CHAPTER IV

THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS

Manual labour on the _obrajes_--The land of the _bañados_ and the agricultural cantons of Corrientes--The timber-yards of the Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Paraná--The exploitation of the _maté_--The forestry industry and colonization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The use of _bañados_ for agriculture is of long standing. It probably goes back to the pre-Columbian period. Father Dobritzhoffer, who is the first to refer clearly to it, compares the Rio Dulce to the Nile[44]; and in point of fact, the _bañados_ have some resemblance to farming in Pharaonic Egypt, while there is nothing like them in the irrigated zones of the Andean valleys. The _bañados_ were then devoted to the cultivation of wheat and pumpkins. The pumpkin, which is of American origin, had not yet been eliminated by wheat, which was introduced by the Spaniards. The wheat produced in the _bañados_ maintained a fairly active export trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the _bañados_ were at times called, with some exaggeration, the "granary of the Vice-royalty." It is difficult to trace accurately the movements of the population of the _bañados_ because of the constant changes of the administrative areas in the province of Santiago. The total population of the province is not now more than three per cent. of the total population of Argentina, but its comparative importance was much greater in the middle of the nineteenth century (nearly eight per cent. at the census of 1861). The departments of Loreto, Atamisqui, and Salavina on the Rio Dulce, which live mainly on the estates of the _bañados_, comprised 46,000 inhabitants in 1861, and only 43,000 in 1895. The Woodbine Parish map and Hutchinson's description clearly give one an impression of a dense population in the area of the _bañados_. I refer elsewhere to the antiquity and constancy of the streams of temporary immigration which spread the population of the _bañados_ over a large part of the territory of Argentina.[45] The temporary emigration of the Santiagueños is distributed amongst most of the provinces of central and northern Argentina, but it is chiefly of interest in connection with the frontier region. The Santiagueño is a woodman above all else, and the forest area has the advantage over the other labour-markets of wanting workers at all seasons, summer or winter, whereas the sugar-cane harvest at Tucumán and the harvest in the south only last a few months. They emigrate from the _bañados_ to Tucumán in May; to Córdoba and Santa Fé in October, November and December; but to the forests of the Chaco all the year round.

[44] _Historia de Abiponibus._

[45] See the chapter on population.

Apart from the _bañados_ of the Dulce and the Salado, the province of Corrientes contains the main reservoir from which the timber industry drew its manual workers. Just as at Santiago del Estero, one finds at Corrientes also the 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 hills of sand and red clay, punctuated by lagoons, which crosses the north-western corner of the province, is not subject to their domination. There the land is subdivided; there are once more fields. Tobacco was an article of export for this fraction of Corrientes, especially after the political isolation of Paraguay, the chief producer of tobacco in the nineteenth century. During the whole of the first half 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 complete in itself. Here again agricultural colonization has created a relatively dense nucleus of population, capable of great increase. Although the administrative divisions do not exactly correspond with the natural divisions, the unequal distribution of the population in Corrientes is made plain by the figures given in the census of 1895. The density rises in the agricultural areas to eight inhabitants per square kilometre, in the department of Bellavista; ten at San Cosma; fourteen at Lomas; thirty at San Roque. It is only between one and two in the purely pastoral departments (Concepción and Mercedes).

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

[46] Val. Virasoro, "Los esteros y lagunas del Ibera" in _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._ (vi. 1887; pp. 305-31).

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

[47] _Diario de la navegacion y reconocimiento del Rio Tibicuari_ (Coll. de Angelis, vol. ii.).

* * * * *

The Santiagueños and Correntinos do not mix. The two zones of expansion and of forestry, of which they are the pioneers, are independent of each other. The _quechua_, which is the language of the _bañados_ of the Rio Dulce, is spoken in the timber-yards of the Chaco de Santiago; the _guarani_, the language of Corrientes and the Paraguay, is most common along the river, in the Chaco de Santa Fé. Their respective spheres will not come into touch with each other until the Quimili branch of the Central Norte Railway, which comes from the Santiago province, joins the line of penetration at Resistencia, on the Paraná, in the west.

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

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

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

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

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

While the Chaco de Santiago is now a democracy of small _obrajeros_ and contractors, the eastern Chaco, along the Paraná, has quite a different type of society. It is entirely in the hands of the big tannic-acid factories, where the _quebracho_ trunks are stripped and boiled, and their sap is concentrated in a viscous resin. The lofty chimneys of these works rise above the forest at intervals. Here the work assumes a capitalistic and industrial character which it has not in other places. It is controlled by powerful concerns, highly organized, which conduct it on a pre-arranged plan. It is true that the works do not deal with the entire output of _quebracho_,[48] but they almost control the market, even as regards the unworked wood which is exported, and they reserve a good deal of it for their branches in Europe. In order to secure the heavy loans which the works represent, the companies that have built them have been obliged to take over large forests, and they have come to own these. The concentration of the area in their hands goes on daily, and the number of companies is reduced by amalgamation or by the purchase of rival concerns and their estates. On the territory of the Chaco, where the administration of public lands was in the hands of the Federal Government, some precautions were taken to prevent the monopoly of the country; but the forests of the province of Santa Fé belong entirely to two firms.

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

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

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

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

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

The last forestry centre in modern Argentina is in the province of Misiones on the upper Paraná. Posadas is its chief station, and protects its southern outlet. Its influence extends beyond the Argentine frontier, over a small part of Brazil and Paraguay. In Misiones there are two types of forest, which differ a good deal from each other, while neither resembles the _quebracho_ forest. One is the forest of araucarias (_pinos_) which covers the elevated tablelands at a height above 2,000 feet. The other is the tropical forest, rich in essences and of perennial vegetation, which fills the bottoms and slopes of the valleys. The pine, which is also much worked on the Brazilian tableland, yields an excellent white wood, suitable instead of the northern pine. It would find a ready market at Buenos Aires, but it has never been worked on Argentine territory because of the great distance of the woods from a navigable river. On account of its position on the tableland the araucaria has to wait for the railways of some future date.[49] As to the leafy tropical forest it includes a number of useful varieties (_timbo_, _lapacho_, _etc._), but the most esteemed of all is the cedar. Its wood is rose-coloured, scented, and fine-grained, and very suitable for furniture. At the time of D'Orbigny's travels the inhabitants of Corrientes were looking out for cedars from the mountains brought down the river when in flood. The _obrajes_ of cedar-wood now extend twenty miles or so on the Argentine bank, and forty miles in the Paraguay bank, which is more even and better for transport. The trunks are floated in rafts down to Posadas; as the cedar, which is less dense than the _quebracho_, not only floats, but is improved by parting with sap in the water. At Posadas the rafts are taken to pieces, and the trunks are delivered to the saw-mills.

[49] In Brazil the saw-mills for the araucarian pines are established along the São Paolo-Rio Grande Railway.

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

The plantations made by the Jesuits were abandoned when the missionaries were dispersed. After the close of the eighteenth century Paraguay became the chief area of production. Villa Rica seems to have been the most prolific centre of the _yerba_. After that date, however, the Jujuy basin, further north, was exploited, and the _yerbateros_, who came from Curuguati, advanced eastward as far as the Falls of the Guayra on the Paraná. In the nineteenth century the trade in Paraguay _maté_ seems to have suffered less than the tobacco trade from the policy of isolation adopted by the Dictators of Paraguay. The descriptions given by Mariano Molas, Demersay, and others, show that the business continued fairly actively. It even extended northward, and reached as far as the Rio Apa. Villa Concepción became a rival _yerba_ market to Villa Rica. The monopoly exercised by the Paraguay Government, however, and the restrictions put upon the navigation of the river, led to the development of the _yerba_ industry in the eastern Misiones on the left bank of the Uruguay. Itaquy served as port of embarkation. In the last third of the nineteenth century the yards moved from the left to the right bank of the Uruguay. Since 1870 the Paraná has supplanted the Uruguay, and the _yerba_ trade has concentrated at Candelaria. This meant the resurrection of Misiones. In 1880 San Javier, on the Uruguay, worked up 800 tons of _yerba_, and Candelaria more than 1,000 tons. The _yerbales_ round San Javier began to run out, and the _yerbateros_ had to go further and further up the Uruguay, toward the _yerbales_ of the tableland of Fracan and San Pedro. Candelaria was mainly fed by the _yerbales_ of the right bank of the Paraná, on Paraguayan territory. Posadas has now succeeded Candelaria, and the _yerbales_ that depend upon it are scattered over both banks up the Paraná.

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

The history of forestry and colonization is one of the most diversified chapters in the general economic history of modern Argentina. Round the region of the Pampas, the first point where agricultural colonization came into touch with the forest belt is the district of the older colonies of Santa Fé. There it found the forestry industry already long established, on the banks both of the Salado and of the Paraná. 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 Fé 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, agricultural work spread over the Central Pampa and the province of Córdoba, 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 Paraná, seems on the other hand to be intended for pastoral colonization. In point of fact, the forest of the Chaco, as well as the lighter scrub which is its southern extension, can be used for breeding without preliminary labour. The Indians have fed cattle and horses on it since the seventeenth century. The herds find food on every side, both in the very numerous clearings (_abras_) which cross the forest and in the forest itself, where the underwood and the herbaceous carpet grow fairly thick beneath the scanty foliage of the mimosas and quebrachos.

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

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

Leaving the river and travelling toward the forest on the west, one first crosses a narrow belt of estates which form an almost unbroken line from San Javier to Resistencia. These are old colonies, mostly founded about 1870, at the same time as the first colonies in the centre of Santa Fé. They had the advantage of being within reach of the river-route, the network of railways that serves the colonies of Santa Fé not being constructed until after 1880. They have not shown the same capacity for extension as the colonies on the prairie, but they are firmly rooted, on high and well-drained land, very different from the clays of the Chaco, where the alluvial beds of the Paraná alternate with stuff that seems to come from the left bank. They grow flax, earth-nuts, sugar cane, and cotton. Behind this slight agricultural façade are the large estates of the factories. In the division of the land the industrial firms sought the districts which were richest in _quebracho_. Buyers of land who had no industrial plans--foreign capitalists and Porteños--and who obtained large concessions in little-known regions, sold back to the factories the plots where there was plenty of wood, after they had taken stock of their property. They converted the remainder into _estancias_ (ranches). The district to the north of the Central Norte Railway, from San Cristobal to Tostado, where the forest, which will presently yield to the plain, breaks into patches and looks like a park, includes a number of these modern _estancias_, in which lucerne is beginning to replace the grasses of the natural vegetation.

When one passes to the interior, the pastoral industry at once assumes a more primitive character. The _quebracho_ concerns themselves go in for breeding, in order to make use of their large estates, 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 compelled by drought to fall back upon the river.

Conditions are quite different in the forests of Misiones. The damp forest of Misiones does not lend itself to breeding. While the forest-workers on the west of the Paraná eat fresh meat, thanks to the proximity of the breeders, in the _yerbales_ and _obrajes_ of Misiones, the use of dried or "jerked" meat (_carne seca_), which is brought some distance, has remained the common practice, as it is in most parts of tropical America. On the other hand, there is now developing in Misiones an agricultural colonization of an original kind, quite distinct from the ordinary Argentinian type. This is because Misiones is a province apart in Argentina. It really belongs, by its geological structure and its climate, to the Brazilian tableland. The colonies in Misiones are merely an extension into Argentine territory of the great belt of colonies of southern Brazil, which stretches from the neighbourhood of Santa Catalina and the Rio Grande do Sul to the River Paraguay. The Brazilian type of colonization is based upon work with the hoe, in clearings that have been made in the forest by the axe and by fire. Ordinary farming would be impracticable between the large stumps which the clearers have to leave in the ground, to rot there slowly. It would, moreover, be useless, as the land, though rich in humus, is light and aërated. The red soil, a decomposition-product of the diabases which are at the root of all agricultural wealth in southern Brazil, covers a great part of Misiones. The economic inferiority of this agricultural colonization in the forest to the Pampean type which has conquered the grassy plains of the Rio de la Plata, is twofold. On the one hand, the surface that a man can develop is very small. The plots of the Brazilian colonies are ten times smaller than the average estate on the Pampa. On the other hand, it is difficult to get about in the forest, and this hinders the export of the produce.

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

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

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

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