CHAPTER VI

THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS

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

The Pampean landscape is doubtless one of the most uniform in the world. Its monotony is tiring to the eye; it is partly responsible for the mediocrity of most of the descriptions of the Pampas. But this uniformity is an advantage for the purpose of colonization. Attention has often been drawn to the rapidity with which plants and animals introduced by Europeans spread in the Buenos Aires district, and, pushing ahead of the breeders and farmers, colonized the Pampas. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when the whole extent of the plain beyond the ancient Indian frontier was occupied, the development of it was so much easier because it was possible to use simpler and more uniform methods of exploitation. It needed neither large capital nor long personal experience on the part of the immigrant. Basques and Italians who had only just landed could take an active part in it almost without apprenticeship. The primitive groups of population could advance from one zone of the plain to another and take with them their own methods of farming and breeding, their own form of rural economy.

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

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

[76] 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.

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

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

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

[77] 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 Paraná, from Corrientes to Posadas, just as in passing from Córdoba to Buenos Aires, one notices that the winter minimum decreases, 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.

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

[78] 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 Córdoba, 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 Paraná and have been known since D'Orbigny's time as "granitic sandstones."

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

[79] 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 formation consists almost entirely of loose deposits, sand and clays of various sorts. There is no gravel.[80] Even in the vicinity of the sierras the beds of gravel, with round or angular pebbles, are almost always 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 campaign 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 Paraná, and the layers of shells at San Pedro on the right bank, never penetrated far into the interior of the Pampean region, and one finds no trace of them when one leaves the coast or the river.

[80] Roth claims to have found gravel in the San Nicolas _barranca_ on the Paraná. 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 Paraná, where the beds of river gravel are considerable.

The source of the elements which compose the Pampean alluvia is very uncertain. Their composition does not clearly show their origin. The clays are comparatively rich in calcareous matter, which seems to indicate that they do not come from tropical America or the upper basin of the Paraná. Wright and Fenner insist upon the high proportion of siliceous glass of volcanic origin which they contain, which points to an intense eruptive activity during or before their formation.[81] Doering had already noticed in the Córdoba region the prevalence of beds of volcanic ash, which become thicker as one approaches the sierra. It is certain that the Pampean sierras have had their share in the formation of the Pampean beds. But the main mass is probably of Andean origin. However that may be, as soon as one gets away from the fringe of the mountains, the only variety noticeable in the lands of the Pampa is that which they owe to the conditions in which they have been deposited.

[81] In Ales Hrdlicka, _Early Man in South America_ (Smithsonian Instit. Bull., 52, Washington, 1912).

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

[82] Many attempts have been made to classify the Pampean lands, but the results cannot be regarded as final. Ameghino, who is first and foremost a palæontologist, 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 palæontology 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 Paraná from Rosario to Buenos Aires and the coastal cliff which is a continuation of it, with a break from Enseñada at Mar Chiquita to Bahía Blanca. Ameghino has recognized there a thick series of æolian deposits separated by several discordances, the oldest elements of which, at Bahía Blanca, belong to the Miocene. The second group comprises the cliffs which enclose the valley of the Rio Primero above and below Córdoba. Doering and Bodenbender in this case describe two stages of æolian 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 sufficiently the fact that in the continental formations the most diverse 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[83] 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.

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

[84] In the vicinity of San Luis and Córdoba the hard strata which are called _tosca_ are beds of eruptive ashes.

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

[85] 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.

The action of the wind in shaping the landscape is more clearly seen in the formation of the dunes. When one starts from Buenos Aires or Rosario, and gets beyond the region of the level Pampas, the dunes are the first feature to meet the eye on the surface of the plain. The first fresh dunes are encountered at Carlota, on the line from the Rio Cuarto; at Lavalle on the line from Villa Mercedes; and at Trenque Lauquen on the line from Toay. The dunes spread northward as far as the latitude of Mar Chiquita, but do not enter the Chaco. They are also found in parts of the scrub on the west, but their proper domain is the western border of the steppe, the upper part of the plain at the foot of the Sierra de Córdoba, the south of the San Luis province, and the central Pampa.

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

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

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

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

[86] 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 inequality 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 especially 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 underground water is near the surface. This level marks a limit below which æolian erosion does not take place: a sort of base-level. The periodic variations of level of the underground water reduce or enlarge the undulations of the surface.

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

The lucerne belt is above all a great breeding area for horned cattle, as sheep-pasturage injures the lucerne. It is not nearly so monotonous, however, as the preceding regions. In the south-east, in the Buenos Aires province, the creation of the lucerne farms was undertaken at a time when agricultural colonization had already begun. We therefore find two types of exploitation side by side. The cultivation of maize enters it in the south-west, in spite of the comparatively unfavourable climatic conditions. The centre of the lucerne area in the south of the Córdoba province is also a great agricultural zone; but there agriculture is directly connected with the creation of the lucerne estates. It is, in fact, entrusted to colonists who till the ground for four or five years, and restore it to the owners sown with lucerne at the expiration of their lease. The crops consist almost exclusively of wheat and flax. Lastly, in the west (San Luis province and extreme south-west of Córdoba province) the soil gets increasingly more sandy, and the climate drier. A single tillage suffices to destroy the natural vegetation and clear the place for lucerne. The lucerne fields have been created by the breeders themselves, the sole masters of the region, without the aid of the colonists.

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

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

6. Lastly, the east of the Buenos Aires province, the centre of which is fairly indicated by the little town of Dolores, is the only part of the Pampean plain which has not been reached by agricultural colonization. The land lies low, and is badly drained. The only change that has taken place in the vegetation is a progressive improvement due to the hoofs of the cattle during their long stays there. This pastoral area is clearly limited in the south by the Sierra de Tandil. In the north it is continued in the more varied region that lies between Buenos Aires and the lower Salado, where the alternation of winter pasture on the dry lands and summer pasture in the valleys, encourages the best methods of breeding, and has made it the region of the dairy industry.

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

* * * * *

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

"The real wealth of the province of Buenos Aires," says Dean Funes, "was, and always will be, the trade in hides" (_la pellejería_).[87] A good part of the hides exported came from the hunting of the wild cattle and horses which had grown numerous on the area of the Pampa beyond the Rio Salado.[88] It was mainly after 1778, when trade with Spain had been authorized and there was an increased demand for hides, that the hunting of these ownerless beasts was taken up. Two thousand Spaniards from Buenos Aires, Santa Fé and Mendoza hunted every day, says D'Azara, killing an animal for each of their meals in addition to those they killed for hides. From 1775 to the Revolution, the Spanish Government made continuous efforts to regulate and reduce the massacre of the herds. It laid down penalties for every person selling hides that did not bear his own mark; it farmed out the right to hunt animals with no mark, and organized the destruction of wild dogs, etc. The ranches developed under shelter of this legislation. Still, the Revolution did not witness the end of this cattle-hunting. D'Orbigny took part in 1828 in two hunts of wild horses (_baguales_) in Entre Rios. The Argentine _gaucho_ long retained the ways of a hunter rather than those of a breeder in the strict sense; witness Urquiza's soldiers who, says Demersay, during the campaign of 1846, when they could not find trees to which they could fasten their horses, killed cattle and tied the reins to their horns.

[87] _Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumán_ (3 vols, in 16^{mo}) Buenos Aires, 1816, t. iii, p. 214.

[88] 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 Paraná. There were still some in Entre Rios.

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

MacKann's description of pastoral life in the Buenos Aires province in the middle of the nineteenth century give us a very clear impression of the stage of transition between exploiting the natural increase of a herd that multiplies without man's intervention, and breeding in the strict sense. The value of a horse in the former case is almost exclusively the cost of breaking it in. The breeder is actually anxious when he sees his horses increase, as he fears he may not have the resources for breaking them in. The most formidable of the dangers that threatened the feeble discipline of the herd was drought. That in the year 1827 was a disaster. The animals left the ranches in a body to go southward, where they mixed.[89]

[89] The water problem is not as important for the history of colonization 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 Fé province, round San Francisco). In other places the superficial 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 Santa Fé 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 neighbourhood 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 Bahía 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.

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

[90] V. Galvez, _Memorias de un viejo_ (Buenos Aires, 3 vols, in 16^{mo}, 4th ed, 1889).

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-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.[91] Garcia also notices the importance of the Salado pastures for the ranches of Salto, Areco, and Lujan.[92] The need to remove the herds in the dry season, and to find _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.

[91] _Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortines que garnecen la linea de frontera de Buenos Aires_ (1796), by D. Felix de Azara (Coll. de Angelis, vi.).

[92] _Nueva plan de fronteras de la Provincia de Buenos Aires por el Colonel Garcia_ (1816, Coll. de Angelis, vi.).

* * * * *

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

Wool was for a long time the only product of the sheep-rearing industry. From 1866 onward it was decided to use the hides and tallow also. As the material of the grease-works was cheap, they spread all over the sheep zone. Many ranches had works of their own. From 1867 to 1877 the _saladeros_ that had been built long before for killing cattle undertook the slaughter of sheep on a large scale. The number of sheep sold to the _saladeros_ rose to 3,000,000 a year. In 1880 the first cargoes of frozen mutton were sent abroad. The creation of the grease-works had made no difference to the breeding, but the building of the refrigerators brought about a rapid transformation of the flock. The Lincoln breed, heavier and more meaty, displaced the fine-wool Merinos. This substitution of Lincolns for Merinos is now complete throughout the Pampean region.

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

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

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

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

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

[93] 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).

The number of cattle increases rapidly. In 1875 it was estimated that there were 5,000,000 head of cattle in the province of Buenos Aires. In 1889 there were 8,500,000. Since that date the variations have been comparatively slight. The Census of 1895 gives 7,700,000; that of 1908 gives 10,300,000; that of 1914 gives 9,000,000; and that of 1915 gives 11,300,000.[94] But the value of the cattle has gone up rapidly. The exports of live meat, which lasted from 1889 to 1900, were the beginning of the rise. It was strengthened when the refrigerators ceased to confine themselves to killing sheep and began to buy cattle. The exports of chilled or frozen beef increased after 1898. The value of them rose to 10,000,000 gold piastres in 1904, double that in 1909, and more than quadruple in 1914.

[94] 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.

The difference between the price paid by the refrigerators for pedigree-cattle and the price of animals of creole blood, which the local market takes, hurries up the transformation of the herd. In order to watch reproduction and nurse the pasture, the ranches put up wire-fences. But the breeding methods are especially modified by the introduction of lucerne. It spread in the south of Córdoba and west of the Buenos Aires province from 1895 onward, and from 1905 onward in part of the San Luis province. There were already small lucerne farms in the Buenos Aires province. A description that was written at the end of the eighteenth century speaks of lucerne farms round the town which were reserved for feeding draught cattle.[95] But the area from which the cultivation of lucerne started at the close of the nineteenth century is the district of the Córdoba province that is crossed by the line from Rosario to Córdoba, completed about 1870 to Bellville and Villa Marina. The lucerne farms there were not created by the breeders, and the lucerne was at first intended for export to Rosario and Buenos Aires in the form of dry fodder. The trade in dry fodder has remained good there. The 1908 Census gives 128 square kilometres of lucerne for cutting in the Tercero Abajo department (Villa Maria) and 267 square kilometres in the Union department (Bellville).[96]

[95] Fernando Barrero, _Descripción de las provincias del Rio de la Plata_ (published by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911).

[96] Amongst the specialized industries connected with the development 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 Bahía Blanca.

The lucerne spread southward and south-westward from this point; and the improvement of the herds kept pace with it. I have shown elsewhere how this improvement was checked north of a line along the course of the Paraná, the northern frontier of the Constitución and General Lopez departments, in the province of Santa Fé and on the Rio Cuarto, and in the Córdoba 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 Government 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 Paraná than in Entre Rios and Corrientes. Pedigree animals have been introduced at Santa Fé, not only in the region of the colonies, but further north, in the extreme northern corner of the Pampa (San Cristobal department), colonized by ranchers from the north of Buenos Aires and the south of Santa Fé, who were ousted by the progress of maize. They have brought with them to the new lands the cultivation of lucerne and the methods they followed on their former property. At Corrientes, on the other hand, breeding is an historic industry. The staff of the ranches is indigenous. The pastoral traditions are unchanged.

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

* * * * *

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

It was, however, not at Buenos Aires, but in the Santa Fé province, that modern agricultural colonization began in the nineteenth century. It goes back to the foundation (in 1854) of the colony of Esperanza, west of Santa Fé, from which it was separated by the strip of forest which follows the course of the Salado. European immigrants--Swiss, French, and Piedmontese--had settled there. The early years of colonization at Santa Fé were difficult, and the colonies did not begin to develop rapidly until after 1870. About that date we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé. The first group of colonies was settled in the north, on the bank of the Paraná. In the centre the Esperanza group advanced steadily westward. A third group of colonies lay along the Central Argentine railway from Rosario to Córdoba.

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

[97] The population of the Santa Fé colonies in 1882 was 52,000, of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier, north of the town of Santa Fé.

The 1908 Census shows a very different state of things. The density of the wheat-cultivation has continued to grow appreciably in the whole of the northern region, and also in the south-west of the province, at some distance from the Paraná (General Lopez department). On the other hand, it has been reduced in the adjoining district of Rosario (departments of Iriondo, Belgrana, Caseros, and Constitución), where maize-growing has developed. Maize has won part of the wheat belt.

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

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

[98] The names of departments which belong in their entirety to the maize region are given in italics. 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.

This originality is not so much in virtue of its crops (hard wheat and flax) as on account of the age of colonization and the division of property. Most of the colonists are owners, and estates of 50 to 200 hectares are the rule. The houses are comfortable; they are surrounded by orchards and kitchen-gardens. Moreover, the rural economy has been complicated, and it has assumed a familiar aspect for the European observer, owing to the introduction of cattle-rearing on a small scale by the farmers. The number of horned cattle doubled between 1908 and 1914 in the Castellanos department, and increased by a third in Las Colonias. The area of lucerne has extended in proportion. The farms have been multiplied on the low lands (_cañadas_), unsuitable for wheat, which the older colonists had disdained; but they are now regarded as the best bits of land. The recent rise in the value of land in the region of the colonies is connected, not with an increase of agricultural production, but a development of breeding. A few co-operative dairy societies have been established. In general, however, breeding is solely for the meat-market. The cattle-trade goes on very different lines from those of the large estates and ranches. It has remained in the hands of small dealers (Jews of Moïsesville).

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

Wheat. Maize.

Chivilcoy 307 kms. 399 kms.

Chacabuco 155 " 164 "

Bragado 147 " 261 "

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

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

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 kilometres 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 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.[100]

[100] 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 Fé 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.

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

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

Ihave shown how this was bound up with the development of the lucerne farms themselves. The extreme west of the lucerne belt (Pedernera department and San Luis) is the only place where the cultivated area was reduced. The contracts by which the ranchers entrust their lands to the colonists, on condition of returning them sown with lucerne, were gradually modified as the stream of colonization developed. The land was at first left to the colonist rent free, the rancher being paid by the creation of the lucerne fields. But in proportion to the increasing volume of the stream of immigrants, and the keener competition of the colonists, the rancher asked better terms. There are similar contracts in regard to the restoration of lucerne fields which have been worn out by pasturage, so that the land has to be ploughed up periodically. The men who clear the land in the lucerne belt have mostly been recruited in the district of the old colonies of Santa Fé, where the new generation had begun to feel the pinch. The crops which they raise during the four or five years of their lease are chosen without any idea of sparing lands which they are not to keep. Wheat succeeds wheat, and the first and last crop is often flax. The proportion of flax is lower only in the southern part of the lucerne belt. In the Buenos Aires province the colonist grows lucerne on his own account, either to sell as dry fodder or for breeding or fattening.

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

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

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

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

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

The heavy land requires a good deal of harrowing, and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give employment to a comparatively large staff. The estates are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership was not divided at the period of colonization, the land, thanks to the breeders, having already acquired so high a value that the colonists could not buy it. On the lands which have been farmed out there has developed a rural, and often far from docile, proletariat. It is in the maize region that the worst agricultural strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners and the colonists are the more prolonged because the sowing of the maize can be put back to the end of the spring without much harm being done. The adjoining zone of the Paraná produced some of the _maiseros_ who have scattered over the north-west. But the modern colonies include, in addition, a large proportion of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy and Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the wheat-growers. Each group has its own area.

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

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

Wheat first spread along the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca, west of the Sierra de la Ventana, then in the coastal district, east of Bahía Blanca. These two wheat-areas became connected after 1904, when the opening of the direct line from Olavarria to Buenos Aires facilitated the development of the intermediate region (Pringles-Laprida). From Bahía 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 Fé, to wait for the threshing machine. The aridity does not permit flax-growing, but oats can be grown, especially between the Sierra de la Ventana and the Sierra de Tandil; and it is good to sow oats when the land has been impoverished by consecutive crops of wheat. Exports of oats through Bahía Blanca began in 1906.

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

The colonist, whether breeder or farmer, is not left to himself. Colonization is sustained and directed by speculation in land, and is influenced by it. Speculation discounts the work of the colonist, and attaches to the land a value which is not based upon the revenue it has produced, but upon that which the speculator 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--the uniformity of the Pampean plain, on which every piece of land is worth about as much as the adjoining piece.

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

The action of the Argentine Government and the provincial authorities has been restrained, apart from the earliest period of the establishment of the Santa Fé colonies, both as regards the securing of immigrants, the distribution of lands, and the administration of the colonies.[101] Colonization has been, on the whole, a private affair. The work of organizing colonization has at times been undertaken by the proprietors themselves; they leased pieces of land and got a good price for them, at the same time increasing the surplus value of the plots they kept for themselves by promoting the increase of population. Sometimes it was undertaken by Colonization Companies, which bought land to divide and sell. More frequently it was undertaken by merchants who advanced credit to the colonists they settled, on condition that the colonists bought what they needed of the merchants, and entrusted them with the sale of their crops. The migration of the Santa Fé colonists was partly due to, and sustained by, a corresponding migration of merchants who had acquired wealth in the older colonies, and who thus got a larger body of customers. The merchant who organizes colonization often acts as the intermediary between the owner and the colonist, guaranteeing the owner a fixed rent for his land and receiving so much per cent. of his harvest from the farmer. This system is very widespread in the corn belt, but it is found all over the plain of the Pampas. It tends to disappear when the colony is older and deeper-rooted, as the colonist gradually earns his independence; he buys his lease, his equipment, and his furniture, and controls the sale of his own crops. In the districts where he has not become owner, the leases are generally variations of two types: farming leases, where the colonist has capital enough for working, and renting leases, where the capital is provided by the owner or the middleman.

[101] 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.

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

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

_Table of Exports of the Chief Products of the Pampean region_ (_in thousands of tons_):

---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | 1901 | 1905 | 1910 | 1913 | 1914 ---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Wheat | 904 | 2,868 | 1,883 | 2,812 | 980 Maize | 1,112 | 2,222 | 2,660 | 4,806 | 3,542 Flax | 338 | 654 | 604 | 1,016 | 841 Flour | 71 | 144 | 115 | 124 | 67 Wool | 228 | 191 | 150 | 120 | 117 Salted hides | 28 | 40 | 61 | 65 | 63 Dried hides | 26 | 24 | 29 | 21 | 14 Chilled beef | 44 | 152 | 253 | 306 | 368 Chilled mutton | 63 | 78 | 75 | 45 | 58 ---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------

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

Pastoral colonization, again, has not been entirely independent of the home market. Martin de Moussy says, it is true, that the area which sent the products of breeding to Europe in 1865 extended as far as the Sierra de Córdoba. But this statement needs correction. The hides from the whole of this zone were, in point of fact, sent down to the ports on the Rio de la Plata, but live animals were sent to Chile from the whole of the north-west of the Pampean region. It was for the purpose of selling cattle to Chile that ranches were multiplied about 1860 in the neighbourhood of Villa Mercedes and lower down, on the Rio Quinto. Jegou's description shows that even in 1883 the breeders of the San Luis province devoted themselves exclusively to supplying the Chilean market.[102] Buyers from Chile and the Andean provinces still visit Villa Mercedes, and until a recent date they came to Villa Maria, in the province of Córdoba. The Santa Fé ranches found their customers, until the opening of the Córdoba line (1870) amongst the _troperos_, who bought draught oxen for their waggons. The loss of these customers and the crisis that followed are one of the reasons why agricultural colonization met with so little resistance on the part of the breeders, and was able to take root so easily at Santa Fé. In the San Cristobal department the breeders who settled there after 1890 found their first market in the _obrajes_ of the neighbouring forest. The opening of the railway to Tucumán afterwards enabled them to send their cattle to the provinces of the north-west. The Buenos Aires buyers were late in this remote canton of the Pampean plain. They did not arrive until 1911.

[102] A. Jegou, "Informe sobre la provincia de San Luis," _Ann. Soc. Cientifica Argentina_, xvi. 1883, pp. 140-152, 192-200, and 223-230.

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

The average of production and export for the years 1912, 1913, and 1914, in thousands of tons, is:

------------+--------+--------+-------+----------------- | | | | Total | Wheat. | Maize. | Flax. |(including Oats). ------------+--------+--------+-------+----------------- Production | 4,241 | 6,398 | 931 | 12,662 Export | 2,140 | 4,227 | 790 | 8,038 ------------+--------+--------+-------+-----------------

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

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

According to the 1914 Census oxen are 24 per cent. of the herd in the same departments of eastern Buenos Aires; 24 per cent. also in Entre Rios; and the proportion rises to 31 per cent. in the lucerne area. Dolores department (eastern Buenos Aires) has 64 per cent. milch cows and 21 per cent. oxen. Pedernera department (San Luis, in the lucerne area) has 49 per cent. cows and 38 per cent. oxen. General Roca department (Córdoba) has 48 per cent. cows and 34 per cent. oxen. Arenales (Buenos Aires) has 39 per cent. cows and 46 per cent. oxen.[103]

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

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

[104] 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.

_Cultivated Areas in the Argentine Republic_ (_in square kilometres, almost exclusively in the Pampean region_).

-----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- | Wheat. | Maize. | Oats. | Flax. | Lucerne. -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- 1896 | 25,000 | 14,000 | -- | 5,600 | 8,000 1900 | 33,000 | 12,000 | -- | 6,000 | 15,000 1902 | 36,000 | 18,000 | -- | 15,000 | 17,000 1905 | 56,000 | 22,000 | 700 | 10,000 | 29,000 1910 | 62,000 | 32,000 | 8,000 | 15,000 | 54,000 1912 | 69,000 | 38,000 | 12,000 | 17,000 | 59,000 1913 | 65,000 | 41,000 | 11,600 | 17,000 | 66,000 1914 | 62,000 | 42,000 | 11,400 | 17,000 | -- -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+---------

_Exports for 1913, 1914, and 1915 at each port._

--------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+-------- |Wheat.| Maize.|Flax.|Oats.|Totals.|Average. --------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+-------- {| 782 | 1,757 | 275 | 13 | 2,829 |} Rosario {| 242 | 1,952 | 248 | 1 | 2,445 |} 2,716 {| 717 | 1,790 | 366 | -- | 2,875 |} | | | | | | {| 441 | 1,389 | 246 | 240 | 2,318 |} Buenos Aires {| 297 | 906 | 55 | 78 | 1,537 |} 2,051 {| 511 | 1,349 | 342 | 96 | 2,299 |} | | | | | | {| 927 | 2 | -- | 462 | 1,393 |} Bahía Blanca {| 241 | -- | -- | 222 | 463 |} 1,075 {| 921 | -- | -- | 442 | 1,364 |} | | | | | | {| 5 | 910 | 74 | -- | 989 |} S. Nicolas {| 1 | 430 | 60 | -- | 492 |} 651 {| 5 | 420 | 48 | -- | 474 |} | | | | | | {| 333 | 358 | 14 | 170 | 876 |} La Plata {| 160 | 51 | 16 | 49 | 278 |} 459 {| 152 | 45 | 6 | 16 | 222 |} | | | | | | {| 265 | 51 | 158 | -- | 476 |} Santa Fé {| 7 | 23 | 128 | -- | 159 |} 278 {| 114 | 7 | 77 | -- | 199 |} --------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+--------