcome some natural obstacle which
restricted its expansion. Sometimes, however, it
brings to hght a new obstacle and creates a new
geographical limit.

To this category belongs the northern limit of the

22 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

belt of selective breeding, idnch slants across the
plain of the Pampas from the Sierra de Cordoba to the
Parana. The more or less d^penerate cattle of the
natives had spread over the whole of the South
Amedcan continent, except the tropical fraiests, since
the seventeenth century, adapting themselves easily
to very difEerent climatic conditions, from the Venezue-
lan Oanos to the setiao of Bahia and the plains of
Argentina. But pedigree animals, more valuable
and more dehcate, introduced on to the Pampas fifty
years ago, are not able to resist the malady caused 1^
a parasite called the garrapaU. Hence the southon
limit of the garrapaU suddenly became a most im-
portant element in the economic life of the RepubHc.
It woidd 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 {mofUt) which surrounds it on every side,
and keeps it at a distance of 320 to 440 miles from
Buenos Aires, had no dedsive influence on primitive
colonization. Whether covered with grasses or brush-
wood, the plain is equally suitable for extensive breed-
ing. 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 monU, 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.'

The changes iduch man has made in the floral land-

* See E. A. S. Ddachanx, " Las repaats fiskas de la Repobfica
Aigeotuia," Rev. Museo PkUa, xv, 1908. pp. 102-131.

^

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THE ARID A^UL^.

TRANS- ANDEAN RAILWAY

The bottom of the valley is 8,000 feet above sea-level ; the sides buried under rubbish. It is
.especially in this latitude, above a height of 10,600 feet, in the zone where the moisture falls
as snow even in summer, that the rock is everywhere buried under its own rubbish. This is
Keideis Schuttzone. // extends to the foot of the Alpine peaks, carved by glaciers.

Photograph by Moody, Buenos Aires.

r-^-iiiAaag^'-^v

QUEBRADA DE IKUYA.

Eastern slope of the Sierra de Santa Victoria, 65 miles from the Bolivian frontier, in the zone
of summer rain. The valleys have been filled with an enormous mass of torrential alluvia.
The Water afterwards made a course through the mobile deposits.

Photograph by Keidel, Mines Division.
Plate II.

To face p. 22.

NATIVE AND NEW PASTURE 23

scape are, as a rule, slight. The Hmits of the forest
zone have scarcely been altered. The beech forest of
the southern Andes seems to be less tenacious than the
monte which surrounds the Pampa, and it has been
ravaged by fire along the whole edge of the southern
steppe at 37° S. lat. The work of man is generally
confined to changing the primitive complexion of the
natural formations, without altering their general
appearance. Thus valuable essences are disappearing
from the forest and the scrub, the larch and the cypress
from the district of the Patagonian Lakes, and the red
quebracho from Santiago del Estero.

A change that is scarcely visible, but is of consider-
able economic importance, thus takes place in the
vegetation of the prairie owing to the presence of
herds. The pasto fuerte, composed of rough grasses,
which is the natural vegetation, is being succeeded
by the pasto duke, in which annual species, soft grasses,
leguminous plants, etc., predominate. It is mainly
composed of plants of European origin. The difference
between the 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 ad-
vanced steadily westward, starting from the vicinity
of Buenos Aires and constantly enlarging its domain,
is not strictly accurate. In 1895 Holmberg ^ 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 observa-
tions, 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 Bahia 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

» Holmberg, " La Flora de la Republica Argentina," in the Secundo
Censo de la Republica Argentina, vol. i. (Buenos Aires, 1898).

24 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

hand, the extent of the pastn duke 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 character-
istic of the pasto duke 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 ehminated by agriculture rather
than by the feet of the herds. Hence the advance of
the pasto duke 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.^

Colonization does more than emphasize the indivi-
duality of each of the natural regions. It connects
together different features, and blends them in a com-
plex 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 Arau-
canian descent, Ranqueles, Pehuenches, etc., who
came down from the mountains and took to horses.
At the close of the eighteenth century the frontier

» Diario de la expedicion de 1778 a las Salinas (Coll. de Angelis, iv.).

THE SPANISH FORTS 25

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 MeUncue. 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.'

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 estabhshed in
1823. In addition, a line of forts stretched from Blanca
Grande in the south-west to Bahia 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 Bahia Blanca was to remain an isolated
advance post until 1880, sharply separated from both
the colonized zone of the Pampas and the establish-
ments 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 Cordoba.
The lands of the lower Rio Cuarto were not occupied.
About i860 (Martin de Moussy) the farthest establish-
ments in this sector were S. Jose 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

» F. de Azara, Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortifies
que guarnecen la linea frontera de Repuhlica Argentina (1796, Coll.
de Angelis, vol, vi.). The documents collected by de Angelis show
clearly that there had been some idea in the middle of the eighteenth
century of occupying the whole plain to the east of the Sierra de
Tandil. These ideas of expansion, of which D'Azara's plan is another
instance, were interrupted by the Revolution {Diario de D. Pedro
Pablo Pabon, Coll. de Angelis, iv. etc.).

26 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

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 terri-
tory that was won of the indigenous population.
Its extreme mobility had masked its numerical
inferiority. I

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 Fe, at Sunchales, Soledad, and
San Javier, they protected the direct route from Santa
Fe to Santiago del Estero. These outposts were aban-
doned during the revolutionary period, and the Indians
advanced as far as the suburbs of Santa Fe. The
roads both to Santiago and, by the Quebracho
Herrado, to Cordoba were cut.^ Urquiza reorganized
the Santa Fe frontier, first as far as San Javier, then
below 29° S. lat. between Arroyo del Rey on the Parand
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,

» M. J. Olascoaga gives {La oonquite de la Pampa Receuil de
documents relatifs d la campagne du Rio Negro, Buenos Aires, 1881)
valuable documents concerning both the details of the fight with
the Indians and the distribution of their invernadas (common lands)
in the region of the Pampas. Olascoaga translates it " winter quar-
ters " ; it was pasturage on which they kept their cattle and from
which they set out on their expeditions.

» See Thomas J. Hutchinson, Buenos Aires and Argentine Gleanings.

FIGHTS WITH THE INDIANS 27

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. ^

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.* 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 Fe, was a valuable rampart, in the
shelter of which a fairly large population had estab-
lished itself round Concepcion 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 arbi-
trary 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

» See Geronimo de la Serna, " Expedicion militar al Chaco," Bol. I,
Geog. Argentino, xv. 1894, pp. 115-79.

■Nuevo plan de fronteras de la provincia d$ la Republica Argentina
(Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi).

28 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

defects of this system of premature military occupa-
tion. "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."'
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 exploita-
tion 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.^

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 Cordoba,
Tucuman, and Salta. They represented two different
branches of Spanish colonization. " Two human
streams," says Mitre, " contributed to the peopling
of the vice-royalty. . . . The first came directly from
Spain, the mother country. It occupied and peopled

» Letter to the Minister of War, October ig, 1875.

» See the curious picture, which Hutchinson gives us, of military
life on the Rio Salado de Santiago about the middle of the nineteenth
century,

MAP I. — ARGENTINA. THE NATURAL REGIONS.

The map shows the distribution of the natural regions — the dry Andes in the north-west, with
irrigated cultivation ; the monte, or brush, which is still used for extensive breeding ; and
the Pampa, with its great areas of cereals and lucerne. The line marking the frontier of 1875
shows the speed at which colonization has developed in the western half of the plain of the
Pampas. The only regions not given on the map are the plateau of Misiones, with its tropical
Jorests, and the wet Andes of Patagonia.

To face p. 28.

THE FOUNDING OF ARGENTINA 29

the banks in the basin of the Rio de la Plata, in the
name of the right of discovery and conquest, and
fertilized them by its labour. The other stream came
from the ancient empire of the Incas, already sub-
dued 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 con-
quests. Thirty-eight years later, in the same year,
1573, the Conquistadores who came from Peru founded
the town of Cordoba, two hundred miles away from the
Parana, while those who came from the Rio de la Plata
founded the town of Santa Fe on the banks of that
river."i

Tucuman 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 table-
lands 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.

» Mitre, Historia de Belgrano, I, ch. i. pp. 4 and 5.

80 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

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 Cordoba tariff, reached the
regions of the north-west. *' The creation of the vice-
royalty," says Dean Funes, ** and the new direc-
tion taken by commerce had the effect that Buenos
Aires became the centre of considerable and important
business."^

This commercial development, which seemed destined
to bring closer together the two halves of Argentinian
territory, was interrupted in the first half of the nine-
teenth 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, Tucuman, and Salt a
were held within the orbit of the Andes districts.^
There are historical reasons for this set-back to the
influence of Buenos Aires. The wars of the revolu-
tionary 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

I D. Gregorio Funes, Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos
Aires, y Tucuman (Buenos Aires, 3 vols., 1816).

» The Woodbine Parish map (1839) puts Tinogasta eighty miles
out of its proper position, at the very foot of the Come Caballos range,
thus reducing by one half its distance from Copiapo, on the Chilean
slope.

THE GROWTH OP BUENOS AIRES 81

which show the great importance of this date in the
history of Argentine commerce :

1850 1831 1833 1833 2834

Imports into the Province of Cata-
marca :
From the Pacific across the Cor-
dillera (in millions of piastres) 72 50 71 40 12
From the Atlantic (Buenos Aires

or Rosario) .. .. ..11 7 20 64 ii6«

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 inter-
mediate 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

' B. Poncel, Mes itiniraires dans les Provinces du Rio de la Plata,
Province de Catamarca (Paris, 1864).

32 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

Tucuman and Mendoza the change was accompHshed
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 Tucuman
before 1880 ; Mendoza, San Juan, Salta, and Catamarca
before 1890 ; and La Rioja before 1900. The establish-
ment 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 Bahia Blanca.
The attraction of the Pampa was felt as far as
the frontiers. Paraguay competed with Corrientes in

MENDOZA AND TUCUMAN 33

the supply of tobacco and oranges ; with Misiones in
the supply of yerba mate. 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 Tucuman and Mendoza. All the other important
towns of Argentina belong themselves to the region
of the Pampas. Tucuman 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
Cordoba to Salta, a distance of about 250 miles, the wood
is cut for the fuel of the sugar-works of Tucuman.
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
Tucuman, now sell their beasts to the butchers of
Tucumdn. The wines of San Juan find their best
customers at Tucuman. Even the nearest portions
of the plain of the Pampas, to the north-east of Santa
Fe and the south of San Luis, supply maize and wheat
to Tucuman and Mendoza, instead of sending them to
the ports for export.

While Argentina hves 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,

3

34 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

before the war, much the same relation to Argentina
as the countries of Western Europe. Thus the economic
prosperity of the RepubHc 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,

FOREIGN MARKETS 35

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, Que-
bradas, 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 (Tucuman). In the inter-
mediate 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 Tucuman, 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 popula-
tion, 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

jl

THE ANDEAN VALLEYS 87

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
Tucuman. While large industrial enterprises develop
at Mendoza and Tucuman, 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 develop-
ment. 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 con-
voying 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
gulHes and large basins, between which there are lofty
and massive chains with steep flanks. Some of these he
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 CaHngasta,
d'Uspallata. They are, however, not " valleys " in

38 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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 in-
dependent 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, quehradas
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 feeHng for the people in poorer districts.

The narrower the valle, the less rain there is. The
observations give 112 milHmetres of rain per year at
Tinogasta, 290 at Andalgala, and 200 at Santa Maria.
Salt a and Jujuy have a much moister climate, and
have no less than 570 and 740 milhmetres 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

METHODS OF IRRIGATION

89

(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. How-
ever, 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 Fohn of the
Swiss Alps, which, there being no snow, dry up the
water of the springs and of the irrigation trenches,
or use the deposits left by the waters to form dunes,
which they push southward, sometimes Hke veritable
glaciers of sand. Moreover, the soil of the valles is
generally composed of coarse and permeable alluvial
deposits, which absorb the 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 modem alluvial beds, gravel and sand, represent

40 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

the upper stratum of a considerable series of continental
deposits which lie on the Paleozoic crystalline rock of
the Andes. ^ 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 import-
ance of distinguishing the different strata in connection
with the question of water supply and the conditions
of human life.^ 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 RepubHc. Wherever the gypsif erous
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.

I This series, stretching from the Permian to the Tertiary, also
includes, especially in the region of the sub-Andean chains, on the
fringe of the Chaco, a number of marine strata (see Bonarelli, Las
sierras suhandinas del Alto y Aguaragiie y los yacimientos petroliferos
del distrito miner o de Tartagal (" Ann. Min. Agric," Seccion Geologia,
Mineralogia, y Mineria, viii. No. 4 : Buenos Aires, 191 3).

» G. Bodenbender, Parte meridional de la Provincia de la Rioja y
regiones limitrofes (Ann. Min. Agric, Seccion Geol., Minerol., y Mineria,
vii. No. 3 : Buenos Aires, 1912),

THE CULTIVATED OASES 41

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 smihng 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 cultiva-
tion, 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 Hke 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

42 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

oases with their backs to the same slope. When the
valle is narrow, the castas 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 ciiltivable 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 dis-
appear 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.

THE STRUGGLE FOR WATER 43

What is even more admirable than the ingenuity of
the vallista in utiUzing 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 deaUng 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 pre-
cedes 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. Jose, 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

44 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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 centi-
metres in width and eight in height. The marco has
infinite divisions, and each subdivision has its own
name — the naranja, the homhilla, 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 pro-
portional 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 owner-
ship 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

THE WATER-JUDGES 45

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 them-
selves, when water is scanty. At Valle Viejo (Cata-
marca), 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

46 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

community or each channel is a syndic elected by the
interested parties. At Santa Maria the piez 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 popu-
lation and agricultural wealth at a height of between
9,000 and ii,ooo feet. They raise cereals, and receive
from the tropical districts (montanas 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 montanas 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

TRAFFIC ON MULES 47

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.i The Puna, at a height of ii,ooo to 12,000
feet, is permanently inhabited, unhke 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 cultiva-
tion 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.2 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 manu-
factured 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

^ Eric Boman, Antiquiids de la region andine de la Ripublique Argen-
tine et de la Puna de Atacama : Mission scient. G. de Crdqui-Montfort
et E. Senichal de la Grange (Paris, vols. i. and ii. 1908).

» Belmar, Les provinces de la Federation argentine (Paris, 1856).

48 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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-Colunqibian 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 Parana, 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.! 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 has been of
fundamental importance in the history of the colonization
of South America. Animals were the only goods that
could be conveyed any great distance. At the beginning

» See Brackebusch, " Viaje a la provincia de Jujuy," Bol. Instit.
Geog, Argent., iv. 1883, pp. 9-17.

VEGETATION OF THE INTERIOR VALLEY

NORTH-WEST).

11 :S OF THE

Descent of Tafi del Valle, going to Santa Maria. The ravine is excavated out of the mass
of coarse aeposits which forms a fringe between the mountain and the valley. On this permeable
soil the vegetation is particularly thin. Cactus. Photograph by the Author.

FOKLSi

iilL uL il'R SLOPE OF THE SUB-ANDEAN CHAINS.

Sierra de San Antonio {Salta province). Perennial foliage, creepers, ferns.

Photograph by the Author.
Plate IV.

To face p. 48.

CATTLE RAIDING 49^

of the conquest the productive regions of the continent,
which supplied the export trade with Europe, were very
hmited in extent. Pastoral colonization began at once,
and spread over a very wide area. Herds of oxen, for
meat or draught, horses, and mules, made their way
toward the centres of consumption : towns like Lima,
Bahia, and Rio, the Peruvian mines, and the sugar-
refineries of the north-east of Brazil, and later toward
the yerhales of Paraguay or the seaports of the Caribs
and the Rio Grande do Sul, where the jerked meat
industry developed. The cattle routes converge upon
these centres.

The export of cattle and mules from the Argentine
plains to Peru was fully established by the close of the
sixteenth century, and it seems to have continued
without interruption ever since. Upper Peru is, how-
ever, 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.' The export of cattle to Paraguay and Misiones
was, on the other hand, of substantial economic import-
ance 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 mate and tobacco.^ 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).

» Memorias sobre el estado rural del rio de la Plata en 1801, Escritos
postumos de D. Felix de Azara, published by D. Augustin de Azaxa
(Madrid, 1847).

> A. Rengger, Reise nach Paraguay in den Jahren iSiS bis 1826
(Aarau, 1835).

4

50 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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. ^ 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. 2 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 Cordoba seems
to have exported to Peru as many as 28,000 to 30,000

I The fattening of cattle for Chile was no longer done in the inver-
nadas of Mendoza at the beginning of the nineteenth century. See
an article on Mendoza in the Telegrafo Mercantil, January 31, 1802,
which tells of the development of ranches on the Tunuyan. Mendoza
and San Juan were their only markets, and they did not sell cattle
to Chile.

* T. J. Hutchinson, Buenos Aires y otras Provinctas argentinas
(translated by L. Varela, Buenos Aires, 1866).

THE REARING OF MULES 51

mules annually. I At the close of the eighteenth century,
we read in D'Azara, 60,000 mules were exported ; and
Helms gives the same figure. « The mules were bought
young by Cordoba dealers at Buenos Aires, Santa F^,
and Corrientes, reared at Cordoba, 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 Fe and Cordoba 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 Cordoba breeders had
developed production. The buyers, coming to Salta
from Lima, Cuzco, and Arequipa, took, without dis-

» Azcarate de Biscay, quoted in H. Gibson, La evolucion ganadera
in Censo agropecuario nacional Buenos Aires, 1909, vol. iii.

» A. Z. Helms, Voyage dans VAmerique meridionale (Paris, 1812).
The journey was in 1788.

52 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

cussion or examination, the batches that were offered
them. The correspondent of the Telegrafo complains
bitterly of these cahalleritos 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 Fe
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 Parana,
to the Santa Fe ranches. The Santa Fe 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, Cordoba
Santa Fe, Santiago, and Salta kept the mules for two
or three years before sending them to Peru. Cordoba
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 Bohvia 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 doubhng the stages. The difficulties of the journey
were very profitable to the oases that lay along the

Mounta/noi4.» Hegioni

65° Lonfl.W Gp.

MAP II. — IRRIGATION IN THE WEST AND NORTH-WEST OF

ARGENTINA.

Extent of the irrigations in the north (zone of the great summer rains), and the
south (glacier zone). The historic industry of fattening cattle in the invemadas
and the export of cattle to the Andean regions only survive in part. On the
■other hand large modern industries have developed at Tucuman, Jujuy (sugar-
<:ane), Mendoza, and San Juan (vines), and they supply the Buenos Aires
market.

To face p. 52.

THE LUCERNE FARMS

53

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

I9IO

1911

1912

1913

1914

Export of Cattle :
To Bolivia . .
To Chile . .

3.600
61,200

6,600
87,500

6,200
68,400

6,300
58,800

4,800
28,300

Export of Mules :
To Bolivia . .
To Chile

2,700
2,300

4,600
3,200

7.900
5,000

8,300
2,600

2,500
3.500

Export of Asses :
To Bolivia . .

9,000

10,500

15,000

15,600

i4,400«

» Imperfect statistics given by Poncel for the province of Cata-
marca give us some idea of the respective shares of the various Andean
districts in the export of Argentine cattle about the middle of the
nineteenth century. In 1855 the province of Catamarca sold 2,700
head of cattle (1,300 to Chile, 200 to Bolivia, 600 to San Juan
and Mendoza), 3,200 mules (2,500 to BoHvia 600 to Salta — which
also were for Bolivia), and 1,200 asses (700 to Bolivia and 400 to Salta).

wherever there is an assured supply of water, and is
invariably found in the upper section of the system
of irrigation-channels ; the cereals are sown lower down,
and are the first to suffer from drought. In the
quehradas, where space is more limited, the lucerne-
fields cover the entire oasis. Every cattle track has
a corresponding line of invernadas, which is often
completed on the opposite slope by a last group of
lucerne-farms where the beasts recover from the journey
before they are sold and dispersed.

54 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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'Escoipe. 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 BoHvian tableland.

The cattle traffic is now restricted to Chile. It
survives at San Juan, JachaJ, 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 table-
land 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 bianco. 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 Antofagasta railway.

The centre of this trade is Salta, or, rather, the little

THE MULE TRADE 55

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 trans-
port 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. BoUvia 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 un-
suitable for cattle. I The journeys are longer, and the
contracts are less settled in advance. Moreover,
breaking-in is a delicate operation that requires experi-
ence. 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
Cordoba 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 Marienos gathers together and,

» For instance, herds of mules are taken from Abrapampa, on the
line of the Quiaca, to the saltpetre mines of Antof agasta, whereas every
efEort to convey cattle by this route has failed.

56 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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. ^ 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 Hfe of the Andes. In the eighteenth
century it was mainly a cattle-fair, but it is now fre-
quented 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 Mariefios 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,

« There is an interesting study of fairs on the elevated tableland
by G. M. Wrigley, " Fairs of the Central Andes," in the Geographical
Review (New York), vii. 1919, pp. 65-80.

THE CATTLE TRADE

57

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 Cordoba, Mendoza, and
Tucumdn.

The rupture of commercial relations with Chile has.

58 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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 simpHfied 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
halderia 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 Salteiio, 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 Tucuman 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 Ber-
mejo and the Rio del Valle, which flows from
the Lumbrera range toward the former bed of the

DRY SCRUB OF THE CENTRAL CHACO.

On the Anatuya line {province of Santiago del Ester o). Cactus. The leafless tree in
the foreground is a red quebracho. The leafy trees are white quebrachos.

Photograph by the Author.

r

MARSHES (eSTEROS OR CANADAS) OF THE EASTERN CHACO.

On the Tartagal line (province of Santa Fe). It is by means of these marshes, which
form in the forest, that this part of the plain is drained. Photograph by the Author.
Plate V»

ROUNDING UP THE CATTLE 59

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 the range. ' The comparative
abundance of water lessens the labour of the breeders
and, at the same time, the disciphne of the herds.
When the time comes, the whole ranch is mobiUzed
for the purpose of collecting the adult cattle and making
a 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, either by the rugged paths across the
forest and mountain or along the easier tracks over
the plain to Embarcacion or Lumbreras, where they
reach the railway. If buyers from the sugar-refineries
at Jujuy do not take them, the cattle are put into
trucks and sent to the Salta market, where there are
sales all the year round. At 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 Chaiiar
and Punt a 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

' On Aconcagua also the moist forest serves as winter pasture for
the cattle from the ranches.

60 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

that enabled them to dominate part of Argentina.
Colonization is even older here than in the Chaco
Salteno. 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 — agiiitas,
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 haja in the east and the costa alia
in the west — became inhabited. The estate of Facundo
is one of these aguaditas of the costa alta.

The two castas form the historic territory of the
Llanos. It was from there that colonization swarmed
over the plain long afterwards. This expansive move-
ment 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 castas were filled with
life. The Sierra and its two castas 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

COMMUNAL ESTATES 61

obtained in the nineteenth century by purchase or by
concessions of pubUc 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.' 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 Saltefio. 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 title of the merced often shows clearly the attraction which
the springs at the foot of the Sierra had for colonists. The land of
the merced of Ulapes is defined thus : " The spring and the land
within two leagues of it in every direction." The spring is the centre.
There its protecting deities live.

62 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

the foot of the steep cliffs of the range. It has not
been possible to cultivate the land far from the moun-
tains. 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 sub-
terranean 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
hanados : cultivated plots in the hollows, where the
moisture left by the storms is concentrated and pre-
served. These are much more extensive, and they

FIGHTING THE DROUGHT 63

are very irregularly distributed. Inequalities of the
alluvial ground that almost escape the eye are suffi-
cient 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 cercOj as maize-
straw is excellent fodder. But wheat also grows well
in the hanados. 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

64 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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 banados, ridges
of earth direct the stream to the represa. It is sur-
rounded 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 4 J to 5 J 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

WANDERING CATTLE 65

is the enclosure (poirero) 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
ranche 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 every-
where. 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

5

66 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST

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 19 13
the dealers from Tinogasta and Jachal, who had not
appeared in 19 12, 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

FARMING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 67

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 banados. 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 Cordoba. 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 appear-
ance of lucerne fields. Lucerne can be grown on the
banados wherever anything else can be grown ; and
the creation of lucerne-farms will give the pastoral
industry a security and stabiHty 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

TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA
THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

Tucumdn 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 Tucuman 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 Tucuman and
Mendoza, and were maintained until the last generation.
Nevertheless, if one compares Tucuman 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 pro-
ceeded 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

68

DAMMING THE WATERS 69

improve the water-supply, which was used wastefully
by the existing estates. There is nothing more sugges-
tive 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 Tucumdn.
The neighbouring cantons of the scrub — Trancas,
Burruyacu, and Graneros — sent cattle and mules to
Peru and Chile, like the other Argentine plains. But
Tucuman 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 Tucuman
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 travelhng along it afforded an

70 tucumAn and mendoza

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 Tucuman,
and the merchants of the town took in exchange
BoHvian ore for export. Thus the road built up a
nucleus of available capital at Tucuman. 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 famihes 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, Tucuman
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 Vene-
zuelan and Colombian Cordilleras, and is connected in
the centre, in the equatorial zone, from Guaviare to
Mamore, with the forests of the Amazon region. At
its two ends it is reduced to a narrow belt which does
not reach, in the east, the alluvial plains, the savannahs
of the Orinoco and the scrub of the Chaco. The humid
forest of the Argentine Andes is nowhere more luxuriant
than near its southern limit, above Tucuman. 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 Salta one has only
to go about 150 miles to pass from the moist forests

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

At the bottom of the valle one can see the sandy bed of the river as a white line in the fore-
ground. Zone of torrential terraces, which follows the edge of the valle.

Photograph by the Author.

" 1

Plate Vi;

THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA.

At the western foot of Aconcagua, the snowy crest of which can be seen.

Photograph by the Author.

THE SUGAR DISTRICT 71

of the sub-Andean chain of the Lumbrera to the arid
valley of Cachi. On both sides of Aconcagua there are
less than fifty-five miles between the sugar-cane fields
won from the forest and the oasis of Andalgala, or that of
Santa Maria, which are right in the desert zone. Accord-
ing as one approaches Aconcagua from the east or the
west, one finds, from base to summit, either the suc-
cessive 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
chmate, that has nothing quite like it elsewhere,
narrowly confined between the forest and the desert.^
The sugar district of Tucuman 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 dis-
appears from the moister air as he approaches Tucumdn.
The rainfall approaches 974 millimetres at Tucumdn.
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 Tucuman, but the evenness of
the temperature, together with the atmospheric moisture

« The higher valleys of Aconcagua ofier inexhaustible interest to
the visitor. At Sancho (Pucara valley) there is a group of Italian
colonists who grow maize and wheat : a unique fact, I believe, in the
whole of this part of Argentina. The Tafi valley is mainly pastoral,
the pastures of the valley being used in summer and the forest for
winter pasture.

72 tucumAn and mendoza

and the rareness of frost. The mists which develop
at the foot of Aconcagua form a protecting mantle
above Tucuman 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 de-
pressions in which the cold air accumulates, in virtue
of the well-known meteorological phenomenon of inver-
sion 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 Acon-
cagua. It has only been made clear by experiment,
and one can still see there the traces of abandoned
plantations.

The water-supply in the Tucumdn 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 Tucuman. The Sali is
an irregular torrent which rises in the sub-Andean
depression to the north and Tucuman, and, after squeez-
ing Aguadita between the north-eastern extremity of
Aconcagua and the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu,
enters the plain at Tucumdn. 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
inchnation 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

SUGAR-CANE FARMS 73

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 Tucumdn
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.^ The Central
C6rdoba Railway, which passes along the right bank
of the Sali south of Tucuman, is the axis of another
zone of cultivation and of old factories. Colonization
afterwards went further west. A new provincial rail-
way, describing a section of a circle, was grafted at
Tucuman (1888-90) and Madria upon the Central
Cdrdoba 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 con-
stantly going higher. In the latitude of Tucuman
the mountain approaches within eight or twelve miles
of the Sali, and the possibilities of extension westward
are strictly hmited ; 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, Concepci6n, 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,

» In 1894 it was calculated that ground that was not yet cleared
was worth loo to 150 piastres a hectare at Cruz Alta, and the cost
of clearing 150 to 200 piastres, whereas in the moist forest at the
foot of the Sierra the land was worth only 75 to 100 piastres,
the cost of clearing it was double (300 to 350 piastres).

74 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA

where the frosts are sUght. 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 Cordoba 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 Tucuman is the maintenance of a
class of independent cultivators, the caneros, 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.*
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 Tucuman, 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

* Except, perhaps, in Barbadoes.

SUGAR REFINERIES

75

the water-supply from the control of a few privileged
big capitalists. Public works, undertaken by the pro-
vincial 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
(caneros) are not indissolubly connected. Their re-
spective 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 caneros, 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 caneros 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
Tucumdn 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

76 TUCUMAN and MENDOZA

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 Cordoba and the old local line bought by the
Central Cordoba.

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 caneros 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 canero the manufacturers advance
money to him, in proportion to their difficulty in getting
cane.

Caneros 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 Cordoba — 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, woiild 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 popula-
tion of immigrant workers has settled down and taken

THE SUGAR-CANE HARVEST 77

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 Tucuman 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 Tucuman 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 Tucuman 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 Tucuman 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 Tucuman, 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 Tucuman, 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 Tucumdn, the canes ripen
more quickly, and the average return is higher. The
water-supply also is good. There have long been

78 tucumAn and mendoza

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 Tucuman.
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 table-
land. The sphere of influence of San Pedro now extends
as far as Bolivia. For the harvest, which, like that of
Tucuman, 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 Embarcacion, 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 GROWTH OF MENDOZA 79

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 Tucuman
in many ways. In the pro v' nee of Cuyo, as at Tucuman,
urban life has been precocious. In the middle of the
eighteenth century Mendoza and San Juan exported
wines, dried fruit {pasas and or ej ones), 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 nine-
teenth 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). ^ As at Tucumdn, the present
period is characterized by a rapid expansion of cultiva-
tion and a rapid growth of population. But, whereas
at Tucumdn 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 Fe, and more than for the province of Cordoba.
Thus Mendoza plays a part of its own in the charm

« A few convoys of cattle still use the Uspallata road, especially
over the Espinacito pass in the Cordillera de San Juan.

80 tucumAn and mendoza

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 Tucuman 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 Parana. 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 vine-
yards 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 Rafael, which in
1913 yielded 4,750,000 hectolitres, out of the total Argen-
tine 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

I

THE VINEYARDS 81

only now taking place. At Mendoza it is quite finished.
The San Rafael 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 diver-
sities 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 Rafael, has
two streams of water to feed it. The Mendoza and
the Tunuyan at Mendoza, and the Diamante and the
Atuel at San Rafael, approach each other, when they
leave the mountains, so closely that the estates they
water blend into a continuous area. Then, however, in-
stead 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 salt-
petre of the clayey soil. There is the same difference
between the upper and lower district at San Juan and
San Rafael.

6

82 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA

The oases of San Juan and San Rafael 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 meet, 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 Eestero, 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

ill illiiiiir^

i

THE OASIS DEL KIXCOX, BELOW SAUJIL (ANDALGALA LINE, PKOVIXCE
OF CATAMARCA).

The dejection-cone, at the foot of which is the very small oasis, is seen resting against the Sierra
d'Ambato. Photograph by the Author.

THE MONTE AT EL YESO.

Zone of clay hills at the foot of the Sierra de San Antonio, at the edge of the Chaco. Corral
{^cattle park) rnade from tree-trunks. Photograph by the Author.

Plate VII.

To face p. 82.

WATERING THE VINEYARDS 83

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 surface is con-
cerned. The water infiltrating into the soil forms a
subterranean sheet which approaches more or less
to the surface according to the topography. It comes
to the surface at the foot of the cone, where the slope
diminishes and the cone gradually passes into the
plain. Hence the cone has, at its base, a belt of marshes
(cienagas), and sometimes a line of good springs (bar-
bollon). 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 coarse
shingle, while the bottom is too wet. The advance
of the plots upward and the steadily increasing
use of the available water tends to raise the level
of the underground sheet and enlarge the area of
marsh.

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
(desague).

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

84 tucumAn and mendoza

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,theoreti-
cally, 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. ^ At San Rafael,
where colonization preceded the systematic inventory
of the natural resources, the concession of eventual
water-rights was a means of facilitating the develop-
ment 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 defini-
tive rights presents many difficulties, and more than one
pretext for fraud. Somtimes 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

I There are at present in the Mendoza province 275,000 hectares
with a definitive right, and 303,000 with an eventual right. The
concessions fed by the Diamante and the Atuel at San Rafael, which
amount to 120,000 hectares with a definitive right and 150,000 with
an eventual right, are not yet entirely developed.

CURIOUS WATER-RIGHTS 85

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 con-
ditions 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 varia-
tion 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.

86 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA

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 sub-
division of property and the large number of electors
make these little republics very lively ; and they are
very jealous of their autonomy. ^

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.* 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 atmo-
sphere causes the ripe grapes to remain long on the
vine, so that the harvest may last two months or more

* There are more than 6,000 owners at San Juan to 91,000 hectares,
and more than 9,000 at Mendoza (zone of the rivers Mendoza and
Tunuyan) to 130,000 hectares (statistics compiled in 1899).

> The difference is much greater at a distance from the Cuyo pro-
vince. Catamarca, which specializes in the production of grapes
for the table, is invaded by buyers from Buenos Aires, and begins
to send grapes in December, two full months before the harvest begins
in Mendoza.

THE ARGENTINE VINES 87

without any harm. It thus requires a relatively small
supplement of manual labour, and does not necessitate
seasonal migrations. The length of the harvest, more-
over, 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. Tucuman has its caneros 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 (vinateros)
and its manufactures (bodegueros).^

Each of these two classes has had its share in the
common work. The vinatores have created the vine-
yard. 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 dis-
appeared, 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

* While the cultivation of the cane has, for the most part, become
dependent upon the sugar industry, which represents large capital,
wine-making is, on the contrary, usually regarded as merely an annex
of wine-growing.

88 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA

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 Rafael, 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 (loo piastres, for
instance), and has to dig, prune, irrigate, etc. A large
number of these agricultural workers and small con-
tractors 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 vinatores 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 table-
lands or the coast. The climate and the risks of trans-
port 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

SOUTH AMERICAN WINES 89

(art ope), 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 19 13 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 culti-
vators who have not cellars. In 1908 it was calculated
that 140,000 tons of grapes were sent to the press

90 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA

by the owners and 175,000 tons bought by the hode-
gueros^

The conflicts of the interests of the vinateros and the
bodegueros are the very woof of Hfe at Mendoza. The
price of grapes is infinitely more variable than that
of wine, and the vinatero 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. Trans-
port of the grapes to a great distance is very expensive.
In exceptional times grapes have been brought from
San Rafael 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 propor-
tionately 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

« More recent statistics are not to hand. The proportion differs
a little every year according to the prices of wine and grapes.

GAMBLING IN GRAPES 91

make vines 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 vinatero, as the manufacturer
does to the canero 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 con-
ventions amongst the bodegueros which lay down offi-
cially, 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 vinateros grow rich.^

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 regrads the home market.
The prosperity of the region of the Pampas, especially
during the years before 19 14, is reflected at Mendoza
and Tucuman. 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 Tucuman in 1876 : that is to say, at
the opening of the Central Cordoba line. The area
planted with cane rose from 2,200 hectares in 1876 to
14,800 in 1886. The production of sugar was trebled

» Besides the causes of a geographical nature which I have indi-
cated, the separation of cultivation from wine-making has other
economic grounds, but they do not fall within the range of this book.
The large bodega is better situated than the small cultivator for organ-
izing the sale of his wines on the distant market of Buenos Aires.
Also, the bodegueros alone are able to meet the competition of Buenos
Aires merchants who import European wines and make adulterated

92 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA

in four years, from 1876 to 1880. But the Central
Cordoba was a narrow-gauge line, expensive to use
and necessitating a transfer of goods at Cordoba. In
189 1 the broad-gauge line from Buenos Aires to Rosario
was extended to Tucumdn ; and in 1892 the narrow-
gauge line from Rosario to Santa Fe, San Cristobal,
and Tucuman 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 Tucuman
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 pro-
duction. 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.

A VINEYARD AT SAN JUAN.

TreUissed Creole vines.

Photograph by Boote, Buenos Aires.

VINEYARD

MENDOZA.

French vines on wire,
cellar (bodega).
Plate VIII.

An irrigation-trench along the path. In the foreground (left) a iDine-
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados, Buenos Aires.

To face \\ 9J.

PROTECTIONIST TARIFFS

93

The elimination of foreign wines and sugar and the
development of Mendoza and Tucumdn were facilitated
by a Protectionist tariff. The details of this are very
curious, as they had to be adjusted to the natural
conditions. The need of protection is chiefly due to
the distance of the market from the productive centres,
Mendoza is 650 miles from Buenos Aires, Tucuman
more than 750 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 between Tucuman and Buenos Aires. Thus the
cost of transport is nearly one sixth the entire cost
of production. In spite of this common burden, the
need of protection is not at all the same in Mendoza and
Tucuman. The climate of Mendoza is excellent for the
vine. The dryness of 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 pro-
duction 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 intro-
duction into Argentina of the wine-industry on a large
scale. I

« Mendoza is further protected by law against fraud. This legis-
lation is partly national and partly provincial. The national law,
which takes into account the interests of the merchants of Buenos
Aires, permits the manufacture of artificial wines. The provincial
law, in the special interests of the productive districts, is more
stringent. It prohibits the manufacture of artificial wines. It also

94 tucumAn and mendoza

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 loo
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 pro-
tection inevitable, also complicates it infinitely in
practice. Sometimes the harvest is not large enough
to meet home demands, and imports have to be per-
mitted. 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

fixes the minimum percentage of alcohol, and prevents the dispatch
from Mendoza to Buenos Aires of alcoholic wines to mix with must.
Finally, it defends the vinatero against the bodeguero by fixing the
quantity of grapes to be used in making a hectolitre of wine and so
prevents fraud at the bodega.

THE TROUBLES OF TUCUMAN 95

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. ' Thus Tucuman 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.

« Especially during the crisis of 1902-3.

CHAPTER IV
THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

Manual labour on the obrajes — The land of the baHados and the agri-
cultural cantons of Corrientes — The timber-yards of the Chaco
and the tannic-acid works of the Parand — The exploitation of
the matd — The forestry industry and colonization.

From the Andes of Tucumdn and Salta to the banks of
the upper Parana in the province of Misiones the north
of Argentina is now a vast timber-yard for the exploita-
tion 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 Parana. In the
western Chaco the difficulty of transport by land
retarded the development of the forestry industry.
The only market for the timber of Tucuman 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

96

SANTIAGO 97

banados, 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 meagre-
ness of their production would otherwise doom to
extinction.

The banados 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 banados 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 banados 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 banados, 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

7

98 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 Atamis-
qui and Salavina, which lived on the waters of the Dulce,
were suddenly ruined in 1825, when the river, in conse-
quence 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 banados.

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
banados. 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 banados
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

HOW FLOODS ARE MET

99

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 cm rent is too rapid. It
furrows the soil, leaves large holes in it like the tones
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
Tucuman 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 banados for agriculture is of long standing.
It probably goes back to the pre-Columbian period.

100 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

Father Dobritzhoffer, who is the first to refer clearly
to it, compares the Rio Dulce to the Nile ^ ; and in
point of fact, the banados have some resemblance to
farming in Pharaonic Egypt, while there is nothing like
them in the irrigated zones of the Andean valleys.
The banados 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 banados maintained a fairly active
export trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
and the banados were at times called, with some exaggera-
tion, the *' granary of the Vice-royalty." It is difficult
to trace accurately the movements of the population
of the banados 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 banados, 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 banados. I refer elsewhere to the anti-
quity and constancy of the streams of temporary
immigration which spread the population of the banados
over a large part of the territory of Argentina.^ The
temporary emigration of the Santiagueiios 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 Santiaguefio 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

I Historia de Abiponibus. » See the chapter on population.

TllH LAND OF THE BANADOb.

On the Rio Dulce, near Loreto, in the dry season. Its actual bed, excavated at a recent date
by a flood in soft clay, is not yet stable. Photograph by the Author.

LORETO : FARMING BY INUNDATION.

In the zone of the scrub, where the floods of the Rio Dulce spread. The interior delta of the
Rio Dulce is one of the earliest centres of population in Argentina.

Photograph by the Author.
Plate IX.

THE TIMBER WORKERS 101

harvest at Tucumdn and the harvest in the south only
last a few months. They emigrate from the hanados to
Tucuman in May ; to Cordoba and Santa F^ in October,
November and December ; but to the forests of the
Chaco all the year round.

Apart from the hanados 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 opposition between agricultural and breeding
districts which is so common in the older colonized
regions of South America. The estancieros (ranchers),
who are breeders, are the masters of Corrientes, but the
line of low bills 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 of the nineteenth
century the tobacco-buyers travelled all over Corrientes
after the harvest, in January and February. The fertile
soil, moreover, with a mild climate in which tropical
plants flourish as well as those of the temperate zone,
provides the elements of a local comfort which is com-
plete 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 (Concepcion and
Mercedes).

102 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 Parana. 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
Virasoro relates that fifty ships are engaged in loading
with Nandubai timber on the banks of the Rio Corrientes
and transporting it to Rosario.^ Born on the left bank
of the Parana, 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. «
Robertson found, when he went from Corrientes to
Asuncidn in 18 14, 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 Santiaguenos 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

» Val. Virasaro " Los esteros y lagunas del Ibera " in Bol. Instit,
Geog. Argent, (vi. 1887; pp. 305-31).

» Diario de la navegacion y reconocimiento del Rio Tibicuari (Coll.
de Angel is, vol. ii.).

THE SPECIES OF TIMBER 103

quechua, which is the language of the banados 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 Sante Fe. 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 Parana, 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
santiagueno and quebraco chaqueno. The former con-
tains 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 con-
tractors 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 lena).
The trunks of exceptionally large quebracho provide
logs that are sold by cubic measurement, but the district
of the quebracho santiagueno 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 Tucuman, and the locomotives over

104 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 Una 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 re-
moved. 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 banados 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 Cordoba, 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

TANNIC-ACID WORKS

105

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 Aiiatuya 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 Aiiatuya line, what was paid
in the older line from Santiago to Frias, close to the
banados.

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 ohraje 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 Aiiatuya 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 ohraje 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
mall obrajeros and contractors, the eastern Chaco, alongs
the Parana, 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 con-

106 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

trolled 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,^
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 Fe 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 admini-
stration 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

X It is more and more necessary to deal with the extract of the
quebracho on the spot the further north one goes toward the interior
of the continent because the freights to the exporting ports rise
higher and higher.

THE GREAT FORESTS 107

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
Fe 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
Parand, 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 (canadas), and in places they be-
come 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 Parana, 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 canadas 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,

108 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 Parana,
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 Asuncion and Concepcion 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

PINES AND CEDARS 109

the province of Misiones on the upper Parana. 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. I 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 matd

» In Brazil the saw-mills for the araucarian pines are established
along the Sao Paolo-Rio Grande Railway.

110 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

(Ilex Paraguay ensis). It is well known that an infusion
of mate (a kind of tea) is an important element in the
food of the western States of South America. Gathering
the leaves of the mate has been a profitable occupation
for centuries : a unique instance, perhaps, in the forest
industries of South America. It has never been inter-
rupted, 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
Parana. In the nineteenth century the trade in
Paraguay mate 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
Concepcion 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 Parana 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

THE MATfi TRADE 111

was mainly fed by the yerhales of the right bank of the
Parana, on Paraguayan territory. Posadas has now
succeeded Candelaria, and the yerhales that depend
upon it are scattered over both banks up the Parana.

The yerhales 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. Mate 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 yerhales.

Work in the yerhales 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 yerhal to offer their services.
The Paraguayans and Argentinians, nearly cdl from the
province of Corrientes, are recruited at Posadas and the
sister-town of Encarnacion, 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 yerhales.
The yerha 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 yerha
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 mate . . . The natives contract
as much debt as they can before they start for the
yerhales, and as soon as they have done a little work,
they say good-bye to the yerhatero, who loses his money.
And the yerhatero in turn is exploited by the merchants
who control him." Before he starts for the yerhal, says

112 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 mate business
are the yerhal in the forest, a shop at Posadas for hiring
and pajdng wages in advance, and diyerha 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 coloniza-
tion. 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 Tucuman,
where most of the workers in the cane-fields are Santia-
guenos, Italians and Spaniards are used for clearing the
soil. The gangs of Mendocinos who go to cut props 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 came
into touch with the forest belt is the district of the
older colonies of Santa Fe. There it found the forestry
industry already long established, on the banks both,
of the Salado and of the Parana. The 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 Fe had preserved. The
colonists did not enter the forest, and did not mingle
with the charcoal-burners, but they profited indirectly
from their presence by selling them maize. Later,

mmmimfi.

LORETO. THE RIO i'lMo i.\ llJi:

1\\-

One of the arms through which the flood of the Dolce flows.

Photograph by the Author.

LA BANDA (SANTIAGO DEL ESTEKO).

Irrigated lucerne fields on the left bank of the Rio Dulce. Zone of modern colonization : a
contrast with the older farms of the flood-zone. Photograph by the Author.

PtATE X.

To iace p- iti.

I

CLEARING THE LAND 113

agricultural work spread over the Central Pampa and
the province of Cordoba, as far as the edge of the scrub
in all parts of the prairie. Wood-cutting is carried on
there, on a small scale, everywhere, at Toay as well as
at Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria. 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 Parana, 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 (ahras) 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 quebrachas.

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 Aiiatuya
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

8

114 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 Fe. They had the advantage of
being within reach of the river-route, the network of
railways that serves the colonies of Sante Fe 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 Parana alternate with
stuff that seems to come from the left bank. They
grow flax, earth-nuts, sugar cane, and cotton. Behind
this slight agricultural fa9ade 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 Portefios — 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 Tost ado, where the forest, which will
presently yield to the plain, breaks into patches and looks

JERKED MEAT EATERS 115

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, when the
timber has been 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 more arid scrub of the eastern Chaco.
There are often a thousand head of cattle to 2,500
hectares. To the north and west of that part of the
forest where the big companies have taken over the whole
of the land, in the province of Chaco, a fairly large
number of estates has been created. 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 com-
pelled 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
Parana eat fresh meat, thanks to the proximity of the
breeders, in the yerbales and obrajes of Misiones, the use
of dried or *' jerked " meat (came 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

116 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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
aerated. 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 Uru-
guay (San Jose 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 Jose), and German-

•-"^^e^if^il-i

STATIONS.

QUEBKA(

Eastern Chaco, on the Resistencia line {Santa Fe province). Here the quebracho is exploited
Jor tannic acid, not sleepers. "'

Plate XI.

Photographs by the Author.

To fjce p. 116.

I

FORESTRY AND AGRICULTURE 117

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 Parana, 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 agricul-
ture 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 yer-
bales. In addition, the industry finds work for more men.
On the Rio Grande do Sul, and later on the Parana, the
wages paid for collecting mate 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 compara-
tively 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 mate.
Large plantations of ilex have already been established

118 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

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 mate is undergoing
transformation while the natural growths are dis-
appearing.

CHAPTER V
PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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

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 Malargue
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 con-
trolled 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

119

120 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 summei 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 moun-
tainous region and goes further east over the table-
land. 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

THE CLIMATE OF PATAGONIA 121

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).' 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 pene-
plain passes from the Tertiary and Cretaceous tableland
to level masses of crystalline rock, the contour of which

« This anomaly is doubtless due to the proximity of the sea and
the respite of the westerly winds in winter. The coast, with its cold
waters and the land-winds causing the deeper water to rise, has a
special climate of fogs and mists. These, which remind us of the garuas
of the coast of Peru, do not penetrate into the interior.

122 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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
Anecon 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 (canadones), which
make breaches in their cliffs on both sides, go only a
little way into the sandstone Pampa or the lava table-
land. 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 ;

PATAGONIAN SCENERY 123

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, ^ 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 eventu-
ally converts the place into a field of shingle. It has

» The calcareous flag-stone of La Tosca, which is characteristic of
the south-west province of the plain of the Pampa, stretches in the
south as far as the Rio Negro in the coast-district. On the other
hand, it is almost entirely absent a hundred miles to the west, between
the Colorado and the Rio Negro, along the line of the railway from
Fortin Uno to Choele Choel.

124 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 table-
land, where the moisture fixes it and prevents the
wind from regaining it. These aeolian 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 aeolian 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 table-
land is one of the most characteristic features of
Patagonian scenery. The area in which mallin has
been formed coincides with the most humid districts

ERUPTIVE SURFACES

125

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.' Though the word mallin is
not used at Santa Cruz, similar aeolian 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 decomposi-
tion, 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 table-
land, 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
Punta 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

« G. Rovereto, " Studi di geomorfologia argentina : la valle del
Rio Negro," Bull. Soc. Geol, Ital., xxxi. 1912, pp. T01-142 and 181-237

126 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 Situacion.
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.^ The edge of the Cordillera, in

« The great mass of the Patagonian Andes differs considerably in
geological structure from the Argentinian Andes. The Paleozoic
sedimentary rocks and the lofty chains of the pre-Cordillera cease
at 36° S. lat. The Mesozoic beds — variegated breccie and porphyritic
conglomerates, sandstones, limestones, and marls — which form the
western slope of the Andes in central Chile, pass to the eastern slope
at 35° S. lat., where they develop in regular folds, in the direction
south-south-east, obliquely to the general line of the range. These
folds account for the orientation of the interior valleys, which is
remarkably uniform from the Rio Negro to the Collon Cura. They
pass in the south-west under the sandstones of the tableland. West
of this sedimentary zone, the zone of the sub-Andean granites and

ON THE CORDILLERA

127

the Malargiie 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 forma-
tion and spread over the plain of a regular network
of streams. From the Rio Grande onward the dejec-
tion 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 domheyi)
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

diorites, which have not been exposed further north except at the
base of the western slope, opens out in the Patagonian Andes, of which
it is the main body between Lake Lacar and the Gulf of Ultima
Esperanza. In fine, the Patagonian Andes are characterised by
volcanic formations. They are seen on the eastern slope about 36° S.
lat., in the lava-flows and ashes of Payen and Tromen. Further south
volcanoes with acid lava and characteristic cones are restricted to
the central zone ^Lanin, etc.) and the Chilean flank, but flows of fluid
basic lava cover enormous stretches at the eastern fringe of the Andes,
and they have spread over a good deal of the Patagonian tableland
outside the Andean region.

128 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 nirre (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 land-
scape. 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 19 14 through
the breaking down of the natural dam of soft earth
which confined its waters, is not a glacial lake.'
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

* Pablo Groeber, Injorme sohra las causas que han producido las
crecientes del Rio Colarado in 191 4. Dir. Gen. de Minas, Geol, e
Hidrol., Bol. No. 11, series B, Geologia (Buenos Aires, 1916).

I

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

On the Central (or Santiago) Chaco mules are used for transport.

Photograph by the Author.

WORKS AT TARi-.v,-... ^....^ CHACO) FOR MAKING TANNIC ACID.

These worlds, built by powerful firms, are permanent centres, drawing timber from a great stretch
of forest, while the saw-mills of the Central Chaco move about freely, to be near the felling sites.

Photograph by the Author.
Plate XII.

To face p. i;).

GLACIERS OF PATAGONIA 129

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.'

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

» Most of the lacustrine depressions are continued eastward across
the Patagonian tableland in the shape of distinct valleys. The eastern
part of the Straits of Magellan is merely a submerged valley on the
axis of Otway Water. Useless Bay also is continued eastward by
the hollow which ends in the Bay of San SebcLstian. Sometimes the
waters of the lakes flow eastward, toward the Atlantic, along these
valleys. Generally, however, the lakes of the western slope are
drained on the west by means of narrow defiles across the Cordillera,
or on the north and south by rivers which follow the sub-Andean
depression and thread them together in the manner of a rosary. The
valley which joins the lake to the Atlantic is in those cases a dead
valley, and the inter-oceanic dividing line of the waters is marked by
the frontal moraine of the old glacier, which confines the lake on the
east. This arrangement is found, with surprising regularity, from
the Alumine and the Lacar to the Neuquen, and as far as Lake Buenos
Aires and the Seno de la Ultima Esperanza at Santa Cruz. The capture
of the waters of the eastern slope by the rivers of the Pacific across
the Cordillera is fairly ancient, and certainly pre-glacial. But during
the Glacial Period the glaciers obstructed the transverse valleys of
the Cordillera, and the waters of the eastern slope found their way
to the Atlantic once more. With the retreat of the glaciers the valleys
of the Cordillera were successively cleared. The lakes, dammed by
the glaciers, were suddenly released and their level lowered. The
valleys of the Patagonian tableland were finally abandoned, and the
topographical accident of secondary importance, which the ancient
frontal moraine of the glacier represents, came to mark the limit of
the domain of the Pacific. The freshness of the contours of the dead
valleys of Patagonia bears witness to the recent date of this conquest,
which was too sudden or rapid to be called a " capture " in the proper
sense. It has not been accomplished everywhere. From Lake San
Martin to Lake Buenos Aires all the lakes of the eastern slope are
drained into the Pacific by rivers which flow into the Culen fiord.
But further south. Lakes Viedma and Argentino are still tributaries
of the Atlantic. They correspond to the zone of the Patagonian
Andes which is still covered by inland ice. To the north, in the basin
of the Puelo and the Yelcho, where the trans-Andean valleys long
ago ceased to be obstructed by ice, the lakes of the eastern slope which
drain toward the Pacific are small in size. Their level to-day is much
lower than it used to be, and a network of streams has developed
east of them, on the earlier lacustrine region, which is now dry.

9

130 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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.' North of the Rio Negro, Woodbine Parish
(1859), inaking use of the notes left by Cruz, who
had crossed the Andes and the Indian territory between
Antuco and Melincue in 1806, was the first to publish
definite information, to which no addition would be
made during the next forty years.^

The settlements founded on the coast by the Spaniards
at the close of the eighteenth century (S. Jose 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 Martin to Puerto San Julian about 1753, Coll. de
Angelis, V). After the revolution, Buenos Aires finally
abandoned these costly expeditions by land to the
salt districts of the Pampa, and was supplied with salt
by schooners from Carmen. During the war with
Brazil and the blockade of the Rio de la Plata, Carmen,
protected by the bar of the Rio Negro, and the Bay
of San Bias 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

» Diario de D. Basilio Villarino del reconocimiento que hizo del Rio
Negro en el ano de 1782 (Coll. de Angelis, vi).

» It is Woodbine Parish who corrects Villarino 's mistake in con-
fusing the Neuquen, at its confluence with the Limay, with the Rio
Diamante, known in the south of the Mendoza province.

CAPTURED BLACK SLAVES 131

curious effects of the hospitality offered to the priva-
teers 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 planta-
tions 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 Jose, 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 intermed-
iaries 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

132 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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, ^ and still comprises,^
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 ap-
proached 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.3 The
district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and CoUon 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

I Carlos M. Moyano, " Informe sobre un viaje a traves de la Pata-
gonia," Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent., ii. 1881, pp. 1-35.

> W. Vallentin, Chubut (Berlin, 1906).

3 J. Popper, " Exploracion de la Tierra del Fuego," Bol. Instit,
Geog. Argent., viii. 1887, pp. 74-93-

WANDERINGS OF THE INDIANS 133

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 archi-
pelago 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

134 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

attacking Buenos Aires, or from approaching the
Patagonian coast in the district of San Jose.^

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 Jose 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 con-
tinued throughout the nineteenth, until 1880, when

» Informe de D. Basilio Villarino H Fr, de Viedma, Coll. de
Angelis, v.

THE PATAGONIAN INDIANS 135

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 Chilian
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

186 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

in the Punta Delfin district, south of the Chubut.^
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 coloniza-
tion was less rapid in the interior. Ambrosetti tells
us of the establishment of the first ranches round the
Sierra de Lihuel Calel in 1893,2 and at the same time
Siemiradzki still found few traces of colonization on
the Colorado. 3

The second stream of colonization came from the
Magellan region. It started in Chilean territory,
about Punta Arenas. It was about 1878 that sheep-
breeding spread round Punta 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.4 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 table-
land 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

» L. J. Fontana, " Exploracion en la Patagonia austral," Bol.
Instit. Geog. Argent., vii, 1886, pp. 223-239.

» J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viage a la Pampa central," Bol. Instit. Geog,
Argent., xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368.

3 J. V. Siemiradzki, Eine Farschungsreise in Patagonien, Petermann's
Mitteilungen, xxxix. 1893, pp. 49-62.

4 J. B. Hatcher, Reports of the Princeton University expeditions to
Patagonia 1896-9 {Narrative oj the Expeditions and Geography of
Southern Patagonia, Princeton, 1903).

CHILEANS IN PATAGONIA 137

Jorge toward the basin of the Sanguerr and the Genua,
(establishment of the Sarmiento colony, south of Col-
huapi, 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. Im-
mediately 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.i South of Nahuel Huapi there is
no regularly used route across the Cordillera. 2 The
Chilean colonists of the southern zone came from

» C. Villanueva, " De Mendoza a Narguin," Bol. Instit. Geog.
Argent., v. 1884, pp. 17 1-4.

• Chilean woodcutters have sometimes got as far as the eastern
valleys in search of larch, but these were nomads who did not
settle.

138 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 CoUon 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 begin-
ning with 1890-95, immigrants of various nationalities
have settled on the Neuquen and the Negro.' 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. 2

The most striking feature of colonization in Patagonia
is the very low density of population. The Census

I Furque, " Descripcion del Pueblo General Roca," Bol. Instit.
Geog. Argent., ix. 1888, pp. 124-132.

» In spite of their importance we must regard as mere episodes
in the story of Patagonian colonization the influx of population caused
on the eastern coast by the discovery of placer-gold at Cape Virgenes
and on the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego (1884), and the discovery
of petroleum at Rivadavia (1907) in the course of drilling in search
of water. Rivadavia is already, with its 3,000 inhabitants, one of
the chief centres in Patagonia.

SHEEP-RANCHES 139

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 dis-
placed 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 indis-
pensable to the sheep. It is the arid tableland that

140 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 periodi-
cally to receive disinfecting baths against the scab.

SCARCITY OF FRESH WATER 141

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 repro-
duction 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 vol-
canic rocks, when the underlying rock is impermeable,
and above the various levels of the marl in the
Patagonian swamps ; for instance, in the canadones
round the Gulf of San Jorge. Besides this, the rain
and melting snow leave on the surface of the table-
land 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

142 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 Jose, 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 that
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 canadones 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 sheep
along little-known tracks, could not avoid losses in
crossing the arid parts of the tableland : parts which
D'Orbigny, translating literally the Spanish word

I

THE VOLCANO PUNTIAGUDO.

On the Chilean side, to the north of the road from Lake Nahuel Huapi. The glaciers come
down lower on the western side, as the moist winds come from the west, and the rain becomes
less and less frequent as one goes eastward toward the Patagonian tableland.

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

Here the Limay enters the sub-desert tableland. Last trees (cypresses) in the valley in the
foreground. Photrogaph by Bailey Willis.

Plate Xlll.

To face p. 112.

REFRIGERATORS 143

travesia, calls " crossings." ' When the ranch is estab-
lished, the breeding does not necessitate any further
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, some-
times on each group of ranches combined in a single
estate, that they pass alternately from winter to summer
pasture. The only transport necessary is that of wool.
The fleeces, which the west wind has heavily laden
with dust, are collected in the sheds belonging to the
ranch, or, in the case of the intrusos, on the premises
of certain small traders (bolicheros) who are scattered
over the tableland even at its extreme limits. Convoys
of wagons then take them to the ports on the coast.

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 refngerator ;
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,

» The search for possible routes for cattle in the districts that were
not yet colonized helped in the study of Patagonia. Moyano was
doing this when he explored the route from Santa Cruz to Lake Nahuel
Huapi.

144 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 possi-
bilities 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 south-
ward. 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 i,ooo
feet at the Bolson, and i,6oo 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.

FORESTS AS PASTURE 145

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 table-
land, 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

10

146 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

fire and difficult of access, is partly composed of trees
that are too old. The lihocedrus 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 out-
put 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

TRANS-ANDEAN ROUTES 147

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
WilHs 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 Resales 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, » 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

» This was the area studied by the Commission of which Bailey
Willis was chairman.

148 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 Bahia 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 sedimen-
tary 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.

t

DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOUTH 149

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. Ter-
tiary 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 agri-
cultural 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

150 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

had hollowed it.^ 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 table-
land, 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 Carilauf-

» Pedro Ezcurra, " Camino indio entre los rios Negro y Chubut :
la travesia de Valcheta," Bol. Instit. Geog Argent., xix. 1898, pp.
134-38.

THE GREAT SHEEP-FARMS 151

quen. This ocoupies 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

152 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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
Afiecon 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. Precip-
itation 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 Afiecon, where the summer and winter
pastures are not far from each other. The custom

SUMMER AND WINTER PASTURE 153

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.^

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 Pat agones 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).

I The district of the Rio Negro is not the only part of Patagonia
which faces the problem of increasing the winter pasture. Attention
has been drawn to the possibility of enlarging the lucerne farms in
the district of Colonia Sarmiento, south of Lake Musters, and making
this a great wintering area for the Santa Cruz flocks.

154 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 dissymetri-
cal 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 under-
ground 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 pastur-
age 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

m — , . ^u,

Plate XIV.

THE PAIAGOMAN 1 AlJLKl.AM) (^.\ i- L Ul h .\ j .

Indigenous vegetation. Rocks eroded by wind.

Photographs by Wlndhausen, Mining Division.

To face p. 154,

II

LUCERNE IN PATAGONIA 155

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. i

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 that they are endeavouring to secure more
workers. These are a singularly mixed lot, Chileans
from the Neuquen rubbing shoulders with Latin immi-
grants (Italian and Spanish) from the region of the
Pampas.

The lucerne is made up in bales and exported by rail
to Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires. The economic
life of the agricultural oasis of the Rio Negro is no more
connected with that of the pastoral tableland than is
life on the Chubut. Neither sheep nor cattle are
fattened on the Rio Negro. It is a curious contrast
to 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

« The work now (1914) in hand will reduce the risk of floods, and
will enable them to enlarge considerably the extent of the tilled land.
The Cuenca Vidal, which opens amongst the sandstone, below the
level of the valley, on the tableland to the north of the Neuquen,
will be arranged so as to absorb the flood-water, and it will feed a
canal which will serve the left bank over an area of 100 miles. The
waters of the Limay will be available for the lower valley.

156 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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. I But there is still transhumation on

I As a matter of fact, of recent years there has been a practice on
this slope of disguising the smuggling of animals under the name of
" transhumation," as the removal of the sheep facilitated it and helped
to maintain it. The shepherds got certificates exaggerating the
number of their sheep from the Chilean officials before they crossed
the frontier, and under cover of these they came back to Chile with
additions to their flocks which they had bought on Argentine territory.

TRANSHUMATION 157

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
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 Canadon 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 Govern-
ment are steadily reducing the area of the migrators
in the Cordillera, and also the ways of communication
between the tableland and the mountains. The pro-
prietors 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

158 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

have no proprietary title. The spHtting 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 appear-
ance 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 Bahia 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

REVOLUTION IN CATTLE TRADE 159

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 advan-
tage 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, Norquin, 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 dukes). 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
foimd 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 Bahia 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

160 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING

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 difierent
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 coloniza-
tion. 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.

11

162 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 Fe, between

the Salado and the Parana, the Pampa stretches as

far as Fives-Lille, a little beyond 30° S. lat.' 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 Fe. It then

turns south-east and south, passing round the entire

depression of Los Porongos and Mar Chiquita ; and

the line from Santa Fe to Cordoba 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 Cordoba 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 Cordoba 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 Fe. There are, in addition, many

isolated clumps of chanares and more extensive patches

of wood in the north-west corner of the prairie (Santa Fe

province). The monte along the Salado is continued

south of Santa Fe along the Parana, as far as the point

where the chief arm of the river reaches the cliffs on

I On the left bank of the Salado, west of the Resistencia railway,
a great gulf of low prairie penetrates into the forest of the Chaco in
the north, almost as far as 28° S. lat., but it has rather the character
of one of the floodable clearings of the Chaco {esteros) than of the
temperate Pampa.

THE SCRUB OF THE PAMPA 163

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 Parana
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 Fe, the approach
of the monte is announced by the appearance of chaiiares,
in the south-west corner of the Cordoba 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 chanares. 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 Bahia 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 tropi-
cal Argentina and the sub-desert regions of western

164f THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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
Parand, 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
Bahia 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 C6rdoba
and 18 per cent, at San Luis. At C6rdoba, 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 Cordoba, 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). ^

» Argentine Mesopotamia, which is a continuation of the Pampean
region from the climatological point of view, is also, even in its northern
part, without the rigorous dry seasons of the Chaco. Ascending the
Parand, from Corrientes to Posadas, just as in passing from C6rdoba
to Buenos Aires, one notices that the winter minimum decreases.

THE CONTOUR OF THE PLAIN 165

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 cultiva-
tion 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 diagonall}' across the preceding, and
are oriented directly north and south. Bahia Blanca
receives in winter as much rain as Rosario, and General
Acha (in the district of the central Pampa) as much
as Cordoba. 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 ¥6, 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 Cordoba 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.

and a secondary maximum appears in the spring. The predominance
of the spring rains, which is a characteristic of southern Brazil, is
conspicuous on the middle Uruguay. On the lower part of that river
the rain-system approaches that of Buenos Aires, with maxima in
spring and autumn, a principal minimum in winter, and a secondary
minimum in summer.

166 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 Vent ana 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 Cordoba, the thrust of
the plateau on the right bank of the Parand, south of
Villa Constitucion 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 Cordoba 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. ^

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 Cordoba 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.2 This ridge isolates the eastern Pampa from

* While the Pampean deposits lie immediately on the crystalline
and Paleozoic formations in the sierras of the lower Colorado and
of the central Pampa, in the south of the province of Buenos Aires
and in Uruguay, they are, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de C6rdoba,
separated from it by red sandstones and conglomerates of uncertain
age, perhaps synchronous with the continental red sandstones of
Corrientes which outcrop east of the Parand and have been known
since D'Orbigny's time as " granitic sandstones."

» At Rancul, in the east, 660 feet of loess overlying red sandstone ;
at Telen, in the west, 2,800 feet of sand, marl, sandstone and gravel.

THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. TRES ARROYES (BUENOS AIRES PKAIKIE
BETWEEN THE SIERRA DE TANDIL AND THE SIERRA DE LA VENTANA).
Zone of wheat and oats on large scale. The Pampa is a tableland here (400 feet above sea-level),

with clay overlying the limestone of the Tosca.

The valleys are well marf^ed.

Photograph by the Author.

THE PAMPKAN PLAIN. |nA\, oN llli; Cl^MK'.M. i'AMl'A (59O FEET).

Thz tableland, with a strong framzwork. of limzstone Tosca, is cut across by well-marked dry
valleys which sink lower toward the east. At the edges of the valle'js the sand is the prey of
the winds. Here we are near the limit of the wheat belt. Photograph by the Author.

THE SOIL 167

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 Cordoba
and the Parana, the loose continental formations are
more than 2,000 feet thick at Bellville, and more than
3,500 feet north-west of Santa Fe (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. ' Even in the vicinity of the sierras
the beds of gravel, with round or angular pebbles, are
almost always covered by clay, and are exposed only
in the banks of the streams. Olascoaga mentions
the surprise of the gauchos of General Roca's army when
they found Patagonian pebbles on the ground during
their stay at Choele Choel on the Colorado, in the course
of the compaign on the Rio Negro. Officers and
soldiers dismounted to pick them up. Sand and clay
form a thick bed of continental alluvia. The Tertiary
maritime transgressions, which have left their mark
in the clays and limestones of the left bank of the
lower Parana, 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
when one leaves the coast or the river.

The source of the elements which compose the
Pampean alluvia is very uncertain. Their composition
does not clearly show their origin. The clays are com-
paratively rich in calcareous matter, which seems
to indicate that they do not come from tropical America
or the upper basin of the Parana. Wright and Fenner
insist upon the high proportion of siliceous glass of
volcanic origin which they contain, which points to

» Roth claims to have found gravel in the San Nicolas barranca
on the Parand. I have myself found small rounded flints in the clay
of the Chaco at Tartagal. But these deposits probably come from
the left bank of the Parand, where the beds of river gravel are con-
siderable.

168 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

an intense eruptive activity during or before their
formation.^ Doering had already noticed in the
Cordoba 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, aeolian deposits, aeolian deposits redis-
tributed by water, river deposits redistributed by
wind — all these different types are represented in the
Pampean formation, but their relative importance is
still disputed. 3

» In Ales Hrdlicka, Early Man in South America (Smithsonian
Instit. Bull., 52, Washington, 191 2).

» Many attempts have been made to classify the Pampean lands,
but the results cannot be regarded as final. Ameghino, who i§ first
and foremost a palaeontologist, has done a service in showing the
futility of these geological divisions based upon the actual surface
of the deposits (colour, fineness, etc.). But even palaeontology gives
rather uncertain results, as it is impossible to recognize and follow
step by step the various stages of the movement of the fossils. All
the classifications of the Pampean are based upon a study of two
groups of sections. The first group comprises the cliff on the right
bank of the Parana from Rosario to Buenos Aires and the coastal
cliff which is a continuation of it, with a break from Ensefiada at
Mar Chiquita to Balila Blanca. Ameghino has recognized there a
thick series of aeolian deposits separated by several discordances, the
oldest elements of which, at Bahia Blanca, belong to the Miocene.
The second group comprises the cUffs which enclose the valley of
the Rio Primero above and below C6rdoba. Doering and Bodenbender
in this case describe two stages of aeolian loess, each covered by torrential
gravel.

From the study of these sections geologists have drawn certain
conclusions as to the movements which have affected the soil of the
Pampa and the changes which the climate has experienced. These
conclusions have in each case only a local value, and they have not
yet been co-ordinated. The majority of the observers, from Doering
to Bailey Willis and Rovereto, seem not to have taken into account
sufl&ciently the fact that in the continental formations the most diverse

WATER ON THE PAMPA 169

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 Parana
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 Parana is the Rio
Tercero or Carcarana. 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 aeolian 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 Fe 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 con-
fluence of the Saladillo, and the contrast between the
light soil and the clay of the bank of the Parand is so

deposits may come next to each other in the same series, according
to the particular process of deposition, and that their alternation does
not imply a general change in the conditions of erosion.

170 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 direc-
tion 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 Parana, 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 seolian erosion.
The rivers of the Pampa, when they leave the sierras,

ALLUVIAL VALLEYS 171

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 Parana (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 Carcarana
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 import-
ant, 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, branch-
ing along the side-valleys, and these owe their origin
to the same negative movement, subsequent to the ex-
cavation 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,

172 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

but along broad and almost imperceptible depressions
(canadas) 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 resis-
tance to erosion. The cycles are run through rapidly,
and the traces of earlier cycles are faint, and are soon
effaced.*

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 decom-
position-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.^ 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

» Certain features of the hydrographic network clearly have the
character of having been superimposed : that is to say, the path of
the watercourses has been bequeathed to the actual plain by former
erosion-surfaces, which have now disappeared, on which the valleys
were originally imposed. That is why in the district of the confluence
of the Colorado and the Chadi-Leuvu the valleys pass from Pampean
deposits to the crystalline sierras, which were at one time entirely
covered with water.

» In the vicinity of San Luis and C6rdoba the hard strata which
are called tosca are beds of eruptive ashes.

SCULPTURE BY WIND 178

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 Bahia Blanca. None of
them has permanent running water. ^ 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 aeolian erosion, like the depres-
sions 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 C6rdoba, 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 aeolian erosion
at work. The wind raises the sand in a sort of tossing
sea. Then the dune assumes a circular shape. A

» The surface of the tosca tableland is further punctuated by a
great number of closed depressions of various depths : long tunnels
{dolines) which can only be explained, apparently, as an effect of
the dissolving of the limestone by water.

174 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 consider-
able, 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 Cordoba province and the centre of
the Buenos Aires province, there are certain soft undula-
tions, 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 aeolian 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 Chaca-
buco 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 depart-
ments, which Parchappe described, have a more con-
spicuous relief, and in their disposition sometimes

THE CHIEF REGIONS 175

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.*

Thus the impression of monotony which the Pampa
makes in us is corrected to some extent by close observa-
tion. 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 :

I. The central part of the Santa Fe 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

» Outside the districts with quick and dead dunes, a frequent type
of landscape on the Pampa is a plain thinly sown with very small
lagoons, generally circular, between which develop a series of barely
perceptible undulations. The inequahty is at times so slight that
one only notices it by the contrast between the vegetation of the
lower and the higher ground. This type of landscape, which is
especiall}'^ seen in the district of Lincoln or of Nueve de Julio, is due
to the action of the wind on a plain where the level of the under-
ground water is near the surface. This level marks a limit below
which aeolian erosion does not take place : a sort of base-level. The
periodic variations of level of the underground water reduce or en-
larges the undulations of the surface.

176 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

stretches westward beyond the frontier of the Cordoba
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 Fe, 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 table-
land on the right bank of the Parand, 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 moistiure, 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 Cordoba in the west, and they
leave out the entire south-western corner of the Santa
Fe province. The maize belt touches the Parand
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,

THE LUCERNE BELT 177

to the southern limit of the Nueve de JuHo and Pehuajo
departmen4:s, 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 Cordoba province, as high up as the line
from Villa Mercedes to Villa Maria, and the southern
part of the Santa Fe 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 under-
ground 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 pre-
ceding regions. In the south-east, in the Buenos Aires
province, the creation of the lucerne farms was under-
taken at a time when agricultural colonization had
already begun. We therefore find two types of exploita-
tion side by side. The cultivation of maize enters it
in the south-west, in spite of the comparatively un-
favourable climatic conditions. The centre of the
lucerne area in the south of the Cordoba 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

12

178 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

and extreme south-west of Cordoba 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 them-
selves, 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 Cordoba, 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 Cordoba 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 coloniza-
tion. 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

I

THE WILD CATTLE 179

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 pelleteria),^ 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.^ 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 Fe and

» Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumdn
(3 vols, in i6™o, Buenos Aires, 1816, t. iii, p. 214.

• The number of wild animals and the area over which they roamed
have often been exaggerated. It does not look as if they ever covered
the whole of the Pampean plain. A Salter who crossed Patagonia
and the whole of the Pampa in 1753 {Voyage du San Martin au fort
de San Julian, Coll. de Angelis, v.) only found wild herds near the
Salado frontier, and he knew by this that he was close to the ranches.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no wild cattle
left on the right bank of the Parand. There were still some in Entre
Rios.

180 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 some-
times happened that the animals went vast distances
in search of water or pasture, and ended by being
regarded as wild and ownerless." When DAzara
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

HORSE-BREEDING 181

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 discipHne of the
herd was drought. That in the year 1827 was a disaster.
The animals left the ranches in a body to go south-
ward, where they mixed. »

» The water problem is not as important for the history of coloniza-
tion in the Pampean region as in the north. Primitive breeding was
confined to natural supplies of water, lagoons or streams, and to shallow
wells (jagueles) dug down to the superficial sheet, which is generally
not deep, but is liable to dry up. As colonization improved, the
breeder, and subsequently the farmer, were better equipped for boring
wells, and no longer feared drought.. They got down to the deeper
waters, semi-artesian (Buenos Aires district) or artesian (west of the
Santa F6 province, round San Francisco). In other places the super-
ficial waters, which are fresher than the deeper layers, were used by
adapting new types of filters to the wells (Buena Esperanza district).
The only two districts where the quest of water offered any difficulty
are the south-west corner of the Pampean region and the northern
extremity of the prairie in the Sante F6 province. The sheets of
water are very irregular there, often saline, and it was a long time
before the ranches got an assured supply.

One remarkable circumstance is the importance of the dunes in
connection with the distribution of the underground water. The
rain-water accumulates in the dunes and flows slowly through the
sand to the sub-soil. The level of the underground sheet in the clay
on which the dune rests is always nearer the surface in the neighbour-
hood of the dune. The dune itself has often a greener vegetation
than the land around it. Nothing is more surprising than to find
at Medanos (west of Bahfa Blanca), in the middle of a plain of arid
aspect, fields of lucerne and orchards lodged in the hollows of dunes
that are still fresh. In the whole of the Buenos Aires province the
dead district of the dunes is, on account of its water-supply, a good
place for habitation. D'Azara notices the numerous water-spots
which ran along the foot of the dead dunes of the Cerillada. All
round were the white bones of the baguales. In the valleys of the
central Pampa, where the sheet of water in the centre of the valley
is often saline, the underground water improves gradually as one
approaches the line of the dunes.

182 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

Revolutions and wars interrupted the work of taming
the cattle. When Galvez went from the Cordoba
province to Buenos Aires at the end of the Rosas
Government, he was struck by the condition of the
ranches.! 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 eman-
cipation-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 Parana. 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 Parand, to the Santa
Fe 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 Hghtly 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 Ventana, Colonel Garcia noticed that the
Indians kept their cattle round the temporary lagoons
of the plain in the winter, and went up to the mountain-

» V. Galvez, Memorias de un vie jo (Buenos Aires, 3 vols, in i6™o,
4th ed., 1889).

THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. THE RIO BAMBA (iN THE SOUTH OF THE
CORDOBA PROVINCE, 5OO FEET ABOVE SEA-LEVEL).

Small circular lagoons. The underground water, which comes from the Sierras to the north-
west, here reaches the surface. Zone of lucerne farms. Photograph by the Author.

THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE,
1,166 FEET ELEVATION).

The plain is sown with quick ond dead dunes, often shaped in a circle round a lagccn. A dune
invaded by vegetation. Photograph by the Author.

SHEEP-BREEDING 183

streams in summer. Transhumation movements of
this kind were difficult for the Creole ranchers, whose
fairly large herds could not be handled easily. The
Chascomus breeders, however, at the close of the
eighteenth century, drove their cattle to the low banks
of the Salado during the dry season. « Garcia also notices
the importance of the Salado pastures for the ranches
of Salto, Areco, and Lujan.» The need to remove
the herds in the dry season, and to find invernadas
within reach of the former ranches, was due to the
change brought about in the natural vegetation of the
Pampa and the spread of the pasto dulce. The annual
herbs which compose the pasto dulce die and disappear
after fertilization. Until the autumn rain they leave
the ground quite naked, whereas the tough grasses
of the pasto duro afforded a thin but permanent pasture.

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
i860, 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

* Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortifies que garnecen
la linea de frontera de Buenos Aires (1796), by D. Felix de Azara (Coll.
de Angelis, vi.).

» Nueva plan de fronteras de la Provincia de Buenos Aires por el
Colonel Garcia (18 16, Coll. de Angelis, vi.).

184 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 ^^^ 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 substitu-
tion of Lincolns for Merinos is now complete through-
out 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 com-
parison 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

DECLINE OF SHEEPBREEDING 185

(Alsina, Puan, Bahia 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 Parand and the Salado, have dimin-
ished : 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-reaiing 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

186 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 remunera-
tive, 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.' About 1880
the advance of sheep-breeding pressed the cattle-ranches

» This is, in a special form, the first instance of specialization, in
the cantons of the Pampean region, in the breeding industry,
properly so called (producing breeders).

INCREASE OF CATTLE-BREEDING 187

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 occupa-
tion 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.'
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.

I The variations in number are less considerable for the Pampean
region than for the whole of Argentina. It is better supplied with
capital than the other breeding districts, and can rapidly replace the
losses caused by excessive export by buying cattle in the adjoining
provinces.

188 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

The difference between the price paid by the refrigera-
tors 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 especi-
ally modified by the introduction of lucerne. It spread
in the south of Cordoba 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.^ But the
area from which the cultivation of lucerne started at
the close of the nineteenth century is the district of
the Cordoba province that is crossed by the line from
Rosario to Cordoba, completed about 1870 to Bell villa
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 Aba jo department (Villa Maria) and 267 square
kilometres in the Union department (Bellville).^

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 Parana, the northern frontier of the

I Fernando Barrero, Descripcion de las provincias del Rio de la Plata
(published by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos
Aires, 191 1).

» Amongst the specialized industries connected with the develop-
ment of the lucerne farms we must mention the growing of lucerne
for seed, which has settled in the dry zones, where the lucerne is not
so much invaded by other species ; for instance, the district of Madanos,
west of Bahia Blanca.

MAP III. — THE CATTLE-BREEDING AREAS. !

Ths density of thz htrd is slight in thi miizz hzlt. It is considerable in the centre and east of
ihe Pam'izan region, which suijply thz refrigzrators with psdigree stock of good weight. The
density is considerable also in thz north of Mesopotamia, but the cattle there are less valuable
and are taken by thz saladeros of the Uruguay. Thz presence of the tick, which inoculates
cattle with Texas fevzr, is thz chief obstacle to the improvement of the herd in the north of
Argentina.

To face p( iSS.

RAVAGES OF TEXAS FEVER 189

Constitucion and General Lopez departments, in the
province of Santa Fe and on the Rio Cuarto, and in
the Cordoba province, by the presence of the garrapate,
which inoculates the cattle with a dreaded disease,
Texas fever. The Creole cattle are immunized against
the garrapate, but pedigree cattle quickly succumb to
it. In order to protect the southern zone, where the
garrapate does not reproduce, the Argentine Govern-
ment imposes severe restrictions on the 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 Parana than in Entre Rios and
Corrientes. Pedigree animals have been introduced at
Santa Fe, 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
Fe, who were ousted by the progress of maize. They
have brought with them to the new lands the cultiva-
tion 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 imchanged.
When we study the variations in the numbers of
cattle in different parts of the Pampa, by comparing

190 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 Cordoba,
Santa Fe, and San Luis provinces, where the herds
doubled beween 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 Parana 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 sur-
rounded 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 canadas in the local dialect (cafiada
de Moron, cafiada du Rio Lujan, etc.).

It was, however, not at Buenos Aires, but in the
Santa Fe province, that modern agricultural coloniza-

THE COLONIES 191

tion began in the nineteenth century. It goes back
to the foundation (in 1854) of the colony of Esperanza,
west of Santa Fe, 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 Fe were difficult, and the colonies did not begin
to develop rapidly until after 1870. About that date
we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural coloniza-
tion at Santa Fe. The first group of colonies was
settled in the north, on the bank of the Parana. In
the centre the Esperanza group advanced steadily
westward. A third group of colonies lay along the
Central Argentine railway from Rosario to Cordoba.
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 pre-
dominates, not only in the department of Las Colonias,
west of Santa Fe, 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 Carcaraiia
and the granaries of Rosario have been built. The
land sown with wheat at Santa Fe rose in 1882 to
102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of
cultivated land.^ By 1889 the area of wheat was
quadrupled. It spread like a drop of oil, reaching
Rafaela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the
advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has
crossed the Cordoba 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 Fe province and

I The population of the Santa Fe colonies in 1882 was 52.000,
of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier, north of the
town of Santa F6.

192 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 Fe, 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 Parana (General
Lopez department). On the other hand, it has been
reduced in the adjoining district of Rosario (depart-
ments of Iriondo, Belgrana, Caseros, and Constitucion),
where maize-growing has developed. Maize has won
part of the wheat belt.

Departments.

Las Colonias'
Castillanos
S. Jeronimo
S. Martin
Iriondo
Belgrana
S. Lorenzo
Caseros
Gal. Lopez
Constiiucidn
S. Justo
M. Juarez

Wheat Area (in kilometres).

1889 1895

1,623
664
971
652

12.
12

1.307
1.845

964
929

1. 137
387

1. 139

888

227

732

1.504

1908

1,621

3.425
849

1,884
442
638

1,390
468

1.370
165

2.345

1,442

Maize Area (in kilometers).

1889

82
65
65

178

51

48

1895

24
4
15
22
81

37
150

83

373

575

7

53

Z908

31

7

264

35

641

296

1,169

970

1.558

736

34

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.

» The names of departments which belong in their entirety to
the maize region are given in itaHcs. The department of San Jeronimo
straddles the maize region and the region of the colonies. The General
Lopez territory also extends, in the south-west, far beyond the limit
of the maize belt.

SMALL FARMERS 193

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 (caHadas), 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 diary 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 Moises-
ville).

Agricultural colonization in the Buenos Aires
province was at first entirely independent of the Santa
F^ colonization. The crops of the adjoining region
of Buenos Aires never disappeared altogether. In
the period to which Daireaux's description of the
economic Hfe 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

13

194 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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
Pigiie.i The opening of the line from Buenos Aires to
Bahia 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 Pigiie
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 and
400 of maize : Veinte Cinco de Mayo, 84 square kilo-
metres of wheat and 218 of maize : Junin, 197 square
kilometres of wheat and 204 of maize in 1895). It
has been maintained ever since, with slow progress,
but without being ousted by breeding. This is one

* Wheat-area in 1889 in the Olavarria department, 319 square
kilometres; in the Suarez department, 118 square kilometres.

THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. BUENA ESPEKAXZA (SAX LUIS PKOVINXE).

The first char! ares.

Photograph by the Author.

THE PAMPEAN J

\. ,. 1\ (150 Mil i:> \\1>1 ul JllEXOS AIRES,
330 FEET elevation).
A line of dead dunes crosses the Junin district, following the course of the Salado,
They are indicated by light, sandy soil, very different from the clays of the north of
Buenos Aires province. Photograph by the Author.

Plate XVII.

The clays.

ROTARY CROPS

195

of the regions of the 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 maize crop
being the better if the summer is wet, and the wheat
crop when the summer is dry. The two cereals follow
each other on the same land, in rotation, the wheat
being helped by the constant weeding and clearing
which the maize requires. The colonists use oxen
in the work, and fatten them afterwards. »

Agricultural colonization in the lucerne region dates
from 1895 to 1905 :

Buenos Aires :

Lincoln

Pehuajo

Guamini

Trenque Lauquen

Villegas

Pinto
C6rdoba :

Gal. Roca

Rio Quarto

Juarez Celman

Union

Wheat

Area

Flax Area

(in kilometres).

(in kilometres).

1895

1908

1895

1908

152

819

100

106

727

—

20

528

—

100

i»439

—

59

4

812

I

84

—

469

—

60

—

1,009

—

89

5

1. 156

—

172

144

1,679

—

183

373

2.548

12

316

I have shown how this was bound up with the develop-
ment of the lucerne farms themselves. The extreme

» Draught animals in 1908 : at Chivilcoy, 17,000 cattle and 10,000
horses ; at Junin, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses ; at Nueve de Julio,
15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses. In the region of the Santa F6 colonies :
at Castellanos, 17,000 cattle and 54,000 horses ; at Las Colonias, 6,000
cattle and 35.000 horses. In the wheat belt (South of Buenos Aires) :
at Puan, (no cattle) 29,000 horses. At the sierras (no cattle), 14,000
horses.

196 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 Fe, where the new generation had begun to
feel the pinch. The crops wliich 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 trafiic 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 agricul-

INCREASE OF MAIZE CROPS 197

tural belt at the foot of the Sierras de San Luis and de

Cordoba. They have less suitable cUmatological con-
ditions, but they have the advantage of greater stabiHty,
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 Parand, where it was already
paramount in 1889, between Campana (north of Buenos
Aires) and San Nicolas. In 1895 it advanced up the
Parand as far as the Santa Fe province (Constitucion) 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 Constitucion
in the province of Santa F^.

Maize Area.

Flax Area.

1889

1893

I9«8

Z889

1893

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 "1
Constituci6nj

51

r 373
1 575

1.538

—

70

752

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

II

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.

198 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give em-
ployment 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 adjoin-
ing zone of the Parana 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

Puan . .
Suarez . .

La Madrid

Pringles
Darrego
Terr, de la Pampa . .

45
52
104
75
13

1,296
1,321
978
249
724
885
1,731

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

sy^a^.p

MH V»

PA M P A

W- JSper cent of the whole

area, sonn tv//^ maije
15-39 fier cent
5- 1^ frerceni-
I I less fhan S fser ceni~
Settle.

66M.on9.W 6r.

MAP IV. — DENSITY OF THE MAIZE CROP.

As it needs more heat and moisture than wheat, the maize does not go so far to the west and
south. It is concentrated for export at the ports of the Rio de la Plata and the Parana, especially
at Rosario. The Argentine " corn belt," the chief maize area, extends back of Rosario and
San Nicolas to beyond Casilda and Pergamino.

To (ace p. 198.

I

WHEAT AND FIAX 199

Aires facilitated the development of the intermediate
region (Pringles-Laprida). From Bahia Blanca it spread
to the west and north-west along the Toay line, and
southward as far as Colorado on the coast. In the
whole area of the Central Pampa it is still possible
to distinguish two strata of immigrants, of different
dates, one superimposed upon the other : the sheep-
breeders and the farmers. Round 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 Fe, 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 Bahia 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

200 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 occupa-
tions, as in the district of the Santa ¥€ colonies or in
the wheat area in the south of the Buenos Aires province.

It seems, moreover, that the development of coloniza-
tion 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 Cordoba or north of Santa
F.e, the sheep-breeders moving westward, or the Santa
Fe 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. Specula-
tion discounts the work of the colonist, and attaches

MAP V. — DENSITY OF THE WHEAT CROP.

The wheat belt stretches in a broad section of a circle from Bahia Blanco to Santa Fe,
which is now reached by maritime vessels. The cultivation of wheat crosses the line
4)f 600 millimetres of rainfall, and even the 40Q-millimetre line, in proportion as one
passes from the area of summer rein to that of spring and autumn rain.

To face p. 303.

I

SPECULATION IN LAND 201

to the land a value which is not based upon the revenue
it has produced, but upon that which the speculator
calculates that it may produce in the future. If the
speculator is audacious, he does not let himself be
discouraged by initial bad experiences ; it takes
repeated checks to exhaust his optimism. The colonist,
even if his farming accounts do not show a profit,
may nevertheless gain something if the value of his
land goes up. The 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 —

202 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 facili-
tated 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
Fe colonies, both as regards the securing of immigrants,
the distribution of lands, and the administration of
the colonies.^ Colonization has been, on the whole,
a private affair. The work of organizing colonization
has at times been undertaken by the proprietors them-
selves ; 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 under-
taken 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

I The Agricultural Centres Law, passed in 1887 by the province
of Buenos Aires to encourage colonization, has not had good results.
By the terms of this law, owners who professed themselves willing
to devote their lands to colonization received an advance on the value
of the lands in the form of mortgages, the interest and repayment
of the mortgage being charged to the colonists. Many owners took
advantage of the law, but, after a pretence of colonization, kept the
ownership of their lands,

THE MARKETS OF THE PAMPA 203

what they needed of the merchants, and entrusted
them with the sale of their crops. The migration of
the Santa Fe 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 varia-
tions 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 over-
looked. When wheat-growing spread at Santa Fd
the crop was at first devoted to supplying Buenos

204 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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. Cordoba and
Santa Fe send their flour to Tucumdn. The price of
cereals still shows slight fluctuations in these parts
as compared with prices in Buenos Aires.

Pastoral colonization, again, has not been entirely

Table of Exports of the Chief Products of the Pampean region
{in thousands of tons) ;

1901

1905

1910

1913

1914

Wheat..
Maize . .
Flax . .
Flour . .
Wool ..
Salted hides
Dried hides
Chilled beef
Chilled muttoi

1

904

1,112

338

71
228
28
26
44
63

2,868
2,222

654
144

191
40

24
152

78

1,883

2,660

604

115

150

61

29

253

75

2.812

4,806

1,016

124

120

65

21

306

45

980

3.542

841

67

117

63

14

368

58

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

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 Cordoba. 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 i860 in the neighbourhood of Villa
Mercedes and lower down, on the Rio Quinto. Jegou's

TRADE WITH CHILE 205

description shows that even in 1883 the breeders of
the San Luis province devoted themselves exclusively
to supplying the Chilean market.' 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 Cordoba. The Santa Fe ranches
found their customers, until the opening of the Cordoba
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 Fe. In the San Cristobal depart-
ment the breeders who settled there after 1890 found
their first market in the obrajes of the neighbouring
forest. The opening of the railway to Tucuman
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 191 1.

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 smaU part of the dry fodder is exported. As
regards cereals, a comparison of the statistics of produc-
tion 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.

» A. Jegou, " Informe sobre la provincia de San Luis." Ann. Soc.
Cientifica Argentina, xvi. 1883, pp. 140-152, 192-200, and 223-230.

206 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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 . .
Export

4,241
2,140

6.398
4.227

931
790

12,662
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 Fe 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

CATTLE MARKETS 207

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 Cordoba 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 propor-
tion 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
(Cordoba) has 48 per cent, cows and 34 per cent. oxen.
Arenales (Buenos Aires) has 39 per cent, cows and 46 per
cent. oxen. I

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 correspond-
ing 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

« For Argentina as a whole the percentage is : milch cows, 55 per
cent, ; oxen, 26 per cent.

208 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

zones, and the lucerne fields for fattening at Villa
Mercedes are used in common by the breeders of the
Pampa and of the bush.^

Cultivated Areas in the Argentine Republic
[in square kilometres, almost exclusively in the Pawpean 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

I9I0

62,000

32,000

8,000

15.000

54.000

1912

69,000

38,000

12,000

17,000

59.000

I9I3

65,000

41,000

11,600

17,000

66,000

I9I4

62,000

42,000

11,400

17,000

Exports jor 19 13, 19 14, and 191 5 ai each port.

Wheat.

Maize.

Flax.

Oats.

Totals.

Average.

782

1.757

275

13

2,829

Rosario . . <

242

1.952

248

I

2.445

>2,7l6

717

1,790

366

—

2.875

441

1.389

246

240

2,318

Buenos Aires <

297

906

255

78

1.537

? 2,051

5"

1.349

342

96

2,299

927

2

—

462

1,393

Bahia Blanca <

241

—

222

463

(•1.075

921

—

442

1.364

5

910

74

989

S. Nicolas.. -|

I

430

60

492

\ 651

5

420

48

474

333

358

14

170

876

La Plata .. J

160

51

16

49

278

\ 459

152

45

6

16

222

265

51

158

—

476

Santa F6 .. J

7

23

128

—

159

j 278

114

7

77

199

I A large number of the cattle which are to be fattened are bought
at the market in Buenos Aires ; but these do not, as a rule, come
from the Pampean region.

CHAPTER VII
ROADS AND RAILWAYS

Roads on the plain — The salt road — The " trade route " — Trans-
port 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 Cordoba. The
Dean Funes ridge, which begins with an altitude of
2,500 feet between the Sierra Chica and these table-
lands, has always been used for communication between
Cordoba and the north-western provinces. There the
railway has taken the place of the primitive track.
Another important track crosses the Sierra de Cordoba
in the north of the Pampa de Achala, and used to
join Cordoba with Villa Dolores and the north of the
San Luis province. The southern part of the Sierra
de Cordoba and the Sierra de San Luis are, on the

14 *»»

210 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

other hand, an insurmountable obstacle, which diverts
southward the high road to Chile via Achiras, San
Jose, 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 Bahia Blanca crosses the
line of sierras. It then skirts the Sierra de la Ventana,
to the north, by the Pigiie 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."

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 Cordoba to
Rosario, which was opened about i860. 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

« J. B. Ambrosetti, " Yik]e a la Pampa central," Bol. Instil. Geog.
Argent,, xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368.

AN OX WAGOX.

Photograph by Soc. Fotograhca de Aficionados.

j^-

v

Plate XVIII.

nil-; MAIL COACH.

The horses saddled with the cincha.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

To face p. aio^

PRIMITIVE TRAVELLING 211

of the road from Cordoba to Tucumdn via Totoral,
Dormida, Rio Seco and Sumampa, on the eastern
edge of the Sierra de Cordoba, etc.) Long stages with
no water supplies, the travesias, are not found on the
made roads, as a rule, except west of the meridian,
of Cordoba. However, the direct road from Santa
F6 to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los
Porongos, which was used in the eighteenth cen-
tury, 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 the mountains, such as those of the Rio
Tercero on the Cordoba road, or of the Rio Cuarto on
the road to 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 Pere Cardiel notices the lack of water
in the dry season (1747). The direct road from Buenos
Aires to the sierras was at that point exposed, alter-
nately, to drought and flood. The line of the Southern
railway, which crosses this low district, is still cut
periodically on both sides of Las Flores by floods.
The lack of an organized network of 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,

212 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

have had to be partially reconstructed, and raised
higher, after a series of rainy years. ^

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 Carbue 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 Carbue, 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 Curu-
malan. The Carbue district, the cross-roads of the

^ Certain duplications in the actual scheme of the railways are
due to this need to correct a line that had been planned hastily and
was useless. The line from Justo Daract to La Paz (191 2), on the
Pacific railway, avoids the steep inclinations of the first line, which
followed the course of the wagon-road via San Luis. The inter-
pretation of the relief is particularly difficult in a country which has
not been shaped by normal erosion. Blunders detected by later
topographical inquiries were similarly committed in constructing the
Patagonian railways. v

INDIAN ROADS 213

tracks, was one of the places where the tribes col-
lected. " 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).! Zeballos has described the Indian track,
the rustrillada, between Epecuen, Atreuco and Tram
Lauquen, where the travesia on the road to Chile
began. 2 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 " Chilefios.'*

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 Carcarana, or Rio Tercero, at
Esquina. It therefore kept at some distance from
the Parana (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 Jose del Monro,
and, after a travesia seventy-eight miles in length,
came to the Rio Tunuyan at La Paz, and ascended
the river to Mendoza.3

I Coll. de Angelis, v.

» Est. Zeballos, Descripcion amena de la Republic a Argentina, vol. i,
" Vi^je al pais de los Araucanos " (Buenos Aires, 1881).

3 Martin de Moussy says that a more direct route, avoiding the
detour to the north by the Rio Tercero, was followed in the eighteenth
century between Buenos Aires and San Luis, by way of Salto and
the Rio Quinto as far as the latitude of fort Constitucion (Villa Mer-
cedes). Woodbine Parish's map (1839) and Napp's map (1876) both
show a road by way of Salto and Melincue to the Rio Cuarto, where
it joins the ordinary road. However that may be, these roads were

214 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

From Esquina de Medrano the Peru road made for
Cordoba in the north-west. From the tablelands
which continue the Sierra de Cordoba 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 Tucuman,
and, passing through Tracas and Metan, followed the
depression which separates the Andes from the sub-
Andean chains. From Salt a 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 Fe to Tucuman, by the north
of the Los Porongos lagoon and the course of the Rio
Dulce. There was another from Santa Fe to Cordoba.
These roads were not exclusively used for conveying
cattle. The river route which they joined at Santa
Fe provided them with a certain amount of traffic
coming from the higher provinces. Paraguayan mate
reached the Andean regions by this road, and in
return the boatmen at Santa Fe loaded up with the
wines and dried fruit of the Andean provinces to take
to Asuncion.

The question of joining the road on to a river was
not of very great importance until the time when
the Parana 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

naver used regularly, from fear of the Indians or — which comes to
the same thing — because the area they cross, in the south of the actual
territory of the provinces of Santa F6 and C6rdoba, was not yet
eolonizedi

REORGANIZATION OF ROADS 215

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 presenti-
ment of it. Speaking of the future of Santa F^, he
says : " When peace is restored, it is certain that the
wares of Cordoba may, instead of going by land from
that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa Fe, 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 Tucumdn to the Parana, 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 Fe 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 Cordoba 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
Carcarafia (at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary was
presently replaced by a direct road to the west-north-
west, following the line which the railways would
adopt.*

In the greater part of Argentina transport was by

» Between 1852 and 1862, during the period when relations were
suspended between the Argentine Confederation and Buenos Aires,
there was a beginning of a general reorganization of the roads in
harmony with the new political conditions. The road from Santa
F6 and Paran4 to Concepci6n (in Uruguay) across the Entre Rios
tablelands, and from there to Montevideo, had owed its initial import-
ance to the closing of the lower Parand under Rosas, and Woodbine
Parish records that there was already a good deal of smuggling there.
This road became an essential artery when Parand made itself the
federal capital under Urquiza. He intended to connect Parand with
the western provinces, and he created a mail service from Santa F6
to C6rdoba. Ephemeral as the good fortune of Parand was, its
influence on the organization of the roads of Argentina was too material
to be ignored by the geographer.

216 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

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 dis-
tribute 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 Tucuman 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 Cordoba to San Juan, or Rioja to
Catamarca, were composed of mules. Hence Cordoba
was, like Tucuman, 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 (artier os) some-
times avoided the domain of the wagoners, and com-
peted with them as far as the banks of the Parana.
In i860 (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 trans-
port from Rosario to the interior. They had, how-

THE OX WAGON 217

ever, to offer to carry goods at two-thirds the price
charged by the wagoners. It appears that this inva-
sion 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 hoopa
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

218 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

contractor for transport, organized caravans. In peace-
ful 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. I 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 Tucuman (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 Tucuman, three months (with the necessary
rests) from Buenos Aires to Salt a. 2 When water ran
short, the journey might be greatly prolonged, as the
animals could do less work, or not work at all if the

« According to the details given us by De Angelis (1837, Intro-
duction to the Diario del viaje al Rio Bermejo de Fray Francisco Moriito,
Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi) a convoy of fourteen wagons from Salta
to Tucum&n required three relays of oxen. The first, comprising a
hundred animals, went from Salta to Tucum&n ; the second, of 130
animals, went from Tucum&n to the Buenos Aires frontier ; the third
(84 animals), went on to the capital. The first and last relays were
hired animals, the second alone being the property of the tropero.

» Thirty days from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, and seventy days
from Buenos Aires to Jujuy, says Barrero (F. Barrero, Descripcion
de las Provincias del Rio de la Plata, end of the eighteenth century,
published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 191 1).

THE DILIGENCE 219

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 galeria went from
Rosario to Cordoba in three days and to Mendoza in
ten days, and from C6rdoba to Salta in fourteen days.
About i860 a quicker goods service was organized,
hght wagons drawn by mules replacing the ox-wagons.
They made the journey from Rosario to Cordoba 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 (11 J
kgs.). Conveying a load from Rosario to Cordoba
cost forty to fifty piastres (eight to ten pounds). The

220 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

cost of carrying an arrohe 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 rail-
ways. In a few places they made a very unequal
fight against the railways. The Memoria del deparie-
mento de Ingenieros de la N acton 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 arrohe 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 inde-
pendent 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 Cordoba in 1870.

The political isolation of Buenos Aires between
1852 and 1862, during the time when the first con-
cessions were issued, made upon the railway system
an impression that would not be effaced until twenty-
five years afterwards. It was not until 1886 that
Rosario was connected by rail with Buenos Aires.
The line to Mendoza and Chile, begun in 1870

THRESHING ON THE PAMPA.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

SACKS OF WHEAT READY FOR LOADING ON THE RAILWAY.

Plate XIX.

There are elevators only in a few of the ports.

Photograph by Soc. Fotograhca de Aficionados.

To face pb 210.

THE EARLY RAILWAYS 221

(F. C. Andino), joins the line from Rosario to Cordoba.
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 estabUshed direct com-
munications between the capital and the province of
Cuyo.

The line from Rosario to C6rdoba is, therefore, the
chief branch round which the Argentine system
developed. It is remarkable that at the time of the
original concession in 1855 ^ 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 Cordoba line westward and Unk it with the
Copiapo line. When he opened the Cordoba station in
1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be dis-
couraged 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 Cordoba,
it had been continued northward as far as Tucuman.
The work was pushed vigorously, and Tucumdn was
reached in 1875. The Cordoba-Tucuman 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 Cordoba, from Cordoba to Tucuman, had a

222 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods coming
from Tucuman had to be transferred at Cordoba. 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 con-
structed 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 Cordoba
reached Santiago del Estero in 1884 and Catamarca
in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a
new direct broad-gauge hne from Rosario to Tucuman ;
and almost at the same time the narrow-gauge line
of the Central Norte, from Santa Fe to Tucuman,
was finished further north. The Tucuman line was
continued northward to the foot of the Andes as far
as Salta. In the province of Buenos Aires the Bahia
Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900 the rail-
ways 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 con-
tinued in 1908 to the Bolivian tableland. In Meso-
potamia, in fine, the north-eastern line reached Posadas
in 191 1 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

i

RAILWAY EXPANSION 228

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 facihtate coloniza-
tion." 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 net-
work of lines which are fed by its traffic and in turn
help it to increase its production. The more pro-
ductive 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 develop-
ment 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 Bahia Blanca hne,
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 F6 and
the construction of the system of lines that serve it
begin a little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (exten-
sion of the Central Argentine system, the railways of
the province of Santa Fe, and the narrow-gauge
railway from Rosario to Cordoba).

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 Unes radiate round the port
of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports
of Rosario and Bahia 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 Bahia Blanca
has no ports, the Parana has quite a number of suit-

224 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

able places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San
Nicolas and Villa Constitucion are served by lines
which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos
Aires. This complexity of the system west of the
Parana continues to the north of Rosario, where the
lines that go to Santa Fe 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 Parana, all their traffic directed
toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to
Buenos Aires and Bahia 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 terri-
tories. 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 hnes leading to the interior of Patagonia from
the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Riva-
davia. We must add the line from Neuquen to the
Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a
Government subvention.^ These lines, serving dis-
tricts with little population and inadequate resources,
will not for a long time make any profit. «

» The line from Bahia Blanca to the Rio Negro, of which the
Neuquen line is a continuation, was constructed in 1896.

• The continuation of many of these lines was contemplated for
the future, so as to secure for them at a later date a long-distance
traffic. The Resistencia and Formosa lines, which reach the Andes,

OPENING UP THE LAND 225

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 Cordoba, 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
Cordoba and San Luis.

As it is the essential function of a railway to
convey the produce of the area it serves to the export-
ing 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

may compete for traffic with the Rosano and Tucumdn lines. In
Patagonia, the continuation across the Andes of the line from San
Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapi has been considered. A pass has
been found at a height of 4,000 feet. When this plan is carried out,
the Trans-Andean from Nahuel Huapi would be in a position to com-
pete successfully with the Trans-Andean from Uspallata, which is
condemned by its elevation to remain a passenger line. These plans,
still far from realization, do not deprive the Ramos Mejia lines of
their character as colonization lines, entirely devoted at present to
conveying the timber of the Chaco and the wool of Patagonia.

15

226 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

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 depen-
dencies of the railways. The port of Colastine belongs
to the railways of the Santa Fe province. The port
of Bahia 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 Bahia Blanca. Puerto Galvan belongs to
the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port
of the line from Rosario to Bahia 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 Investigacion 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 coloniza-
tion 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 coloniza-
tion during the years antecedent to 1912. They

50 100 i»c 100 lnw.

^lAP VI. — THE RAILWAYS.

It is impossible to give the entire system. Only the main lines are given. Of the narrow-gauge
lines of the Pampean region only those which connect the system of northern Argentina with
Buenos Aires are given. The map shows the double direction of the Pacific system from Villa
Mercedes, to Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca. It gives only an imperfect idea of the way in
which the lines ending at the ports of the Parana and the Rio de la Plata {Santa F£, Rosario,
San Nicolas, Buenos Aires and La Plata) overlap and cross each other.

To face p. 216.

EFFECTS OF COMPETITION 227

have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land
to the better land in the east.'

The rise in the value of land and the advance of
colonization led, at each of those crises of develop-
ment 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 estab-
lished itself. This concentration could not be accom-
plished 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 Cordoba, is also served
by a line belonging to the Santa Fe railways and by
a line of the Pacific Company which puts it in com-
munication with Buenos Aires. On the other hand,
the Central Argentine penetrates to the very heart of
the area of the Pacific at Junin.

However, competition between the various com-
panies has had the effect of dividing the Pampean
plain into three great spheres of influence. The first,
in the north, is that of the Central Argentine and the
Buenos Aires y Rosario line. In 1908 the Argentine
Government officially sanctioned the fusion of 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 Bahia Blanca to the north-west, which has
been linked up once more with its original system at

» J. Lopez Mafian, El actual problema agrario (Buenos Aires, 1912,
Ministerio de agricultura, Direccion General de agricultura y defensa
agricola). '

228

ROADS AND RAILWAYS

Villa Mercedes. It thus has two outlets, to Buenos
Aires and Bahia 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 amalga-
mate. 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 Carbue, 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 Carbue, which was to cross their
sphere of influence. It was opened in 191 1.

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

3I-0

34*3

32*5

32-6

Western

58-3

6i-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,

GOODS TRAFFIC 229

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
Tucuman.

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 dis-
tances 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

230 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

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.^

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 Cordoba 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 Bahia
Blanca and the Colorado. In the same year, the
Pacific, Central Argentine, Central Cordoba and State
railway carried 880,000 tons of minerals (half being
lime) from the vSierra de Cordoba. 2 All the timber
carried on the lines of northern Argentina, except the
quebracho from the banks of the Parana, 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

» The war and the difficulties of marine freightage have lessened
the seriousness of the problem of carrying goods rapidly by rail in
Argentina.

2 The transport of mineral stuff, apart from salt, has been greatly
reduced by the war. In 1916 it was only 637,000 tons for the Southern
and 157,000 tons for the whole of the lines of the Central Argentine,
Pacific, Central C6rdoba, and State.

1

HOME TRAFFIC 231

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 Cordoba. For several com-
panies the sugars of Tucuman 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 Cordoba
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 besLsts
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 Cordoba, which had reached

232 ROADS AND RAILWAYS

Rosario in 1912 and so had escaped the need to
transfer its export-traffic at Cordoba to the broad-
gauge, began immediately afterwards to effect a direct
communication with Buenos Aires (Central Cordoba,
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 Fe Company, which is closely
associated with it. The medium-gauge lines of Meso-
potamia also have effected a communication with
Buenos Aires by means of a ferry-boat that plies on
the Parana 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 19 13. 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 Cordoba,
and it also had large interests in the French com-
panies of the Buenos Aires and Santa Fe provinces.
All the narrow-gauge lines would have concentrated
in its hands if it had been able to get the State rail-
way. 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 rail-
way. 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 Parana 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 Parana 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

RIVER AND RAILWAY 233

service of boats on the Parand, 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 dis-
appeared 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 Fe, Corrientes and Asuncion. 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 Paran4 and its changes — The estuary
and its shoals — Maritime navigation — The boats on the Parand.

The problem of the use of tne river-routes of the
Parana 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 Parana during the
whole of the sixteenth century. The routes linking
the Parana and the Paraguay with the tableland
furrow the whole plain of the Pampa and the Chaco,
from the latitude of the estuary to about i6° S. lat.
(expedition of Nufio 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 Parana.^

I There is still a certain amount of goods trafhc in this latitude
between the river and the Santa Cruz district by the Puerto Suarez
and Puerto Pacheco tracks.

234

THE PORTUGUESE FORTS 235

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 Asuncion. The river ceased to be a
great continental route.

The division of the Parana between the Spanish
and the Portuguese was a check upon the full develop-
ment 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
Parana 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 Parana 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 dis-
tricts 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 Parana, which would have followed the thread
of the river to foster the trade of Buenos Aires if the
frontiers had been fixed otherwise.

236 THE RIVER-ROUTES

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 Fe, Entre Rios and Corrientes had not more
than 103,000 inhabitants collectively. Paraguay
exported tobacco, mate and timber by the river. The
Buenos Aires Estano received 800 tons of tobacco a
year. The exports of mate 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 Fe.

The development of navigation on tne Parana
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 suc-
ceeded 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 tne 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 Parana, that few ventured as far as Buenos

EARLY RIVER LIFE 237

Aires, the ships being linked in convoys. Up stream,
Corrientes was the limit ot navigation. The dictator
Francis closed tne Paraguay, and even the small boats
no longer sailed on the upper Parand, along the frontier
of Paraguay. The Coirentinos, 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
mate. Corrientes thus became the market-centre of
the upper river and replaced Asuncion in the trade.
The flotilla on the Parana included fiat-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 F^
and Buenos Aires. The orchards of the delta pro-
vided Buenos Aires with oranges and peaches. Hides
for export were shipped at Goya and Santa Fe. 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. They had to stop when
there was no south wind, or a little progress was made
by hauling (silgar). D'Orbigny took a month to
travel up.^ In 1822, before the war with Brazil,
there were 651 boats entered at Buenos Aires for
coasting trade on the rivers and 1,035 at San Fernando
or on the Tigre, the advance port of Buenos Aires.
In 1833 Isabelle put at one thousand the number of
vessels at work on the Parana and the Uruguay.

^ The local south winds which help the voyage upward below Rosario
may be due to the high temperature of the water of the river ; this
also gives rise on the lower Paran4 to thick fog of which warning
is given.

238 THE RIVER.ROUTES

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 addi-
tion, Rosas's troops on the barranca of the right bank
prevented any from going up the Parana, 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 agita-
tion 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 Parana 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 Parana compelled a diversion of
the trade of Paraguay toward the south-east. It
crossed the isthmus of Misiones, between the Parana
and the Uruguay, and passed down the Uruguay. At
this time the whole commercial activity of Paraguay
was concentrated at Itapua, on the upper Parana.
The prosperity of the Uruguay was some compensa-
tion for the misery that reigned on the Parana. The
populations of Paysandu and Montevideo greatly
increased.

In 1852, at the fall of Rosas, the modern period
began for the Parana. 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 Parana.
In 1850 MacKann found fifty vessels, of 20 to 100
tons, belonging to Italians at Santa Fe. This wave
of immigration coincided with the development of

DURING THE REVOLUTION 239

relations between the Parana and the port of Monte-
video. From 1852 to i860 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 com-
munication between over-seas ports and the ports
on the river : Gualeguy in Entre Rios, and Rosario
in Santa Fe. 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 i860 was also the time when
steam-navigation was developing, and this doubled
the value of the river-ioute. From i860 onward
Buenos Aires was connected by regular services of
steamboats with Rosario, Santa F^, Corrientes,
Asuncion and Cuyaba. On the upper Parana goods
(timber, tobacco and oranges) were still carried by
sailing boats between Corrientes and Apip^, where
they stopped at the commencement of the rapids.
Steamboats did not sail up the rapids of Apipe until
1868. 1 From 1850 to i860 there were repeated
explorations of the Salado and the Bermejo, as the
interior provinces hoped to be able to find a con-
nection with the vivifying artery of the Parana (voyage
of Page on the Salado from Salta in 1855, and of
Lavarello on the Bermejo in 1855 and 1863).

In i860 the entry of Buenos Aires into the Con-
federation 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 Parana
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

» According to Rengger, sailing ships sometimes succeeded in crossing
the Salto d'Apip6.

240 THE RIVER-ROUTES

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 Parana in its low capacity for transport and
alluvial deposit. While the Parana 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 Parana,
while further north, from Gualeguacha to Concepcion,
the hills of Entre Rios are hidden behind a screen of
fiat 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 Parana 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 Con-
cordia (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 Tome and occa-
sionally to Concepcion. Small ships go higher, as
far as Salto Grande in Misiones (27° 20' S. lat.).*

The navigable system of the Parana 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 Parana, and

I At one time the boats on the upper Uruguay saved transport
by going from Salto to Arapehy, midway between Monte Caseros
and Concordia (see Isabelle).

VOLUME OF WATER 241

the Ministry of Public Works published a map, on
the scale i : 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.* 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 Parana
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.* 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 Parana. 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 maxi-
mum at Asuncion in May. The flood of the Paraguay
extends the period of high water on the lower
Parana until the end of autumn. The upper
Parana has most of its basin in the tropical zone of

» It is as well to notice that the profile determined by the altitude
of the zero of these different scales, or the low-water profile, is of a
purely theoretical character. The river is never at low-water over
its whole course. The real profile is always varied by slight move-
ments of flood and ebb.

» Observations of the sediment held in the water have been made
at Campana, 32 miles from the estuary. At this point the Parana
only holds in suspension fine particles of clay, but sand travels slowly
along its bed. The weight of the clay in suspension varies from 179
grammes per cubic metre in March during the flood, to 42 grammes
at low-water in July. The stuff mostly comes from the Bermejo,
which carries 5 kilogrammes of sediment per cubic metre. The load
of the Parang is much heavier than that of the Uruguay, but far
lower than that of the Mississippi.

16

242 THE RIVER-ROUTES

summer rain. But its behaviour is also influenced
by the spring or autumn rains of the southern part
of the Brazihan 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
Parana 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
Parana 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. Excep-
tional 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 Parana. During this first phase the curve

THE FLOODS 243

of the Bajada is parallel (thirteen days later) to that
of Posadas. There is the same parallelism in Novem-
ber, December and January. If the summer rains
are light on the upper Parana, the flood is late on
the lower Parana, and the water is still low there in
December (020 below the low- water mark on Decem-
ber 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 Parana,
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 Parana 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 pro-
gressively 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
Parana 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 Parana escapes from the restraint of
the Brazihan tableland, which imprisons its valley,
from the falls of the Guayra, in a deep fissure between
lofty basalt cHffs. 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

-v

244 THE RIVER-ROUTES

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."
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
Parana 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 Fe and
Parana, 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 flood alters it and leaves
some trace of itself in the topography. The beds of
sand that it lays down are fixed by rushes and float-
ing weeds, then by willows {Salix humholdtiana).
This screen of vegetation encourages accretion, and
the edges tend to rise higher. In the middle of th&
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

» The district on the right bank of the Paran&, above Santa Fe
and Parang, seems to be due to a recent subsidence. The river is,
on the other hand, compelled to effect active erosion in crossing the
high lands between Santa Fe and Buenos Aires. It is curious that
the break or fall at Villa Urquiza occurs precisely above the bend
of the Parana. A less marked break has been recognized further
north, in the latitude of Lavalle, above the Goya bend. It seems
that the diminution in the excavation of the valley is due to the erosion
which the current effects laterally on the cliffs of the left bank.

THE PARANA AT CORKIHXTKS.

Banks and islands partially fixed by vegetation.

Photograph by Widmayer.

>'-

''V

THE BARRANCA AT PARANA ^TMKl:. RlOSj, IJ-.l- 1 HANK.

It is composed of clays and of beds of conchiferous terrestrial limestone, which have supplied
the lime-kilns for more than a century. Photograph by Boote.

Plate XXI.

To face p. 244.

DUNES AND ISLANDS 245

:o alternate beds of clay and sand. Below Rosario
the river gradually loses its power. The islands become
more stable and flatter. Clumps of willow and spiny
ceibos {Erythrina cristagalli) still cover the edges of
them, and sometimes spread over the interior. But
as the climate is now less humid, the vegetation fixes
the soil less firmly, and the wind 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 flood-
able 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 Parana. 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, fiUed-up bottoms of which are on the level
of the alluvial plain of the Parana. The cliffs are
at their highest in the district of Villa Parana, 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 aeolian clays only at the top of them. Below
these are Tertiary marine strata (marls and sand-
stones with beds of shells). The cHffs 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

246 THE RIVER.ROUTES

are replaced by granitic red sandstone.^ On the
right bank the height of the cHffs gradually diminishes
up river. They are still conspicuous at the confluence
of the Carcarana, but at Santa Fe 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 Parana. 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 Asuncion
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 Parana and the Salto Grande on the Yguassa.
Sixteen miles below Posadas the Parana 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 Apipe. 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 mela-
phyre, 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-

I In the space between the frontier of Entre Rios and the Rio
Empedrado, south of Corrientes, the cliffs expose, above the red sand-
stone, beds of sand and clay, fluvial alluvia left by former beds of
the Parang, the traces of which can be followed from the north-east
to the south-west diagonally across the province of Corrientes.

THE SHOALS 247

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 meander-
ing 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.^ 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 migra-
tion of the shallows is very different from the per-
manence of the rocky bottom of the stretch between
Corrientes and Posadas.

From La Paz to Parana the main course is outlined
by the Entre Rios cliffs. There is no further meander-
ing. 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

» In point of fact, the ridge is lower at the time of low water, when
the current is concentrated in the main channel, so that one always
finds one or two feet greater depth there at low water than soundings
taken at high water would lead one to expect.

248 THE RIVER-ROUTES

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. ^

Below Parana, 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. 2 We can distinguish four sections of
unequal length. From Parana 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 pre-
vented ships from reaching Santa F6 (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 (Parana viejo,
Riacho de Coronda).3

» A little above its actual position.

• In studying the variations of the bed of the Paran& it is necessary
to avoid comparing maps drawn at dates separated by long intervals.
The differences of such maps are such that they do not enable us to
follow the processes by which the actual forms have been derived
from earlier forms. The analogies which they show are sometimes
due, not to the permanence of the topography, but to the return of
a complete cycle of changes, or of conditions analogous to the earlier
conditions.

3 The secondary arms of the right bank, north of Santa Fe, were
not explored until 1870. Sullivan's map (1847) only mentions the
Riacho de San Jeronimo, which is visible for a short distance below
20° S. lat. The right bank was the domain of the Indians, and the
Correntinos would not venture near it. In 1870 ships began to use

WANDERING OF THE RIVER 249

Below Diamante the river leaves the cliff on the
left bank and slants across the alluvial plain to the
clift 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 move-
ments, 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 the
ships then breaks up into a series of meanders over
a course of about eight miles and a half, and this
means the concentration in a single channel of the
greater part of the water of the river, and in narrower
bends in the sections where the current is divided
between several arms.

From San Lorenzo to San Pedro the river flows by
the cHff of the right bank. It is remarkably regular,
and has only one slight bend : an exceptionally good
site, on which the town of Rosario is built. At almost
equal intervals, differing by only about ten to thirteen
miles, the river leaves the cliff, and is separated from

the San Javier arm, on which many colonies arose. Further north
the Parana Mini has been used since 1890 for exporting quebracho
timber.

250 THE RIVER-ROUTES

it by an alluvial strand, or by an insular zone a few
miles in width. ^ Below this bend the current again
touches the cliff and landing is easy. The small, older
ports of the Parana — Constitucion, San Nicolas, Puerto
ObHgado and San Pedro — are built on similar sites.
It does not seem that the islands at the foot of the
cliff tend to extend downward in front of these ports ;
the points where the river reaches the cliff are fixed.
The depth is often considerable at the foot of the
cliff (138 feet opposite Puerto Obligado). The shoals
are distributed irregularly at the bends, where the
channel moves away from the cHff. They all have
to-day a minimum depth of twenty-one feet .2 On the
left bank the secondary arms sprawl over the alluvial
plain for thirty-five miles north of the river.

The delta begins at San Pedro. The Parana Guazu,
or main arm, leaves the cliff on the right bank and
passes to the Uruguayan bank opposite Carmelo.
The Parana de las Palmas, which branches off from
it to the south and passes before Campana and Zarate
at the foot of the tableland, is deep and easy to navi-
gate, but it is closed at the bottom of the estuary
by a six-foot bar, which makes it a sort of blind alley
opened only above. The arms of the zone of the
delta differ from those of the river-zone proper in the
irregularity of their course. Flowing between long
islands, they sometimes lie in straight stretches and
at other times in meanders or almost perfect buckles.
The channels of the southern part of the delta, near
Buenos Aires, are called caracoles (snails) on account
of their winding shape. The weakness of the current,

» As between La Paz and Paran4, it seems possible to show some
relation between these alluvial stretches at the foot of the cliff and
the confluence of the small valleys of the Pampean plain.

» The Paso Paraguayo, which has cost the Argentine hydrographic
service most work, did not exist at the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury. It seems that the channel then kept to the cliff as far as
Benavidez, and was continued as far as the source of the Parang
Pavon by a very pronounced buckle, of which the Monriel lagoon
is a scar. In 1895 the Paso was only fifteen feet deep.

THE ESTUARY 251

which is held up by the tide, is seen also in the dis-
tribution of the greater depths ; they are no longer
uniformly found along the concave edge of the bends,
but are scattered irregularly. On the Parana Guazu
a depth of 130 feet has been ascertained. Its minimum
depth is twenty-two feet.

The study of the estuary may be taken separately
from that of the river. It consists of three parts,
unequal in size, which open with increasing breadth
toward the Atlantic. The upper Rio de la Plata,
above Colonia and Punta Lara, has a width of about
thirty-five miles. The middle Plata, twice as wide,
extends to the latitude of Montevideo and Punta de
las Piedras. Then the outer harbour opens between
Maldonado and Punta Rasa. The water is still fresh
in the middle estuary up to eighty miles below Buenos
Aires.

The bottom is alluvial except in the channels between
Martin Garcia and Colonia. ' Differently from up the
river, where the channels have sandy bottoms, while
the banks are of fine clay, the channels of the estuary
have bottoms of mud and clay. In the outer harbour
the pilots recognize the approach of banks by the
sand which is brought up by the sounding-lead. The
action of the waves, which is not found in the river,
accumulates stuff of compaiatively large size and
weight on the banks.

In spite of the conclusions embodied in the nautical
instructions, which describe the estuary as a theatre
of rapid changes " occasioned by the continual deposits
of sand brought down by the Parana and the Uru-
guay,'* 2 the estuary is, as a matter of fact, in a remark-
able state of equiUbrium, and there is no trace of a
gradual accumulation of alluvia, or of important

» The granite which outcrops at Martin Garcia also forms the plat-
form of the English Bank in the outer harbour.

» The water in the estuary, worked up by waves and tide, contains
more sediment than the water of the river.

252 THE RIVER-ROUTES

changes of channel. The shore of the delta north of
the Parana de las Palmas, covered with rushes which
protect it from the attack of the waves, shows neither
advance nor retreat. The broad lines of the hydro-
graphy of the Rio de la Plata are plainly indicated
on Woodbine Parish's map. The EngHsh Navy map
of 1869 (on the basis of observations in 1833, 1844
and 1856) only differs in detail from the present map.
The stability of the channels is surprisingly different
from the changes in the bed of the river in the flood-
zone. The permanence of the bottom, in spite of
the loose deposits of the estuary, is explained by the
regularity of the currents. These currents, which
determine the submarine topography of the Rio de la
Plata and the distribution of the banks, are not of
river origin. They are tidal currents.

There are two groups of shoals in the estuary. The
first, the Play a Honda, occupies the whole western
part of it up to a line drawn from Buenos Aires to
Colonia. These banks leave a narrow passage in
the north, opposite the Uruguayan shore, and this is
followed by ships going to Uruguay and the Parana
Guazu. The second group of shoals is the Ortiz Bank,
triangular in shape, which rests in the north on the
Uruguay coast below Colonia, while its point extends
south-eastward to eighteen miles north of the Punt^
de las Piedras. It keeps the zone of deepest water
in the middle estuary to the south, near the Argentine
shore. In the latitude of the point of the Ortiz Bank,
on a line from Montevideo to Punta de las Piedras,
the middle estuary is separated from the outer harbour
by a bar (barra del Indio) with thirty-eight feet of
water, caused by the transverse currents which circulate
from point to point inside the English Bank.

The tide in the estuary is very irregular. The south-
east winds increase the flow and retard the ebb. When
they are blowing, it often happens that the level of
the water in the upper estuary keeps up from one

NAVIGATION WORKS 253

tide to the next, sometimes for several days. The
tide, which is sHght at Montevideo, is greater at the
bottom of the harbour on the Barra del Indio, some-
times rising nearly forty inches there. From there it
advances with difficulty northward, over the Ortiz
Bank, along the Uruguayan shore, whereas it passes
freely into the deeper zone on the Argentine side.'
At Buenos Aires it still has a depth of thirty inches.
From there it advances northward by the Martin
Garcia channels beyond the Playa Honda. The channel
of the Pozos del Barca Grande, which crosses the
Playa Honda bank from north to south, parallel to
the edge of the delta, is oriented in conformity with
the tidal currents and maintained by them. It is not
attached to the river, and it is separated from the
mouths of the Parana de las Palmas or the Parana
Mini by shallows which are navigable only to small
boats. The Rias of the Uruguay, where the tide
raises the water twelve inches, forms a sort of reservoir
which, at the ebb, feeds a strong current round Martin
Garcia and sweeps the channels there.

The work done for the improvement of the estuary
includes the deepening to thirty feet of the Barra del
Indio and the dredging of a straight channel from
that point to Buenos Aires. Steamers of large ton-
nage going up the Parana leave this channel twenty-
six miles east of Buenos Aires, and turn north in
order to pass east of Martin Garcia, and enter the
river by the Parana Guazu or the Parana Bravo.
Since 1901 the Argentine Government has considered
a plan of opening a direct route from Buenos Aires
to the Parana de las Palmas, either by cutting an
artificial canal at the foot of the chffs, across the
Tigre archipelago, or by using the channel of the
Pozos del Barca Grande and cutting the narrow bar
which closes the Parana de las Palmas below. If

» The current at high tide is stronger than at low tide, and it has
shifted to the north-east the streams which find an outlet on this side.

254 THE RIVER-ROUTES

this were done, the ports of the Parana de las Palmas
would have direct access to the sea. Moreover, the
new route from the Parana to the Atlantic would be
entirely within Argentine territory, out of range of
the Uruguayan shore, and Buenos Aires would become
a necessary port of call both on departure and return.

Above the estuary, the work for the improvement
of the Parana began in 1904 and 1905. Since 1910
the material dredged from the bed of the river has
risen to 3,500,000 cubic metres a year on the average.
The experience gained in the course of this work has
enabled the Argentine hydrographic service to adjust
its methods to the incomparable force of the river.
It is impossible to maintain a general rectification of
the bed and the banks, as is possible with European
rivers. The only thing to do is to submit quietly to
the plan which the river sketches for itself, and be
content to deepen the difficult passages on the line
of the main arm. Suction dredges, which work easily
in the sand, attack each ridge or paso from below,
making a channel into which the waters flow, so that
it tends to enlarge itself up stream. The dredges are
shifted from bank to bank according as the soundings
tell of the formation of fresh obstacles to navigation.
They were at first concentrated below Rosario, where
the Argentine Government had to carry out certain
engagements contracted with the Port Company ;
then they were scattered as far up as Santa Fe. The
actual equipment suffices to carry out the programme
that had been drawn up — to maintain a depth of
twenty-one feet as far as Rosario and of nineteen
feet as far as Santa Fe.

As regards the section above Santa Fe, the engineer
Repossini advises that, instead of adopting a pro-
gramme of expensive dredging with uncertain results,
they should first think of adjusting navigation to the
natural conditions, and they are such as would be
considered very favourable in Europe. The hydro-

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THE RIVER FLEET 255

graphic service would, however, still have two func-
tions : in the first place, the topographical study of
the river and the constant placing of buoys, and, in
the second place, the observation of its behaviour
and anticipation of variations of level. The utiUty
of the work of foreseeing floods, which has been carried
on since 1907, has been abundantly proved. It
pubHshed a daily bulletin of forecasts, based upon
observation of the pluviometric scales of the upper
river, which is equally valuable to the navigators and
to breeders in the floodable area. It enables the
breeders to get their cattle into safety before the
floods come. On the other hand, the ship can,
thanks to the bulletin, foretell what depth of water
it will find at critical passages, and calculate exactly
the load it can carry, and so complete its cargo lower
down. The service of forecast of floods has morally
improved navigation on the Parana by suppressing
every possible pretext for wilful stranding, which had
become a current form of speculation.

Nothing is more varied than the fleet which now
serves the Parana. It includes tramps, and long, slim
European ships, which load up with cereals and meat ;
large river boats, luxurious and light ; barges and
tugs, lighters and schooners, which have compensation
for their slowness in their cheapness.

As regards navigation, the river is now divided
into three sections. Maritime navigation ascends as
far as Santa Fe. At Rosario and Santa Fe it goes
right to the heart of the zone of cereals and to the
fringe of the forest area. The upper section, between
Rosario and Santa Fe, is less safe than the lower
section, and this is reflected in the cost of freightage
from Santa Fe.

The ports of the lower Parana, between Santa Fe
and Buenos Aires, may be classed in three categories.
The ports of the first group are built on low land

256 THE RIVER-ROUTES

that is liable to be flooded. Every year the floods
threaten their trafiic. That is the character of
Colastine, east of Santa Fe, which specializes in ship-
ping quebracho timber, or Ibicuy, on the Parana Pavon,
in the south of the province of Entre Rios, which,
however, is protected by excellent works. The small
ports of the barranca of the southern bank, on the
main river and on the Parana de las Palmas, form a
second group. They ship meat (Campana and Zarate)
and cereals (San Nicolas and Villa Constitucion), and
they are admirably adapted for this by their natural
situation. Steamers come right up to the chff without
any need of special works on the shore. The sacks of
wheat are let into the ships down sloping gangways
from stores excavated in the cliff or from wagons.
None of these ports are equipped for receiving imports.
The third group comprises ports with complete appa-
ratus for both export and import. The chief of these
is Rosario. It was the increase of imports between
1850 and i860 that stimulated its early progress.
To-day the tonnage of the goods unloaded at Rosario
is nearly one-half the tonnage of the cereals shipped
there. Yet, in spite of appearances, it is the imports
that account mainly for the busy life of its quays.
The port company does the unloading itself, as well
as the handling and storing of the goods imported,
but it is content to receive dues on all exports within
the area for which it has a monopoly. Only a small
part of the cereals exported uses its elevators. A
deep-water port, equipped like that at Rosario for
import and export, has just been constructed at Santa
Fe. Already it competes with Colastine for the
export of quebracho. Its import trade is still small,
as such trade requires large capital and a whole net-
work of relations with the adjoining country, and
that is not the work of a day.

The second section of the river stretches from Santa
Fe to Corrientes, and is continued up the Paraguay.

TRANSPORT BY WATER 257

The transport 6f quebracho timber and tannic acid is
the chief item of its trade. The maximum draught
of the vessels it admits at normal low water is six
feet. Some of the ports on the left bank (Esquina,
Goya) and all the ports on the right bank (Recon-
quista, Barranqueras, etc.) are at some distance from
the main bed, or lateral arms. The Chaco works
have generally a flotilla of steamers and barges. It
is the exporters of timber and extract of quebracho to
Europe who most strongly demand the deepening of
the bed of the Parana above Santa F6. Sailing ship>s
share with the river steamers the transport of the
products of the Paraguay and of Corrientes (hides,
tobacco and mate). The transport of oranges alone
from San Antonio, Villeta, Pilar and Humaita repre-
sents an item of tens of thousands of tons.

The third section of the river stretches from
Corrientes to Posadas, and beyond. Sailing ships have
disappeared from this section, as they cannot make the
Apipe rapids. Steamers of four and a-half feet draught
and 150 tons are now used on it, but they cannot
proceed at low water. They provide a direct service
between Buenos Aires and Posadas, though the service
is not very economical, because it does not permit
them to use to the full the transport-capacity of the
river below Corrientes. Most of the goods for Posadas
are, therefore, trans-shipped at Ituzaingo, below the
rapids, or at Corrientes. The steamboat companies
which serve Posadas are obliged, in order to secure
the economical transport of goods shipped on the
upper Parana, to maintain lines which go up the
Paraguay as far as Asuncion, and take on at Corrientes
the goods that come from Posadas. Higher up, the
falls of the Guayra and the Yguassu set an impassable
limit to the enterprise of Argentine vessels. Boats on
the stretch above Yguassu on the Parana feed the
railways of the Brazilian tableland. The traffic of
the upper Parana consists chiefly of matd from Misiones

17

i258 THE RIVER-ROUTES

and cedar-planks from the Posadas saw-mills. Rafts
of timber are stopped at Posadas and rarely follow
tiie river further.

The Argentine statistics of navigation are obscure.
They confuse under one heading the river-traffic
between Posadas and Brazilian territory, or between
Corrientes and the Paraguay, and the exports of the
Pampean region to Europe. It is difficult to get
from them an idea of the real traffic, or to distinguish
the tonnage loaded or unloaded at each port from
that which merely touches its quays in ships going
up or coming down the river. They credit a score of
ports with a total tonnage of (entries and clearances
together) more than 500,000 tons.

At all events, they do enable us to distinguish between
ports exclusively devoted to river traffic and those
with direct relations to oversea ports. Nearly all the
boats destined for the Parana touch at Buenos Aires,
which remains the chief importing centre, on the way
up, and unload there. They then go empty to Rosario,
San Nicolas, or Santa Fe to take on a full cargo of
cereals or timber, and set out down the Parana for
Europe without calling at Buenos Aires. Clearances
for interior navigation at the port of Buenos Aires are
far more numerous than entries. From 1912 to 1914
Buenos Aires received on the average, coming from
interior ports, 1,750,000 tons, of which 1,635,000 were
cargo. It cleared for the same ports ships totalling
3,275,000 tons, of which 1,580,000 were in ballast.
The latter figure fairly represents the tonnage of sea-
going ships sent up river empty after discharging on
the quays of Buenos Aires. At Rosario, San Nicolas
and San Pedro, on the other hand, the tonnage of
clearances for Argentine ports is much less than the
tonnage of entries. ^ The total movement of goods at

« Movement of internal navigation at Rosario (average 1912-1914) :
entries, 1,108,000 tons, of which 690,000 in ballast; clearances,
580,000 tons. At San Nicolas : entries, 400,000 tons, of which

OVERSEA TRADE 259

the port of Rosario is 410,000 tons entries and 375,000
tons clearances for interior navigation, and 1,100,000
tons entries and 1,824,000 tons clearances for navigation
abroad.

According to Repossini's calculations the tonnage
of exports on the lower Parana south of Santa F^
rose in 1910 to 4,000,000 or 4,500,000. The imports,
almost entirely confined to Rosario, were about a
fourth of this figure. For the middle and upper
Parana, Repossini estimated the volume of the traffic
at 800,000 tons, of which quebracho was two-fifths.

The navigation of the Parana is one of the chief
sources of the prosperity of Buenos Aires. Even if
the development of the import trade at Rosario or
Santa Fe is partly at the expense of the capital, and
the boats laden with cereals do not stop at its quays,
still the coasting traihc on the river is in great part
meant for Buenos Aires. In returning, rather than go
empty, the boats take cargoes of European products
bought from the Buenos Aires importers. By means
of the Parana the import-trade sphere of influence of
Buenos Aires reaches beyond the frontiers of Argentina,
as far as Paraguay and part of Brazil. Buenos Aires
is, moreover, the main centre for equipping the steam-
boats of the river. Its capital dominates the Parand.
Lastly, the Parana supplies it with an export freight
which must not be overlooked. It is at Buenos Aires
that the hides, tobacco and timber and extracts of
quebracho for oversea markets, shipped on schooners
in the upper reaches of the river which are impassable
for steamers, are trans-shipped for abroad.

440,000 in ballast ; clearances, 4,000 tons. The difference between
the entries and the clearances represents ships starting straight for
Europe.

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.

A LARGE-SCALE chart of the mean density of the
population lor each province — Hke those which were
pubhshed in the latest Argentine Census-reports —
has no geographical value for the west and north-
west, where oases of slight extent are separated by
vast desolate stretches, deserted because of the lack
of water. In the Pampean region, on the other hand,
the population is distributed in a very regular manner,
and the mean densities calculated fairly represent
the facts.

To the several types of exploitation, of which we
have studied the distribution on the Pampa, there
correspond unequal densities of population. Cattle-
breeding, for instance, requires only a thin popula-
tion. The early pastoral colonization of the plain on
the west of the Salado was carried out, between 1880
and 1890, with a very small number of workers. A
large ranch of 400 square kilometres on the northern
edge of the Pampa (the Tost ado ranch) only employs
about a hundred men, or one for four square kilo-
metres. The density increases appreciably for sheep-
breeding on the pasios tiernos of Buenos Aires pro-
vince, where a ranch of a hundred square kilometres,
devoted to producing wool, with fifty or sixty shep-
herds, sustains at least 200 persons, or two to the square

260

GROWTH OF POPULATION 261

kilometre. I The density is not appreciably greater in
the area of wheat -growing on a large scale, where the
extent cultivated by one family reaches, including
fallow, 200 hectares. But it may, even apart from
the urban population, be more than ten to the square
kilometre in the maize belt.

The growth of the population of Argentina can be
followed closely from the middle of the eighteenth
century. A Census taken in 1774 gives the Buenos
Aires district within the first line of forts 6,000 inhabi-
tants. At the end of the eighteenth century (Census
ot 1797, quoted by D'Azara) the population of the
province of Buenos Aires, without the town, was a
little over 30,000 souls, the zone occupied having
been extended in the meantime, at least in part, as
far as the Salado. Woodbine Parish estimates the
population at 80,000 in 1824, at the time when the
expansion southward, beyond the Salado, as far as
the Sierra de Tandil, began. It doubled between
1824 ^^^ 1855. The northern departments then
counted 45,000 inhabitants, the western 58,000 and tne
southern 63,000. The density was still a little greater
in the north, along tne road to Peru, but the advance
of sheej>-rearing in the south was beginning to change
the centre of gravity of colonization. The first regular
Census of the Argentine Republic in 1869 showed a
still more rapid advance. The population of the
Buenos Aires province had grown to 315,000 inhabi-
tants. The increase was greatest in the west, where
tillage began to extend round Chivilcoy, beyond the
pastoral area, and in the south, where sheep-farms
multiplied. The population of the southern depart-
ments more than doubled in fourteen j^ears (137,000
inhabitants to 70,000 square kilometres in occupation,
or two to the square kilometre).

However, the Pampean region — Buenos Aires (includ-

« The density is twenty times less in the ranches which use the
meagre pastures of the Rio Negro.

262 THE POPULATION

ing the capital), Santa Fe, and the southern part of
Cordoba — still had a smaller population than that of
the northern and north -western provinces : 626,000
as compared with 813,000. The Mesopotamian pro-
vinces had then 263,000 inhabitants.

The proportion was reversed twenty-five years later
at the 1895 Census. The population of the Pampas
had increased threefold, and was moie than a half of
the entire population of the country. That of the
western and north-western provinces was about a
third of the whole, and had only increased by fifty
per cent.

If one considers in detail the distribution of the
population of the Pampean plain in 1895, one sees
that beyond the suburbs of Buenos Aires the area of
greatest density — five to eight per square kilometre —
was in the north-west, between San Andres de Giles
and Pergamino, a district of advanced methods, where
the cultivation of maize was beginning to occupy a
good part of the land. The population was confined
to the west of the preceding zone, in the agricultural
area of Junin, Chacabuco and Chivilcoy. This area,
where maize and wheat were next each other, already
embraced Viente Cinco de Mayo (five to the square kilo-
metre) on the west and Nueve de Julio (2*5). In the
south of Buenos Aires, the departments of the left bank
of the Salado, which were entirely given up to breeding,
but long colonized, had a density of three to five per
square kilometre. The region lying between tne lower
Salado and the Sierra de Tandil, a sheep-breeding area,
then giving good returns but of recent colonization, had
not more than three. The density falls rapidly as one
goes westward. It sinks to less than one in the north-
west and west of the Buenos Aires province, in the
area where the cattle-breeders from the east had
settled At Santa Fe, the region of the colonies, at
the level both of Rosario and Santa Fe, had five inhabi-
tants per square kilometre. But beyond the Cordoba

THE OLDER INDUSTRIES OF THE PAMPA : DRYING HIDES

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

Plate XXIII.

DRYING SALT MEAT.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

To face p. i6i.

IMMIGRANTS FROM EUROPE 263

frontier the density falls to two in the San Justo
department, and still less further south, at Marcos
Juarez, Union and General Lopez.

In 1914 the density was more than fifteen in the whole
of the maize area in the Buenos Aires and Santa Fd
provinces, and it approached this figure in the depart-
ments of the old agricultural colonies on the middle
Salado. In the region of the lucerne farms it was
three to five, except in the south-east (departments
of Veinte Cinco de Mayo, Nueve de Julio and BoHvia),
where it rose, thanks to the co-existence of ranches
and of wheat and maize. It sank to between two
and three in the wheat area in the south and south-
east of Buenos Aires. At Santa Fe the district of the
colonies had seven to the square kilometre.

The growth of the population is partly explained
by immigration from Europe. Foreigners were, in
1914, 30 per cent, of the total population.' The pro-
portion of foreigners to the total population is one
of the indications by which we can best follow the
advance of colonization. As soon as it relaxes in
any region, the number of immigrants diminishes.
(The children born of foreign colonists in Argentina
are considered indigenous in Argentine statistics.)
In 1869 the proportion of foreigners rose to 417 per
1,000 in the province of Buenos Aires (without the
capital). This was the great period of pastoral colon-
ization and the development of sheep-breeding. It was
then only 156 per 1,000 at Santa Fe. In 1895 the
proportion of foreigners sank to 309 per 1,000 at
Buenos Aires, but rose to 419 at Santa Fe, where the
date almost marks the end of the great period of
agricultural colonization. In 1914 the proportion of
foreigners at Buenos Aires rose to 340 per 1,000
(development of the maize region and the southern

» All Europeans, except a few tens of thousands of Bolivians in
the Salta and Jujuy provinces, a few thousand Brazilians in Misiones,
and a few thousand Chileans at Neuquen.

264 THE POPULATION

wheat area). It sank at Santa Fe (350 per 1,000),
in spite of considerable immigration in the southern
maize-growing departments. At the same time there
was a great influx of foreign population in the pro-
vince of Cordoba (200 per 1,000) and in the area of
the Central Pampa (360 per 1,000). ^

The recent enumerations also enable us to follow
the displacements of the indigenous population on
Argentine territory and the part this has had in
colonization. Outside the Pampean region the parts
of the country which have proved centres of attraction
for the Argentine population are the sugar provinces
of Tucuman and Jujuy and the province of Mendoza.
In 1895 Tucuman had 40,000 inhabitants who had
been born in other provinces, Jujuy 15,000 and
Mendoza 19,000. The attraction of Tucuman was
mainly felt in the adjoining province of Santiago
(12,000 immigrants) and Catamarca (12,000). At
Mendoza the immigrants came mainly from San
Juan (7,000) and San Luis (3,000). The attraction
of the timber region is more difficult to estimate,
because most of the obrajes are in the province of
Santiago, which found the workers itself, and the
enumerations have not taken into account displace-
ments within each province. Nevertheless, immigration
into the land of the quebracho Chaqueno, along the
Parana, can be recognised from 1895 onward. It was
maintained by the Corrientes province. Santa Fe
has 10,000 immigrants from Corrientes, of whom
6,500 are in the forestry departments of Reconquista
and Vera. The Chaco region maintains 2,000 Cor-
rientes wood-cutters and several hundred from Santiago

» I have referred elsewhere to the magnitude of the stream of
European immigration at Mendoza, In Patagonia (territory of the
Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, the Santa Cruz, and Tierra
del Fuego, of which the total population is only 104,000) sheep-breeding
has attracted a considerable number of immigrants (428 foreigners
per 1000 in 1914).

INTERIOR IMMIGRATION 2C5

and Salta. Corrientes has also sent 5,000 emigrants
to Misiones.

In the Pampean region the population of Buenos
Aires in 1895 included very few who came from other
provinces. The population of Santa Fe was more
mixed. The attraction of the agricultural colonies
had brought 65,000 Argentine immigrants. They came
mainly from the left bank of the Parand and Cordoba.
The immigrants from Cordoba are localized along the
railway from Rosario to Cordoba, in the Belgrano
and Iriondo departments and the town of Rosario.
The migration of the Santa Fe colonists to the new
lands in the west had scarcely begun at that time.
They were still only 3,000 in the Buenos Aires pro-
vince, and 5,000 at Cordoba ; most of them were in
departments adjacent to the old colony area. The
colonization of Cordoba began simultaneously in the
east, toward Santa Fe, and in the south-west, in the
Rio Cuarto department, to which the breeders from
San Luis went. Similarly, the Argentine population
of the Central Pampa includes elements from the
east as well as European colonists and elements from
the north-west (10,000 immigrants from the Buenos
Aires province, 3,000 from San Luis).

The 1914 Census has less complete details in regard
to interior immigration than its predecessor. The
migrations had not ceased. The attraction of Tucu-
mdn and Mendoza had, in fact, decreased. The
province of Tucuman had 55,000 Argentine immi-
grants, the province of Jujuy 15,000, the province of
Mendoza 34,000. The provinces of Mendoza and Cor-
rientes remained nuclei of considerable immigration
(38,000 and 63,000 immigrants). At Santa Fe the
number of emigrants who left the province to
settle at Cordoba and in the remainder of the Pampean
region rose from 14,000 to 87,000. The Patagonian
territory also had a large excess of immigrants from
other provinces.

266 THE POPULATION

Periodic migrations with no definitive change of
residence are not given in the official statistics. The
importance of these migrations in northern Argentina
has been noted in the chapters we devoted to Tucuman
and the forestry industry. They occur also in the
Pampean region, where they are due chiefly to he
need of labour for the harvest and the threshing of
wheat and flax, and for reaping the maize. Miatello
has given us a detailed analysis of the phenomenon
for the province of Santa Fe in 1904. The period
when the wheat and flax growers need help is from
November to February. It begins in March for the
maize farmers, and lasts so much longer when the
harvest is good. The temporary immigrants come
partly from Europe. Not only is the stream of immi-
gration to Argentina fuller during the months which
precede the harvests, while the stream of re-emigration
to Europe is greatest in the autumn, but it is not a
rare thing for Italians to go every year to Argentina
merely to stay there during the harvest, when wages
are high. This seasonal immigration from Italy is of
long standing ; it is mentioned by Daireaux in 1889.
These foreigners, however, are only part of the
adventurous crowd enlisted for the harvests on the
Pampean plain. Seasonal migration is everywhere a
national practice. The labour employed in reaping
the maize includes elements borrowed from the towns
near the maize belt. But all the provinces round
the Pampean region send their contingent of tem-
porary immigrants. Some even come from the valley
of the Rio Negro at Bahia Blanca, from San Luis,
and even from Mendoza to the Central Pampa and
the Cordoba province.

The oldest, and still the largest, stream is that
which comes from the Santiago province. D'Orbigny
notices in 1827 the temporary streaming of Santi-
aguenos to the coast. In that year slow progress
was made with the wheat-harvest of Buenos Aires

A YEAR'S JOURNEY 267

because of the shortage of labour. " The forced
levies for the army prevented the Santiaguenos from
going to hire themselves, as was their custom, in fear
lest they should be compelled to serve." '

Temporary emigration began, no doubt, with the
journeys which brought the northerners to Buenos
Aires as drivers of convoys of wagons. Santiaguenos
were numerous amongst these troperos. Lorenzo Fazio
collected reminiscences of these journeys in the land
of the banados.^ They go back to tlie first quarter of
the nineteenth century, the period before the diversion
of the Rio Dulce and the ruin of Salavina and
Atamisqui. " My father," said one of his informants,
** drove wagons of wheat to Cordoba, and sometimes
to Buenos Aires, where he sold them and bought
goods-stuffs in exchange. He bought the wheat at
Loreto, Atamisqui or Salavina. It was a year before
he got back, because it was necessary to wait for the
rain and the growth of the vegetation, otherwise his
animals would have died of thirst or hunger on the
road." The journeys of the troperos meant a long
spell of idleness in the Pampean region, precisely at
the harvest season. Naturally, they would lend a
hand in it.

The temporary emigration of the Santiaguenos
continued throughout the nineteenth century. It was
maintained even during the disturbances under the
government of Rosas, which almost entirely put an
end to commercial relations between Buenos Aires
and the northern provinces. When Galvez passed
through the villages on the Rio Dulce he noticed that
there were few men in them. They had scattered
over the roads or were, as he says, andariegos. Only
the women remained. The province of Buenos Aires
received the Santiaguefios in crowds, offering their

« D'Orbigny, Voyage dans VAmerique tndridionale. vol. i. p. 528.
» Lorenzo Fazio, Memoria descriptiva de la provincia de Santiago
del Estero (Buenos Aires, 1889),

268 THE POPULATION

services. Chivilcoy and the whole region of tne
chacras of maize and wheat received their caravans
for the harvest, and some were kept for the sowing.
Even the ranchers took advantage of this reinforce-
ment, and hired the men for marking. In the
autumn they went back with their tropillas, much
dreaded by the breeders whose land they crossed,
stealing any horses that were not well guarded.

The province of Santa Fe, especially in the agri-
cultural departments of the north-west, is now the
chief theatre in the Pampean region for the immi-
gration of the Santiaguefios. It does not always
come by rail, but has to some extent preserved its
primitive and picturesque features. The immigrants
arrive in troops on mules and horses, and scatter in
November over the colonies.

The population of Argentina has also felt the
attraction of the urban centres. The growth of the
towns is due to both foreign and national immigration.
The development of urban life, which is one of the
characteristic features of modern Argentina, is a
recent phenomenon. There was no indication of its
coming in the eighteenth century. DAzara was, on
the contrary, struck by the absence of communal
life {pueblos unidos). The scattering of the population
was a result of the predominance of breeding. " If
these people found profit in agriculture, one would
see them gather together in villages, instead of the
whole population being dispersed in ranches." ^ It
is this scattering of the population rather than an
absolute numerical inferiority — the solitude, ** the
desert, the universal horizon that forced itself into
the very entrails of the land " 2 — that moulded the
fiery soul of the gaucho.

The primitive urban sites were all either on the

» F. de Azara, Memorias sobre el estado rural del rio de la Plata en
1801, p. 10.

» Sarmiento, El Facundo, p. 19.

I

A HERD OF CREOLE CATTLE.

Photograph by Widmaycr.

Plate XXIV.

A HERD OF DLKHA.M CAULK.

Photograph by Soc. FotograAca de Aficionados.

Toraeep.s«6w

I

THE SCHOOLS OF CORDOBA 269

river or on the historic roads to Chile and Peru. The
only towns of the Parana region at the end of the
eighteenth century were Buenos Aires, Santa F^ and
Corrientes. As to towns in the interior, Helms's
journey in 1778 gives us some idea of their size.
Cordoba, at the crossing of the Peru road and the
tracks to the province of La Rioja, had then 1,500
white inhabitants and 4,000 blacks. As it was near
the Sierra, which provided granite and lime, it had
some semblance of architecture, and had paved streets,
which struck even the traveller from Buenos Aires.
The attraction of its schools was felt over a wide area.
We still have a list of students from Paraguay who
studied at Cordoba University in the eighteenth
century.^ Tucuman and Salta, especially Salta, also
were busy centres. Salta had 600 Spanish families
and 9,000 inhabitants in all, and its influence extended
as far as Peru and Chile. Jujuy, on the other hand,
was a very small town. Helms mentions the decay
of Santiago del Estero. The trade which had once
flourisned there had, he says, gone in a different
direction. The prosperity of Santiago was, as a
matter of fact, connected with trafhc on the direct
route from Santa Fe to Tucuman, which ceased at
the close of the eighteenth century. Santa Fe also
was a decaying town at the close of the eighteenth
century, and would remain such until the middle of
the nineteenth. Its distress was due, not merely to
the suspension of its direct trade with Peru, but
also to the decay and isolation of Paraguay, which
had provided most of its trade and for which it
acted as intermediary with the Andean provinces.

The great development of urban life in Argentina
dates from the time of the colonization of the Pampean
region. The ratio of the urban population has risen
considerably during the last twenty-five years. In
1895, 113 centres with more than 2,000 inhabitants

» Published by the Rauista del Instituto Paraguayo (vol. iv. p. 334).

270 THE POPULATION

comprised 37 per cent, of the total population of
Argentina ; in 19 14 the number of urban centres
was 322, and they comprised 53 per cent, of the
population. The population of towns with 5,000 to
20,000 inhabitants has increased threefold in twenty
years, rising from 312,000 in 1895 to 977,000 in 1914.
Large new towns like Rosario and Bahia Blanca were
created. The relative sizes of the older towns changed
rapidly. Tucuman and Mendoza (121,000 and 92,000
inhabitants) shot beyond Santiago and Salta (22,000
and 28,000 inhabitants). The towns of the north-
west, Catamarca and Rioja, are, on the other hand,
scarcely developed.

When one examines a chart of the urban population
of the Pampean region, one finds that colonization
has led to the creation in it of ten chief centres, of
from 15,000 to 25,000 inhabitants, and some fifty
secondary centres, of from 5,000 to 12,000 inhabitants,
which all have a distinctl}' urban character. This
association of urban centres and a scattered agri-
cultural or pastoral population is one of the original
features of the way in which the Pampa was peopled.
There is no village, or purely rural group. The dis-
tribution of these centres on the plain is fairly
regular. They are a little closer together in the dis-
tricts near the Parana, to the north of Buenos Aires,
where the population is older, and where the density,
even of the rural population, is at its highest. The
territory of the Pampa is divided between the spheres
of influence of these various centres. Their radius
is as low as ten miles in the north-west, and is about
twenty miles in the south of Buenos Aires and twenty-
five in the extreme west.

A secondary railway nucleus has generally settled
the sites of them (San Francisco-Pergamino, Junin).
Their population comprises all the workers needed for
the flow of the economic life of the Pampa : agents
for the exporters of cereals, merchants who supply the

THE PORTS 271

colonies with imported goods — especially agricultural
machinery — bankers and insurance companies, sur-
veyors and lawyers. Those which have the best
service of trains have a certain amount of industry —
mills and breweries — the products of which are absorbed
locally. These towns derive all the elements of their
life from the Pampean region itself, and have no
direct relations either with foreign markets or with
other parts of Argentina. ^

But the towns of the Pampa which have grown
most rapidly are the ports. Rosario rose from 23,000
inhabitants in 1869 to 91,000 in 1895 and to 245,000
in 1914 ; Bahia Blanca from 9,000 in 1895 to 62,000
in 1914. The actual population of the Pampa ports
is not at all in proportion to the part which each
plays in the export ot Pampean products : —

Export of Cereals in thousands of tons.

(Average for 191 3-1 9 15)

Rosario.

Buenos Aires.

Bahla Blanca. San Nicolas.

La Plata.

SanU F*.

2,716

2,051

1.075 651

Population in 1914.

459

278

^45.000

1.575.000

62,000 19.000

137.000

64,000

Some centres, such as Campana, Zarate, San Pedro
or San Nicolas, which load up meat or grain in great
quantities, have nevertheless remained small towns.
Neither the trade in meat nor that in cereals is enough
of itself to sustain a busy urban life. In point of
fact, the growth of the Pampa ports is mainly con-
nected with their function as importing ports and
markets of capital. The close dependence of Bahia

» Only two of them. Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria, are on the
edge of the Pampa. We have seen elsewhere the part which the
extensive breeding of the north-west plays in the business of the Villa
Mercedes cattle-market. Villa Maria also derives some advantage
from its nearness to the scrub. Its limekilns receive limestone from
the Sierra de C6rdoba, but they get their fuel locally, from the men
who clear the scrub.

272 THE POPULATION

Blanca upon Buenos Aires in both these respects
seems to forbid it all hope of ever becoming the equal
of Rosario. The prosperity of Rosario was founded
during the time when Buenos Aires was isolated,
between 1853 and i860 ; this enabled them to organize
an import trade there and to accumulate a nucleus
of independent capital.^

The development of Buenos Aires must be studied
separately. It does not merely reflect the success of
the colonization of the Pampa ; it is a phenomenon of a
national order. The attraction of Buenos Aires has
been felt throughout the whole land. In 1895, of a
total population of Argentine birth of 318,000 souls,
more than a half — 167,000 — were born in the pro-
vinces.2 The way in which the prosperity of Buenos
Aires is bound up, not only with that of the adjacent
territory but with that of the whole country, is seen
in the stability of the figure representing the number
of the inhabitants who have come from foreign lands.
While the proportion of foreigners in each of the
provinces varies from one census to another, according
to the displacements of the stream of colonization, it
remains almost the same at Buenos Aires : 496 per
1,000 in 1869, 520 in 1895, 493 in 1914.

The population of the city of Buenos Aires was
estimated by Helms in 1788 to be between 24,000
and 30,000. D'Azara put it at 40,000 in 1799. The
Revolution did not interrupt its growth. According to
the estimate of Woodbine Parish the city had 81,000
inhabitants in 1824. On the other hand, the Rosas
Government involved a period of stagnation (90,000
inhabitants in 1855). But after 1855 Buenos Aires

» Buenos Aires and Rosario alone have independent grain markets,
though it is differently organized in each case. At Buenos Aires the
exporters have entered into direct relations with the producers and
eliminated intermediaries. At Rosario they have to use the services
of a strong body of agents.

» The 1 91 4 Census does not give reliable details on this point

BUENOS AIRES 273

resumed its progress, even before the political unity
of Argentina was re-established, and has never since
relaxed. Its population has doubled almost regu-
larly at intervals of fifteen years : 177,000 in 1869,
433,000 in 1887, 663,000 in 1895, and 1,575,000 in
1914. The latter figure, in fact, is inadequate.
Greater Buenos Aires, including the outlying parts, has
really 1,990,000 inhabitants.

The site on which the city is built is a regular plateau,
sixty-five feet above sea level, cut by flat-bottomed,
marshy valleys. The Riachuelo, at the mouth of one
of these valleys, provided Buenos Aires with its first
port. The low and badly drained lands of the valleys
are occupied by the poorest quarters. Their sides,
the barrancas, bear the aristocratic residences, and
the gardeners have been able to use the sites to great
advantage in their plans.

As a whole, the growth of Buenos Aires presents
the same feature of regularity, on account of the
uniformity of the soil, as the spread of colonization
over the plain of the Pampas. The city is distributed
in concentric zones, and it is thus a model on a small
scale of tne distribution of the various types of
exploitation on the Pampa which surrounds it. The
central nucleus, the business quarter, contains not
only the offices, but the warehouses of imported
goods. Round this centre, with a radius of one to
three miles, are the residential quarters in which the
density is greatest (250 to 350 to the hectare).
Beyond this the density sinks to less than 200 per
hectare and less than fifty on the outskirts. The
central quarters developed the maximum density
after 1900. Those of the first outer zone have gained
greatly between 1904 and 1909. Since the latter
date, the progress of these quarters has been arrested
in turn, and the recent growth is mainly in the
remote working-class suburbs in the south and on
the bank of the Riachuelo.

18

274 THE POPULATION

Buenos Aires has preserved in its central district,
and reproduces in all its outer districts, the primitive
draught-board plan of a Spanish colonial city. This
plan is not suited to its needs to-day. The rapid
growth of the city and its expansion — the mean density
is not more than fifty-four inhabitants to the hectare,
as against 360 at Paris — complicate the problem of
transport. At the present time the city is considering
plans for reconstructing its thoroughfares and making
diagonal streets, starting from the centre and following
the direction of the main streams of traffic. In this
way the city would reproduce the fan-wise distribution
of railways over the Pampean plain.

Buenos Aires is the intermediary between the
provinces and oversea countries. It has three titles
to this profitable part. In the first place, it is the
chief centre of the import trade. The mei chants of
the cities in the interior are customers of the Buenos
Aires importers, and are closely bound to them by a
system of long-term credit. Buenos Aires is, secondly,
the centre for the distribution of the European capital
which has been used in the development of the country.
Lastly, it divides immigrant workers amongst the
provinces, just as it divides capital. As an immigra-
tion port its position is unrivalled. The efforts that
were made to divert part of the immigrants to Bahfa
Blanca failed, and direct immigration to the Santa
Fe province ceased at the close of the first period of
colonization, about 1880. It is also at Buenos Aires
that immigrants who are not going to settle in
Argentina embark ; re-emigration, which is regarded
as a national plague by Argentine economists, is
another source of profit to the capital. Hence the
fortune of Buenos Aires is due in the first place to
the close contact between the economic life of Argentina
and that of Europe and North America.

But its very growth has led to a gradual change
in the part it plays in the interior of the country. In

WEALTH OF BUENOS AIRES 275

proportion as its population and wealth grew, it
became a great national market. The products of the
provinces go to it, not merely to meet its own needs
as consumer, but in order to be distributed over the
entire country. The figures of the cattle trade on
the Buenos Aires market are instructive in this
respect. From January to July 19 19 there were
1,130,000 head of cattle sold, 240,000 being for the
supply of the capital and 700,000 for the refrigerators.'
Of the remainder, 120,000 were bought for fattening
and 40,000 by the butchers of other towns. The
capital of its own which has accumulated at Buenos
Aires is invested either in real estate or in industry,
which has found great profit both in the development
of local consumption and in the great stock of labour
provided by immigration. Buenos Aires is not now
content to be merely an intermediary between the
country and foreign lands. It contributes by its own
resources and work to the task of colonization and
the supply of manufactured articles to the agricultural
and pastoral districts. It is, finally, a luxurious city,
with every opportunity for the men who have grown
rich by the rise in the price of lands to spend their
income, and providing pleasure for the country folk
who come up occasionally, tired of their laborious,
rough and solitary existence. _^

» During the same period the Argentinian refrigerators killed
1,490,000 head of cattle. Therefore, about half of these were bought
at Buenos Aires.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I give here only the most important and most recent
works. A list of the articles I have consulted would be
long and uninteresting, while a complete list of those which
might have been consulted, and from which information
might have been gleaned, is impossible. For a work of
this character there is no account of travel, no study of the
soil, the climate, or the vegetation, no statistical document
or journal or purely historical text, that has not a perfect
right to be regarded as a source.

I. Periodicals.

Of the periodicals published in Argentina, and partly or
wholly devoted to the study of the land and its develop-
ment, the principal are : —

Boletin del Instituto Geografico Argentino (Buenos Aires,
since 1879 > vol. i, 1879, vol. ii, 1881 ; one vol. yearly from
1881 to 1901 ; has appeared irregularly since).

Anales de la Sociedad Cientifica Argentina (Buenos Aires,
2 vols, yearly from 1876).

Revista de la Sociedad Geografica Argentina (Buenos Aires,
only appeared from 1883 to 1889).

Boletin de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Cdrdoha
(C6rdoba, since 1874, 23 vols, to 1918).

The publications of the Buenos Aires and La Plata museums
also contain, besides copious anthropological, archaeological,
palaeontological, and historical material, a large number of
articles of interest to geographers : —

Anales del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Buenos
Aires. Begins 1864, 25 vols., folio and quarto, to 1914.

Anales del Museo de la Plata. First series 1890-1900,
second series from 1907.

177

278 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Revista del Museo de la Plata. From 1890-1891, 17 vols,
to 1910-1911.

All these reviews contain especially articles on the parts
of the country which were last explored — Patagonia, Chaco,
Misiones. They contain little about the parts that were
early colonized, though these are not always the best known.

2. Maps.

The maps published in the eighteenth century (D'Anville's
map, 1733, in the Lettres 6difiantes, 19th collection, Paris,
1734 : Bellin's map in vol. ii of the Histoire du Paraguay
of the R.P.P.F.X. de Charlevoix, Paris, 1756, 3 vols.,
etc.) are based upon information collected by the Jesuit
missionaries.

D'Azara's map (1809) shows a remarkable advance.

Important corrections of D'Azara's map are found in
Woodbine Parish's map (1838).

Brackebusch's two maps are essential documents : Mapa
del interior de la Republica Argentina, por el Dr. L. Bracke-
busch, 1 : 1,000,000 (Gotha, 1835) and Mapa geologico del
interior de la Republica Argentina, i : 1,000,000 (Gotha, 1890).

The results of earlier work have been used in the Atlas
de la Republica Argentina construido y publicado por el
Instituto Geografico Argentino (Buenos Aires, 1894), which
includes a list of its sources.

Since that date many maps have been published : maps
of the various provinces and surveys drawn up by the railway
companies, the Chile Frontier Commission (see Patagonia),
the Mines Division (see Natural Regions), and the Ministerio
de Obras Publicas (see River Routes). A brief account of
the history of Argentine cartography and a list of maps of
provinces will be found in Colonel B. Garcia Aparicio, La
carta de la Republica (Anuario del Instituto Geografico Militar,
i, 1912, Buenos Aires, pp. 1-27).

The MiUtary Geographical Institute has itself published
a large number of maps, either on the basis of fresh surveys
or by compiling earlier work, chiefly : —

About thirty sheets on the scale i : 25,000 (Pampean
region) since 1904, interesting for studying the relief of the
plain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 279

** Governacion de la Pampa," i : 500,000 (Estado Mayor,
3 A Division, Buenos Aires, 1909).

Three sheets on the scale i : 1,000,000 (Buenos Aires,
Concordia, and Corrientes). Buenos Aires, provisional edition
191 1 of a map of Argentina on the scale i : 1,000,000, which
is to comprise twenty-one sheets.

A convenient reference map, though of no scientific value,
is the map of the railways, on the scale i : 2,000,000, in
three sheets, published in 1910 by the Ministerio de Obras
Publicas.

3. Statistics.

A summary of the chief statistics is pubHshed annually
in The Argentine Yearbook (from 1902 at Buenos Aires;
from 1909 at Buenos Aires and London).

The Anuario de la Direccidn General de Estadistica, which
has appeared since 1880 in one, two or three vols, quarto,
gives the figures of trade, immigration, agriculture, railways,
navigation, etc. (last volume consulted is for 1914, Buenos
Aires, 1915).

In the third volume of the Anuario for 1912 will be found
a list of the publications of the Direcci6n de Estadistica.
Besides the Anuario the Direcci6n publishes a bulletin with
commercial statistics (last number consulted 181, " El
comercio exterior Argentino en los primeros trimestres de
1918 y 1919," Buenos Aires, 1919). Boletin 176 contains
a review of Argentine trade from 1910 to 1917.

The statistical department of the Ministry of Agriculture,
under the direction of E. Lahitte, publishes the Boletin
Mensual de Estadistica Agricola (last volume consulted,
xxi, 1919).

4. General Descriptions. >

The scientific study of this part of South America may
be traced back as far as D'Azara. His observations are

» Besides the publications of the Jesuits, which can easily be con-
sulted, a fairly large number of texts bearing upon the history of
colonization have been published or re-published in the nineteenth
and the twentieth century. See especially :

Relaciones Geograpicas de Indias (vol. i, 1881 ; vol. ii, 1885, Madrid).

280 BIBLIOGRAPHY

collected in Don Felix de Azara, Voyages dans I'Amerique
meridionale, published by Walckenaer (Paris, 1809, 4 vols,
in 12°^° and atlas) and Descripcion e historia del Paraguay
y del Rio de la Plata, published by D. Agustin de Azara
(Madrid, 1847, 2 vols, octavo).

The Voyage dans I'Amerique meridionale of Alcide d'Orbigny
contains his observations on the Parana, the province of
Corrientes, the Pampa (Parchappe's voyages), and Pata-
gonia (1828). (Historical section, vol. i, Paris, 1835 ; vol. ii,
Paris, 1839-43 ; vol. iii, third part, geology, Paris, 1842).

Darwin also visited the coast of Patagonia and crossed
the Pampa (1833) : Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of
H.M.S. " Adventure " and " Beagle "... vol. iii, as Journal
and Researches (London, 1839).

Sir Woodbine Parish's work, Buenos Aires and the Provinces
of the Rio de la Plata (London, 1838), is remarkably well-
informed, and is based upon a thorough study of previous
publications and archives.

W. MacKann's Ten Thousand Miles' Ride through the
Argentine Republic (London, 1855, 2 vols.) is interesting,
and the work of a close observer.

Martin de Moussy, Description giographique et statistique
de la Confederation argentine (Paris, 1858, 3 vols, octavo
and atlas), is unequal, but full of information.

The work of H. Burmeister, Description physique de la
Republique argentine (Paris, 2 vols., 1876), is of little value,
and has been overrated.

Richard Napp, Die Argentinische Repuhlik (Buenos Aires,
1876, I vol. octavo), includes a valuable chapter by P. G.
Lorentz on the flora (" Vegetations verhaeltnisse Argentiniens,"
pp. 87-149).

Anales de la Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires, Puhlicacion de
documentos relativos al Rio de la Plata (from igoo).

Publications of the Junta de Historia y Numismatica Americana
(Buenos Aires, 7 vols., octavo, from 1905 to 1915).

Valuable notes on some of the most important historical documents
will be found in E. Boman, Antiquites de la region andine (see North-
West Argentina).

The most curious collection of all for the geographer is : Pedro
de Angelis, Coleccion de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua
y moderna de las provincias del Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1837,
6 vols, octavo, containing many itineraries, journals of expeditions,
etc., together with notes by D 'Azara).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 281

The second volume (*' Temtoire ") of the Second recense-
meni de la RipuUique argentine (Buenos Aires, 1898) includes
a joint geographical study by a number of writers.

Geologie, by J. Valentin.

Climat, by G. G, Davis.

Flore, by E. L. Holmberg.

Some attempt at a general consideration of our geographical
knowledge of Argentina has been made by E. A. S. Delachaux,
" Las regiones fisicas de la Repubhca Argentina (Rev. Mus.
Plata, XV, 1908, pp. 102-131).

Our physical knowledge of Argentina has been greatly
promoted by the work of the Direcci6n de Minas. The
results are summarized in the Memorias de la Direccidn
general de Minas, Geologia, e Hidrologia, published from
1908 onward {Anales del Ministerio de Agyicultura, SecciSn
geologia, mineralogia, y mineria : last volume published
for the year 1915, Buenos Aires, vol. xii. No. 2).

Special works are published in the same section of the
Anales del Min. Agric, and in the Boletines de la Direccidn
de Minas, Geologia, e Hidrologia. See, especially, series B
(Geologia). These reports and the accompanying maps are
the basis of all work on the geography of Argentina. They
already cover a great deal of Argentine territory. The
work of Keidel, in particular, which is an essential contribu-
tion to the geological history of the South-American continent,
and that of Windhausen, are largely concerned with physical
geography, the study of the relief, and the influence of the
climate on the landscape.

A summary of the history of study of the soil of Argentina
will be found in E. Hermitte, La geologia y mineria Argentina
in 1914 (Tercer Censo Nacional, vol. vii, pp. 407-494).

As to climate : Buenos Aires Ministerio de Agricultura,
Servicio Meteorologico Argentina, Historia y Organisacion,
con un resumen de los resultados, preparado bajo la direcci6n
de G. G. Davis (Buenos Aires, 1914, quarto), dispenses one
from consulting any previous works.

There is a very complete bibliography of works on the
botany and geographical botany of Argentina in F. Kurtz,
" Essai d'une bibHographie botanique de I'Argentine " (2nd
edition, Bol. Acad. Nac. Ciencias C6rdoha, xx, 1915, pp. 369-
467)-

282 BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is a convenient summary of our knowledge of the
primitive population in Felix F. Outes and Carlos Bruch,
Los aborigenes de la Rep. argentina (Buenos Aires, 1910).

5. North- West Argentina.

The most complete general work on irrigation is that of
E. A. Soldano, La irrigacion en la argentina (Buenos Aires,
1910, octavo). See also C. Wouters, " La irrigaci6n en el
valle de Lerma " {An. Soc. Cient. Argentina, Ixvi, 1908,

pp. 117-145).

The best description of the Puna de Atacama and the
country of the Valles is in Eric Boman, " Antiquites de la
region andine de la Republique Argentine et du desert
d'Atacama " (Mission scientifique G. de Crequi, Montfort, et
E. Senechal de la Grange, Paris, 1908, 2 vols.).

L. Brackebusch, " Ueber die Bodensverhaeltnisse des
nordwestlichen Teiles der Argentinischen Republik mit
Bezugnahme auf die Vegetation " {Petermann's Mitteilungen,
1893, p. 153) is a general description of the whole of north-
western Argentina ; but Brackebusch 's description of his
journey, " Viaje a la provincia de Jujuy " {Bol. Inst. Geog.
Argent., iv, 1883, pp. 9-17, 204-211, and 217-226) is fresher
and more useful.

I have mentioned in the note to p. 40 Bodenbender's
work on the province of La Rioja.

Of the various articles, from all quarters, on North-Western
Argentina the following may be noticed : —

J. B. Ambrosetti, " Viaje a la Puna de Atacama de Salta
a Caurchari " (Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent., xxi, 1900, pp. 87-116).

F. Kiihn, " Descripcion del camino desde Rosario de
Lerma hasta Cachi " (Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent., xxiv, 1910,
pp. 42-50).

H. Seckt, *' Contribucion al conocimiento de la vegetacion
del Nordeste de la Rep. Arg. — Valles de Calchaqui y Puna
de Atacama " (An. Soc. Cient. Arg., Ixxiv, 1912, pp. 185-
225).

Juan F. Barnabe, ** Informe sobre el distrito minero de
Tinogasta " (An. Min. Agric, Seccion Geol. Mineralogia y
Mineria, x. No. 4, Buenos Aires, 1915).

On the Puna de Atacama :

BIBLIOGRAPHY 283

L. Caplain, " Informe sobre el estado de la mineria en
el Territorio de los Andes " (An. Min. Agric, Seccion
Geol. Mineralogia y Mineria, vii, No. i, Buenos Aires,
1912).

On the sub-Andean chains : —

Guido Bonarelli, " Las Sierras subandinas del Alto y
Aguaragiie y los yacimientos petroliferos del distrito minero
de Tartagal " (ibid., viii, No. 4, Buenos Aires, 1913). See
also Direcci6n General de Minas, Geol., e Hidrol, Boletin,
series B, No. 9 (Buenos Aires, 1914).

On the Chaco Salteno : —

L. Arnaud, " Expedicion al Chaco " (Bol. Inst. Geog.
Argent., vi, 1885, pp. 201-210).

On the part of the San Luis province that lies in the zone
of the scrub : —

Ave-Lallemant, " Datos orograficos e hidrograiicos sobre
la Provincia de San Luis " (Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent., v, 1884,
pp. 191-196, and 222-224), ^^^ " Apuntes sobre represas y
baldes en San Luis " {An. Soc. Cient. Arg., xi, 1881, pp. 178-
188).

A. L. Cravetti, " Investigaci6n agricola en la Provincia
de San Luis " (Buenos Aires, 1904, An. Min. Agric, Secci6n
Agric, Botanica, y Agronomia, vol. i. No. 5).

On the scrub south of Mar Chiquita : —

H. Frank, " La repoblacion forestal en la region de la
Mar Chiquita " {Bol. Dep. gen. Agric. y Ganaderia, Prov.
C6rdoba, ii, 1912, pp. 52-57), and " Contribucion al conoci-
miento de la Mar Chiquita " {ibid., pp. 87-101).

6. TUCUMAN AND MeNDOZA.

On Tucuman see Emilio Lahitte, La industria azucarera,
apuntes de aciualidad (Buenos Aires, 1902).

The best source of the economic history of the sugar
industry is the file of the Revisia azucarera (" organa de
los cultivadores de cana y fabricantes de azucar," Buenos
Aires).

On Mendoza, '* Investigacion vinicola " (Buenos Aires,
1903, Anales, Min. Agric, Secci6n Comercio, Industrias, y
Economia, i. No. i).

284 BIBLIOGRAPHY

7. Forestry Industries.

Rudolf Leutgens, " Beitrage zur Kenntniss des Quebracho-
Gebietes in Argentinien und Paraguay " {Miiteil. Geogr.
Ges. Hamburg, xxv, 1911, pp. 1-70).

8. Patagonia.
A. The Tableland.

Apart from Villarino's journey on the Rio Negro in the
eighteenth century, the first journey across the Pata-
gonian tableland is that of G. Chaworth Musters, At Home
with the Patagonians (London, 1871).

In the early volumes of the Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent.
will be found the results of various explorations between
1878 and 1885 by Argentine travellers.

With this group of documents, which provided the first
material for his conclusions, we may associate the geological
studies of Florentino Ameghino, " L'age des formations
sedimentaires de Patagonie " (An. Soc. Cient. Argentina,
1, 1900, pp. 109-130, 145-160, and 209-229 ; li, 1901, pp. 20-39
and 65-90 ; lii, 1901, pp. 189-197 and 244-250 ; liii, 1902,
pp. 161-181, 220-249 and 282-342) and " Les formations
sedimentaires du cretace superieur et du tertiaire en Pata-
gonie " (An. Mus. Nac. Buenos Aires, series ii, vol. viii,
1906, pp. 1-568).

On the southern part of Patagonia, south of 50° S. lat. : —

Svenska Expeditionen till Magellanslaenderna (Wissen-
schaftliche Ergebnisse der Schwedischen Expedition nach den
Magellans Laendern, 1895-1897, unter Leitung von Dr.
Otto Nordenskjoeld, Band I, Geologic, Geographic und
Anthropologic, Stockholm, 1907).

On the Magellan region and that of the Santa Cruz : —

Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions to Pata-
gonia, 1896-9, i, J. B. Hatcher, Narrative of the Expeditions,
Geography of Southern Patagonia (Princeton and Stuttgart,

1903).

On the Rio Negro district : —

S. Roth, " Apuntes sobre la Geologia y la Paleontologia
de las Territorios del Rio Negro y Neuquen " (Rev. Mus,
Plata, ix, 1899, pp. 141-196).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 285

Of more recent works we must especially notice those of
the engineers of the Direcci6n de Minas : —

R. Stappenbeck y F. Reichert, " Informe preliminar
relative a la parte sudeste del Territorio del Chubut '* {An,
Min. Agric, Secci6n Geol. Mineral., y Minas, vol. ix. No. i,
Buenos Aires, 1909).

Ricardo Wichmann, various studies of the eastern part
of the plateau of the Rio Negro {ibid., xiii, Nos. i, 3 and 4,
Buenos Aires, 1918 and 1919).

A. Windhausen, studies on the Rio Negro and the Neuquen
{ibid., X, No. i, Buenos Aires, 1914). The geological results
of Windhausen 's work are summarized in articles that
appeared in the American Journal 0/ Science (4th series,
xlv, 1918, pp. 1-53) and in the Bol. Acad. Nac. Ciencias
Cdrdoba (xxiii, 1918, pp. 97-128 and 319-364).

We must add G. Rivereto, " La valle del Rio Negro "
(Bol. Soc. Geologica Ital., xxxi, 1912, pp. 181-237, ^md xxxii,
1913, pp. 101-142).

B. The Andes.

Numerous articles in the Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent, and
the An. Soc. Cient. Argentina, immediately after the military
expedition of 1879-1880 (Host, Av^-Lallemant, etc.).

A detailed study of the Andean region was undertaken
at the time of the frontier-quarrel between Argentina and
Chile, and this led to a number of publications. The work
done by the Argentinians under F. P. Moreno is used in
Frontera Argeniina-Chilena, Memoria presentada al tribunal
nombrado por el Gobernio de su Majestad Britanica (London,
1902, 2 vols, quarto, i vol. maps, and i vol. photographs),
and in the Breve Replica a la memoria Chilena (London,
I vol. quarto, 1902). See a summary of the results in L.
Gallois, " Les Andes de Patagonie " {Annales de Geographic,
X, 1901, pp. 232-259).

In the Revista and the Anales of the La Plata Museum
will be found part of the research made during this period
(1897-1900) by Argentine experts ; especially the work of
Burckhardt and Wehrli on the Neuquen Cordillera. The
Chilean work which served as the basis of the SiatemaU
presented on behalf of Chile in reply to the Argentine Report

286 BIBLIOGRAPHY

(London, 1902, 4 vols, and 2 vols, as appendices) is, on the
whole, less valuable.

Of later travellers we must mention P. D. Quensel, " On
the influence of the Ice Age on the continental watershed
of Patagonia " {Bull. Geol. Inst. Univ. Upsala, ix, 1908-9,
pp. 60-92), and " Geologisch-petrographische studien in der
Patagonischen Cordillera " (ibid., xi, 1912, pp. 1-114).

Very important surveys in the Cordillera and on the
plateau of the Rio Negro were made under the direction
of Bailey Willis {Northern Patagonia, Ministry of Public
Works, Bureau of Railways, Argentine Republic ; text and
maps by the Comision de Estudios hidrologicos, Bailey
Willis Director, 1911-1914, New York, 1914, i vol and atlas).

On the Patagonian forest (Argentine slope from 40° S. lat.
to Cape Horn) see Max Rothkugel, Los Bosques Patagonicos
(Minist. Agric, Direccion Gen. Agric. y Defensa Agricola :
Officina de Bosques y Yerbales, Buenos Aires, 1916).

9. The Pampean Region.

The occupation of the western part of the Pampa between
1875 and 1880 led to a fairly large amount of research. The
most important work is the Informe oficial de la Comisidn
cientifica agregada al Estado Mayor General de la Expedicidn
al Rio Negro, vol. iii, Geologia, by Dr. Ad. Doering (Buenos
Aires, 1882). We must also notice G. Ave-Lallemant,
*' Excursion al Territorio indio del Sud " {Bol. Inst. Geogr.
Argent., ii, 1881, pp. 41-49) ; D. Dupont, " Notas geograficas
sobre el pais de los Ranqueles {Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent.,
1790, pp. 47-56) ; and Est. Zeballos, Descripcion amena de
la Repuhlica Argentina, vol. i, Viaje al pais de las Araucanos
(Buenos Aires, 1881).

Of general works on the Pampa and the Pampean deposits :

Fl. Ameghino, La formacidn Pampeana (Paris and Buenos
Aires, 188 1), and " Las formaciones sedimentarias de la
regi6n litoral de Mar del Plata y Chapalmalan " {An. Mus,
Nac. Buenos Aires, series ii, vol. x, 1908, pp. 348-428).

G. Bodenbender, " La cuenca del valle del rio Primero
en C6rdoba : Descripcion geologica del valle del rio Primero
desde la Sierra de Cordoba hasta la Mar Chiquita " {Bol.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 287

Acad. Nac. Ciencias Cdrdoba, xii, 1890, pp. 1-54) ; and
" Die Pampa Ebene in Osten der Sierra von C6rdoba in
Argentinien " (Petermann's Mitteilungen, 1893, pp. 201-237
and 258-264).

Santiago Roth, " Beobachtungen ueber Entstehung und
Alter der Pampasformationen in Argentinien " (Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Geol. Ges., xi, 1888, pp. 375-464) ; " Beitrag
zur Gliederung der Sedimentablagerungen in Patagonien und
der Pampas Region " (Neues Jahrhuch fiir Min., Geol., und
Paleont., Beilage, Band xxvi, Stuttgart, 1908, pp. 92-150) ;
and " La construcci6n de un Canal de Bahia Blanca a las
provincias andinas bajo el punto de vista hidrogeologico "
(Rev. Museo de la Plata, xvi, 1909).

Nouvelles recherches sur la formation pampeenne et I'homme
fossile de la Republique argentine. A collection of scientific
articles published by R. Lehmann-Nitsche (Rev. Mus. Plata,
xiv, 1907, pp. 143-488), which contains, especially, one by
C. Burckhardt, " La formation pampeenne de Buenos Aires
et Santa F^," and one by Ad. Doering, '* La formation
pampeenne de C6rdoba."

Ales Hrdlicker, Early Man in South America (Smithsonian
Institution, Bull. 52, Washington, 1912 — geological part by
Bailey Willis).

On the district of the Central Pampa, R. Stappenbeck,
*' Investigaciones hidrogeologicas de los valles de Chapalco
y Quehue y sus alrededores " (Min. Agric, Dir. Gen. Minas,
Geol., e Hidrol., Bol. No. 4, Buenos Aires, 1913).

On various points in detail one may consult : —

Lavalle y Medici, " Las nivelaciones de la Provincia "
(Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent., vii, 1866, pp. 57-71).

P. A. Bovet, El Problema de los Medanos en el Pais (Buenos
Aires, 1910).

R. Velasco, ** Los Medanos de la Provincia de C6rdoba "
(Bol. Dep. Gen. Agric. y Ganaderia, Prov. C6rdoba, i, pp. 155-

173).

Among descriptions of an economic character, which are
generally of poor value, we must make an exception in favour
of Emile Daireaux, La vie et les moeurs d la Plata (Paris,
1889).

A few useful notes on colonization will be found in Teod.
Morsbah, " Estudios economicos sobre el Sud de la Provincia

288 BIBLIOGRAPHY

de Buenos Aires " (Bol Inst. Geog. Argent., ix, 1888, pp. 143-
151) and in E. Segui, " La provincia de Buenos Aires " {Bol.
Inst. Geog. Argent., xix, 1898, pp. 419-440).

A very useful summary of the results of a general inquiry
into agriculture will be found in " Investigaci6n agricola en
la Rep. argent " (Anales Min. Agric. Agronomia, vol. i.
No. I, 2 and 3, Buenos Aires, 1904 : " Preliminares," by
Carlos D. Girola, ** Investigaci6n agricola en la region septen-
trional de la Provincia de Buenos Aires," by Ricardo J.
Huergo, and " Investigaci6n agricola en la Provincia de
Santa F6," by Hugo Miatello).

With this inquiry is associated G. D. Girola, El cultivo
del trigo en la provincia de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires,
1904).

Agricultural censuses have been taken repeatedly. For
1888 F. Latzina, Vagriculture et le hetail dans la Repuhlique
argentine (Paris, 1889). For 1895 (Secundo censo, see Popula-
tion) the results are given in C. P. Salas, Bureau central de
Statistique de la province de Buenos Aires and Vagriculture,
Velevage, et le commerce dans la province en 1895 (La Plata,
1897 ; maps by Delachaux). For 1908, Censo agro-pecuario
nacional. La ganaderia y la agricultura en 1908 (Buenos
Aires, 3 vols, quarto, 1909). Vol. iii contains a series of
monographs dealing not only with the Pampean region, but
the economic history of the whole country.

For 1914 {Tercer censo, see Population) the publication
of vol. V, relating to agriculture, is unfortunately delayed.
There is also available a census of cattle made in 1915 for
the Buenos Aires province, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Min,
Ohras Publicas, Censo Ganadero (1916).

10. The Railways.

For the history of the railways see Rebuelto, " Historia
del desarollo de los ferrocarriles argentinas " {Bol. Ohras
Publicas, vol. v, 1911, pp. 113-172, vol. vi, 1913, pp. 1-48
and 81-110, and vol. viii, 1913, pp. 1-32), and the entire
series of the Boletin de Ohras Publicas.

A sort of annual of the Argentine railways has been pub-
lished every year since 1906 under the title Killik's Argentine
Railway Manual (London, i vol. with map, last issue 1918).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 289

11. The Parana.

E. A. S. Delachaux, " Los problemas geograficos del
territorio Argentine " (Rev. Univ. Buenos Aires, 1906, v),
includes a study of the floods of the Parand.

The chief source is the memoir of Repossini, " Memoria
sobre el rio Parand '* [Bol. Obras Puhlicas, vol. vi, 1912,
pp. 141-168 and 254-264, vol. vii, 1912, pp. 31-48 and
163-186, and vol. viii, 1913, pp. 33-99). It contains on a
reduced scale the map issued by the Ministry of Public Works,
which is not available in France. The defect is supplied
by the EngUsh Admiralty Charts, " Rio de la Plata,"
1869 (No. 2544 in the Catalogue of Admiralty Charts), and
" River Parana," parts i, ii, iii, iv, v, and vi of 1905 (Nos.
1982/A and 1982/B).

There is an interesting economic summary in W. S. Barclay,
" The River Parana, an economic survey " (Geogr. Journal,
xxxiii, 1909, pp. i-io).

On the estuary : —

Alej. Foster, " Regimen del Rio de la Plata y su correcci6n "
{An. Soc. Cient. Argent., Iii, 1901, pp. 209-234).

G. Rovereto, " Studi di geomorfologia argentina," ii,
'* II rio della Plata " {Bol. Soc. Geol. Ital., xxx, 1911).

12. Population.

Besides municipal and provincial censuses, there have
been three general censuses :

First census made in 1869, one folio volume published
in 1872. I have only been able to consult Oficina del Censo.
Informe sobre la operacidn y resultado del Primer censo argen-
tino (Buenos Aires, 1870, octavo).

Second census of the Argentine Republic, May 10, 1895
(2 vols, quarto, Buenos Aires, 1898).

Tercer Censo Nacional levantado el 1° de junio de 1914 (10
vols, quarto, Buenos Aires, 1916-1917). Only the fifth
volume, on agriculture, is not yet to hand.

A geographical interpretation of the distribution of the
population was attempted by E. A. S. Delachaux, " La
poblaci6n de la Rep. Argent." {Rev. Univ. Buenos Aires,
iii, 1905).

19

INDEX

Abipones, the, 24
Acequia, the, 45, 69, 83
Aconcagua, 19, 38, 59, 70, 71
iEohan deposits, 21, 124, 170
Agricultural Centres Law, the, 202
Aguadas, 61, 210
Algarrobas, 39, 54, 64
Alhuampa, 113
Alumine, the, 128, 129
Ambrosetti, J. B., 136, 282
Ameghino, F., 168
Andalgala, 42
Andes, the Argentine, 19, 37, 46,

54. 57. 70. 126
Andes, the Patagonian, 19, 120,

126, 129
Afiecon, 122, 151
Antof4gasta, 54, 55
Apipe rapids, the, 239
Apostoles, 116
Araucanians, the, 24, 121
Argentine hydrographic service,

254
Arrieros, the, 51, 216, 217
Arroyo del Rey, 26
Asses, trade in, 53
Atamisqui, 97, 98
Atuel, the, 81, 84
Azcarate, 51, 52

Bahfa Blanca, 25, 32, 148, 155,
164, 168, 173, 198, 223, 227,
271

Bajada Grande, the, 242, 243

Bamboo, 133

BaHados, the, 62, 63, 67, 97, 98, 10 1

Barra del Indio, the, 253

Barrancas, 17, 245

Pasalt, 122, 125, 1^9

W

Basques in Argentina, 183, 186

Bellavista, 246

Bellville, 167, 188

Bermejo, the, 40, 115

Bodegueros, 87-90

Bodenbender, G., 40, 57, 168, 286

Bolivia, relations with, 48, 50, 52,

53. 70
Boman, E., 47, 282
Brackebusch, L., 48, 54, 278, 282
Brazil, 109, 116, 182, 235
Breeding, 22, 131, 179, 188, 189
Briti.sh Navy in Argentine waters,

238, 24, 252
Buenos Aires, 17, 29, 30, 32, 57,

109, 112, 155, 159. 164, 184,

209, 218, 220, 239, 254, 259,

272-275
Burruyacu, Sierra de, 72, 73

Calchaqui, 48, 54
Caldenes, 163
Caiiadas, 107
CaHadones, 12 2-1 41
Candelaria, no, 116
Caneros, the, 74, 75
Carcarafia, the, 171, 212, 246
Carilaufquen, the, 141
Carmen, 130

Carri Lauquen, Lake, 128. 151, 157
Catamarca, 31, 43, 45, 55. 80
Cattle, Creole, 22, 131, 179-183.

189
Cattle, pedigree, 22, 188, 189
Cattle fairs, 209
Cattle trade, the, 48, 50, 53, 66.

80, 131, 179-189, 206-208
Catuna, 62
Cedar-fore6ts, 109

292

INDEX

Central Argentine Railway, 76,

191, 220, 225
Central C6rdoba, 74, 76, 91, 104,

221
Central Norte Railway, 114
Cerco, the, 63
Cerro Payen, the, 119, 136
Cerros Colorados, 150, 151
Chaco, the, 32, 78, 96, 104-115
Chaco, Saltefio, the, 58-60
Chamical, 62
Chanares, 163
Charcoal-burners, 112
Chicago and Buenos Aires, 17
Chile, relations with, 25, 29, 30,

48, 49,53, 54. 57,134,137.138.

204, 205, 210
Chile road, the, 210, 213
Chilean flour, 79
Chiriguanos, the, 79
Chivilcoy, 190, 194, 195, 212, 263
Choele Choel, 133, 134, 149
Chosmalal, 120, 137, 144
Chubut, the, 138, 140, 155
Climate, 46, 70, 71, 72, 77, 80, 92,

119, 120, 139
Coilrue, the, 127
Colalao del Valle, 42
Colastine, 226, 253
Colonia, 251, 252
Colonies, the, 191, 193, 195, 196
Colonization Companies, 202
Colonos, 75
Colorado, the, 172
Conlara, 178
Cordillera, the, 19, 20, 48, 81, 121,

126, 129
C6rdoba, 29, 33, 50, 57, 164
C6rdoba, Sierra de, 209
Corrientes, 32, 49, 102, 107, 108,

189, 215, 257, 269
Costa, the, 41, 42, 60
Cruz Alta, 73, 74, 75
Cuarto, the Rio, 25, 211
Cuenca Vidal, 155
Cumbre Tunnel, 222
Cuyo, 79, 85, 86, 96
Cypresses, 127

Daireaux, E., 187, 193, 287

Dairies, 186, 190, 193

Dams, 69-70

Darwin, C, 23, 123, 133, 170, 217,

280
D'Azara, F., 25, 28, 49, 102, 174,

180, 212, 279, 280
Dead valleys, 122, 129
Demarcacidn, 44
Diamante, 248, 249
Diamante, the, 81, 84
Diez y seis de Octubre, 120, 144
Doering, A., 168, 286
Dolores, 178
D'Orbigny. A., 130, 131, 133, 142.

180, 236, 237, 280
Drainage, 83

Drought, 65, 66, 105, 120
Dulce, the Rio, 97, 98
Dunes, 173, 174, 181
Durham cattle, 189, 207

English Bank, the, 252
Entre Rios, 169, 182, 186, 194
Epecuen Lake, 212
Exhibition, San Francisco, 7

Falda, the, 73, 74

Famatina, Sierra de la, 40

Fiords, the Patagonian, 20, 128

Flax, 176, 196, 197

Floods, 97, 99, 211

Floods on the rivers, 240, 241

Forests, 23, 96-118

Forts, the early, 26, 27

Frontiers, early, 25

Funes, Dean G., 30, 179

Galeria, the, 218

Gallegos, 120, 121, 136

Garcia, Colonel, 27, 182, 183, 210

Garrapate, the, 22, 189, 207

Gauchos, 218

Gauge, differences of, 221, 222,

231, 232
General La valle, 165
Geological formations, 40, 121,

122, 124-126, 129, 166, 168
Glaciers, the Patagonian, 19, 36,

123, 128, 129
Gold, 138

INDEX

293

Goods, traffic, analysis of, 228-231
Granite, 121, 125, 149
Guapichas, 54
Guayra, the, 246

Harvest, labour and the, 266
Helms, A. Z., 51
Hides, 178-180
Holmberg, E. L., 23, 281
Hrdlicka. A.. 168. 287
Huari, 56
Hutchinson, F. J., 50

Immigration, 9, 116, 137, 191,

263, 264
Indians, relations with the, 24-28,

47. 131-135
Indians, the Patagonian, 1 31-135
Ingeniero White, 226
Intrusos, 139, 157
Invernadas, the, 51, 53, 60, 65, 183
Irrigation, 36, 41-46, 61, 64, 74,

83-86, 144, 154
Itinerary of author, 6
Ituzaingo, 246, 257

Japan, trade with, 8
Jegou, A., 205
Jerked meat, 115
Jesuit missions, 1 10
Jujuy, 38, 56, 77
Junin, 194

Labour-supply, 76, 77, 79, 88,

108-111
Lacar, Lake, 144
Land-ownership, 61, 201-203
Land, speculation in, 201
Lanin, Mount, 128-147
Larch, the, 146
La Rioja, 32, 33, 59. 80, 209
Ledesma, 78
Lenga, the, 127
Lima, 29, 48
Limay, the, 120, 123, 124, 130,

146. 154
Lincoln sheep, 184
Los Sauces, 41
Lucerne-farms, 53, 67, 155, 176-

178, 196

Lumbrera, Sierra de la, 58, 70,
77,

Mackann, W., i8o, 280
Maize, 71, 192-194. 197, 198, 230
Mallin, 124, 125, 142, 151
Manantiales, 142, 148
Maquinchao, 148, 150, 151, 153.

158
Mar Chiquita, 113, 162, 173, 176,

191
Markets, Argentine, 203-210
Martin Garcia, 166, 251, 253
Matacos, the, 79
Mali, 33, 109-112, 117
Matto Grosso, 117, 235
Mayten, 128
Mejia, Ramos, 224
Mendoza, 19, 32, 33, 50, 57, 79-

93, 218, 270, 271
Merced, the, 61, 67
Mercedario, 19
Merino sheep, 184
Mesopotamia, the Argentine, 18
Miatello, 176
Migrations of cattle, 65, 143, 157-

159

Migrations of indigenous popula-
tion, 264-267

Misiones, 33, 109- 112, 115

Molle, 127

Monte, the, 22, 96

Montevideo, 238, 251

Moussy, Martin de, 25, 50, 204, 210

Muleteers, the, 216-7

Mule-trade, the, 49, 51-2, 53, 55

Nahuel Huapi, Lake.

120.

126,

127, 130, 132, 133,

144.

225.

245. 247
Navigation, statistics of,
Negro, the Rio, 32, 80,

258
119.

121.

130^ 153
Negroes captured, 131
Neuquen, the, 129, 130.

137.

138.

153

Oases, 36, 41, 86

Oats, 199

Obrajes, the, 103- 1 05, 107

294

Olavarria, 194
Olta, 62
Omber, the, 163
Ortiz Bank, the, 252
Otway Water, 129, 136

Pagancillo, 40

Pampa, the, 17, 21, 33, 161-208,

261, 262
Pampa, extent of the, 102
ParaboHc tariffs, 226
Paracao, 248

Paraguay, 109, no, 236, 269
Paraguay, the river, 116, 165, 235,

241, 247
Paraisos, 175
Parana, the, 17, 26, iii, 112, 171,

214, 234. 236-50
Parand de las Palmas, the, 250,

252. 253
Parand Guazu, the, 251
Parand Mini, the, 253
Parish, Sir Woodbine, 30, 100, 130,

182, 213, 215, 261, 280
Paso Paraguayo, the, 250
Pasto duke, 23, 24, 183
Pasio duYo, 23, 24, 183
Pasto fuerio, 23
Patagones. 153, 154
Patagonia, 11 9- 160
Pehuenches, the, 24, 131
Peru, relations with, 28, 29, 49, 51
Peru road, the, 209, 210, 213, 214,

216
Piedra Blanca, 43
Pine forests, 109
Plata, Rio de la, 28, 29. 234, 239
Playa Honda, the, 252, 253
Poma, 56
Poncel, B., 31, 53
Population, growth of, 261-263
Ports, 225

Portuguese, relations with the, 235
Posadas, in, 116, 242, 248, 249
Potatoes, 205

Pozos del Barca Grande, 253
Protectionism, 93, 94
Puerto Belgrano, 232
Pumpkin, the, 100
Puna, the, 37, 33

INDEX

Puna de Atacama, 47, 48
Punta Arenas, 136

Quebracho, the, 23, 96, 103, 256-7
Quebracho Herrado, 26
Quebradas, 38, 41, 53
Quetriquile, 151
Quinto, the Rio, 26
Quiroga, 59

Railways, 74, 76, 91, 104, 114, 191,

211, 220-233
Railway tariffs, 226
Rainfall, 21, 38, 39, 71, 72, 80,

120-121, 164
Ranqueles, the, 24, 131
Refrigerators, 143, 187, 188, 209
Repossini, 254
Represa, the. 64, 210
Riachucho, 247
Rincones, 180
River-floods, 240, 241, 243
River-traffic, 235-258
Roads, 210-220
Roca, General, 26, 27
Rosario, 92, 164, 171, 173, 191,

ii5, 221, 239. 245, 253
Rosario de Lerma, 55, 56
Rosas, General, 30, 238

Saladeros, 184, 189

Salado, the, 23, 26, 112, 171

Sali, the, 69, 77

Salitral, 124, 149

Salt Lakes, the, 24

Salt Road, the, 212

Salta, 29, 32, 33, 38, 46, 48, 51,

59, 70. 214, 218
San Cristobal, 114
San Feliciano, 248
San Javier, no, 114, 249
San Jose, 116, 134
San Juan, 19, 32, 33, 50, 66, 79. 82
San Lorenzo, 249
San Luis, 33
San Pedro, 78, 289, 250
San Rafael, 80, 81, 82, 172, 177
Sancho, 71
Santa Cruz, the, 120, 121, 123

INDEX

295

Santa F6, 26, 52, 112, 114, 175,

191, 196, 198, 253
Santa Maria, 55, 56, 77
Santiago del Estero, 26, 28, 50,

60. 77, 97. 113
Saw-mills, 106-8
Scrub, the, 22, 96
Seasonal migrations, 266
Selective breeding, 21, 179 188

189
Sheep-breeding, 139-144. 183-186
Shipping, 236. 740, 253-259
Sierra de los Llanos, 59-63, 67
Sierra d'Ulapes, 66
Somuncura, 122, 152
Spaniards, the early, 28, 29, 48
Stage-coaches, 210
Straits of Magellan, 129
Sugar-industry, the, 69-79
Suerte de agua, the, 85

Tablelands, the alluvial, 17, 37
Tandil, Sierra de, 25, 172, 179, 182,

184, 190
Tannin, 102, 105, 106, 107
Tehuelches, the, 131
Texas fever, 22, 189
Teran, M. J. B., 7
Tercero, the Rio, 211, 213
Tierra del Fuego, 128, 140
Tinogasta, 48
Tobacco, 10 1
Tobas, the, 24, 26
Toma, the, 63

Tosca, the, 123, 172, 173, 178
Tostado, 114
Trans- Andean railway, 220, 221,

222
Transhumation, 143, 156-159, 182
Transport, evolution of, 215-220,

228
Travelling, early difficulties of,

211-219, 237-238
Travesias, the, 52, 60, 142, 211
Tronador, Mount, 128, 147
Troperos, the, 217-19
Tucum&n, 29. 32. 33, 69-79, 218,

221, 270, 271
Tunuyan, the, 81, 82

Tupungato, 19
Turno. the, 44, 85. 86

United States, comparison with

32. 34
United States, trade with, 8
Urban centres, 268, 269
Urquiza, 26, 180, 215
Uruguay, 116
Uruguay, the river, no, 235, 238,

259
Useless Bay, 129

Valcheta, 122, 123, 149, 150. 153

Valle de Lerma, 48, 54

Valle Viejo. 43, 45

Voiles, 37-48

Vegas, 54, 144

Veinte cinco de Mayo, 194, 262

Ventana, Sierra de, 172, 182, 198,

199
Villa Concepci6n, 1 10
Villa Maria, 113, 213
Villa Mercedes, 25, 66, 113, 164,

174. 177. 207. 221
Villa Parani, 245
Villa Rica, no, in
Villarino, 130, 133
Villa Urquiza, 244
Vilque, 56
Vifiatores, 87-93
Vineyards, 80-93
Volcada de agua, 45
Volcanic eruptions, 122, 125

Wagons, travel by. 216, 217
War, the European, effect of, 8
Water-power in Patagonia, 146
Water-rights, 43-46, 61, 64, 84-86
Water-supply, 36, 38, 39. 41-46.

61, 64, 72. 83-86, 141, 154. 181
Welsh in Patagonia, 138
Wheat, 190-192, 194, 198, 199,

230
Wheelwright, 221
Wild cattle, 1 79-1 81
Willis, Bailey, 138, 146, 147. 152.

171
Wind, action of the, 20, 124. 170

296

Wine-industry, the, 80-95
Wool, 139. 183-185

INDEX

Yguassu, the, 242, 246, 257

Yerbales, the, 49, 109-112, 115,
117

Zapala, 156, 158
Zeballos, 204, 213
Zonda, the, 41

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THE BUENOS AYRES

GREAT SOUTHERN RAILWAY

COMPANY, LIMITED

CAPITAL AND LOANS.

ORDINARY STOCK £29.090.000

5 % PREFERENCE STOCK 8,000.000

4 % DEBENTURE STOCK 15,605,797

4i % DEBENTURE STOCK- SaladiUo Branch—

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OFFICES OF THE COMPANY:
iti LOMDOM ' RlwBf Platm Houme, Finaburv Ctroua, E.C.S.
tut BUENOS AYRES, Laeal CommlUoo-Oallo Cangallo, 534..
Oanmral Mmnmomr and Gmnmral Officos—

Plaxa OonstiiuGiott Station.

THE Company owns and works a system of rai ways 3,947 miles in
length, which serves the greater part of the province of Buenos
Ayres, and possesses terminal stations in the City of Buenos Ayres, La
Plata, Mar del Plata, Zapala, Bahia Blanca, and Carmen de Patagones.

The Company also possesses interchange stations for the transport
of traffic with the Western Railway at Marmol, Barracas al Sud, Merlo
and Carhu6, and also with the Bahia Blanca and North-Western
Railway at Bahia Blanca, Darragueira, and with the Midland Railway
at Buenos Ayres and Carhue.

The Company has direct access to all ports of the Province of
Buenos Ayres, having entered into an agreement with the Southern
Dock Co., in which it possesses a large proprietary interest, and is con-
nected by means of its own hues with the Government Docks in
Buenos Ayres. In La Plata the Southern Railway has direct access to
the large docks which were ceded to the National Government by the
Provincial Government, and the Port Hues there are worked by the
Company for account of the Government.

At Bahia Blanca the Company has constructed large steel moles,
and also a mole for loading cereals, which are provided with elevators,
electric cranes and other modern machinery for the rapid and economical
loading and discharging of merchandise, and providing accommodation
for some 20 ocean-going ships. At this port and at the Southern Dock,
Buenos Ayres, tanks have been erected for the storage of fuel oil,
-which is largely used in locomotives throughout the system.

Besides the commercial ports above referred to, the Railway Company
serves two or three popular holiday resorts which are yearly becoming
more frequented, such as Mar del Plata, Miramar and Necochea on
the coast, and Sierra de la Ventana and Tandil situated in the hilly
districts of the Province.

CENTRAL ARGENTINE

RAILWAY

The Direct and Express Route between Buenos Aires
and Rosario, Cordoba, Santa F^, Santiago del Estero and
Tucuman, with connections to the Northern Provinces,

LUXURIOUS FIRST-CLASS DINING AND SLHEPING
COACHES.

High-cloBs Catering at moderate priceM.

Fast Trains to the health resort of Alta Gracia
and the Cordoba Hills. Excursion Tickets at
special fares, including railway transportation
and hotel accommodation for seven, fourteen,
or thirty days.

QUICKEST ROUTE TO THE NORTHERN PROVINCES
in connection with the Argentine State Lines at Tucuman.

Excellent service of Electric and Steam Trains to and

from the Buenos Aires Suburban Districts, including

TIGRE, the Argentine Henley.

For further mfovmation apply to : —

HOWARD WILLIAMS, C.B.E., General Manoier.

Information Bureau,

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THE SOUTH AMERICAN
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