FORMOSA

This, the northernmost of the Argentine National Territories, does not merit the superlative of its name; especially it does not do so when compared with Misiones. Geographically and in its general superficial characteristics Formosa is a continuation of the Chaco, by which it is bounded on the South. On the North and East it is bounded by Paraguay except at its South-Eastern corner, where its boundary is the river Paraguay, with the Province of Corrientes on the other bank. On the West it is bounded by the Province of Salta.

Much of Formosa is almost unknown land as far as really scientific exploration is concerned; and some tribes of itsTobaIndians still appear to have an inconveniently violent dislike of official explorers, several having been murdered by natives in recent times.

The real exploration of the interior of Formosa is done by squatters who, when turned off one holding, move on to a new one further from the civilisation which, such as it is, is mostly to be found on the River Paraguay, or near to it on the banks of its chief affluents, the Pilcolmayo (which forms the Northern boundary between this territory and Paraguay) and the Bermejo. The clearance of the rocks, sunken logs and masses of vegetation from the beds of these rivers as a preliminary to the carrying out of other works for the purposeof making them navigable is under consideration by the National Government, which also proposes to build a railway line from Embarcación, in the Province of Salta, across the centre, almost, of Formosa, in a South-Easterly direction, to its capital, a town of the same name and, doubtless, the first to bear it. At present Formosa has no railroad at all.

This Territory has several other considerable rivers and streams all running nearly parallel to one another and to the Pilcolmayo and Bermejo, in South-Easterly direction, to the River Paraguay.

Almost the whole of its surface is a vast plain gently inclined; its South-Eastern part is largely covered with forests and dotted with many shallow swamp-like lakes—“Esteros,” as they are called.

The forests are very rich in various valuable woods; of which the chief object of present commerce is theQuebracho, which here, as elsewhere in the Republic, is found in two varieties, the red and the white. The former is the richest in tannin. Quebracho extract (for tanning purposes) will be seen to figure prominently in the tables relating to Argentine exports.[36]Quebracho logs are in constant demand for railway sleepers.

The wide glades and open spaces in the forest afford excellent pasturage, and are all eminently suitable for agriculture. Some parts of this territory are destined to become rich alfalfa fields, and already relatively considerable areas are under this forage. There is plenty of salt, sandy soil with water near the surface. Maize also, on account of climatic conditions and the nature of the soil in parts (where a rich layer of humus is superimposed on a moist, sandy subsoil), should form a valuable crop in this Territory.

Formosa, with its Northern situation and therefore almost tropical climate, has few sheep; but cattle, still of the native breed, thrive well in many parts.

Also, in Formosa, and in Misiones, a large proportion of traction bullocks must be reckoned among the numerical value of their cattle.

In Formosa the summer or rainy season lasts for about seven months of the year; little or no rain falls in the winter or dry season—as in the tropics. In the wet season many of the rivers overflow their banks and such, likely, inundations should be taken into account by any would-be purchaser of land in Formosa.

He should also keep his eyes open for dangers other than floods; for if scientific exploration cannot yet be said to have obtained any firm grasp of Formosa, how much less can measurements and boundaries be hoped to be in order. They are not so in most of this Territory, and a purchasing settler might eventually find himself with little for his trouble and money but the costs of a lawsuit forced upon him by some owner of an historic grant made by a grateful Republic in bygone days to the grandfather of such owner for distinguished service of one kind or another.

Latifundíos, these low-lying Argentine landowners are called; and it is not too much to say, as has been indicated elsewhere in these pages, that their existence is a pest and a menace to proper colonisation.

Every such absentee landlord should be forced by law to declare himself and his claims, and to furnish measurements and situation of the land, the subject of the latter to be checked by the Government surveyors and lawyers; and to do this within a fixed reasonable period from the date of the passing of such laws. His claim to lapse absolutelyipso factoin default of his doing so.

Then the National Government should proceed to allot fiscal lands to all desirable comers, and afford these the aids to starting their farms and plantations usual in other countries having unoccupied land awaiting development, as still is by far the greater part of the territory of the Argentine Republic.

Every educated Argentine is just as well aware of all this as the writer or you, the reader; but just think what a flutter in aristocratic dovecotes on the mere suggestion of the putting in practice of such Laws (they or drafts of them probably exist in the pigeon-holes of Government House in Buenos Aires)! What a fluttering in those dovecotes there was a few years ago when the discovery was made, and most imprudently revealed, that vast tracts of land supposed to belong to the Nation had in fact got, in one way or another, into the possession of private individuals.

The then President, Dr. Figueroa Alcorta, declared vehemently (and caused the declaration to be published far and wide) that whomsoever were found to be responsible for such a scandalous state of things would be dealt with without mercy, whoever he or they might be.

That was all.

The sentence was like those of the Queen of Hearts inAlice in Wonderland. No one really ever was executed. Nor, as far as the public ever knew, even called to account. Possibly someone was told not to do it again; it must be hoped so.

In Formosa, latent absentee landlord and squatter would almost appear to work on a mutually beneficial, if tacit, understanding. The former does not in the least mind his land being developed by the latter (there is no foolish worry about such things as prescriptive rights) and generally lets him be; until such time as he, the landlord, wants to occupy himself or sell.

Meanwhile the squatter has accumulated cattle and money by selling stock (contraband, if possible, or covered by a few duty-paying animals) in Paraguay, and need only move on a few leagues or so, when told to, with his herds. His house and furniture are usually negligible quantities.

Formosa does as much trade as the total of its general products (except timber, which goes South) allows of, because Paraguay is generally too much overrun by revolutionary,or momentarily constitutional, forces to have much time or space free for industrial occupations. At the same time Paraguay does manage to produce large quantities of tobacco and mate yerba which Argentina takes, although, as has already been observed, her own lands could perfectly well produce them, given suitable labour.

As has been rather more than hinted at, the official Returns of Imports and Exports as between Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil and Argentina give but a faint idea of the actual trade between the last-named and her northern neighbours; and the present writer would be much surprised to learn that the upper reaches of the River Uruguay could tell no tales of systematic smuggling between the two River Plate Republics, or the Andes none of similar practices between Argentina and Chile.

The fact is that adequate guard of these enormous and sparsely populated lengths of upcountry frontier would cost more than the results of it would pay for. And why make a fuss while such prime necessities of life as mate and cigarettes are comparatively so cheap?

Formosa produces tobacco and sugar; the latter, as in Misiones, being chiefly used for the production of alcohol.

A great deal of foreign capital is now invested in timber cutting and exporting companies. Native labour is suitable for this work, but it is desirable in the interests of the companies concerned that the native overseers or gangers be controlled by whites conversant with native ways and also having the gift of forest topography.

This last consideration is suggested by the undoubted fact that many a pile of logs has been solemnly measured up and the felling paid for several times over by the white gentleman who has failed—in consequence of a slight rearrangement of the pile, no doubt—to recognise them on successive visits to glades and clearings which all look very much alike except to particularly experienced eyes.

Thus does the untutored Indian or half-caste sometimes laugh at civilization.

Formosa, although sparsely inhabited, boasts a large proportion of pure whites of various nationalities among its settlers and the timber companies’ employees. There are several Franciscan Mission Stations in the Territory.

This hasty run over the Argentine Republic has stirred many pleasant memories in the heart of the writer, and set him hoping that, perchance, some one reader may be tempted to take passage to the River Plate; at less cost than, and quite as luxuriously as, if he made his usual sojourn on the Mediterranean Riviera.

Would I could take him—an intelligently enthusiastic person he, of course, would be—on a personally conducted tour of my own designing.

We would go first to Buenos Aires, reserving the restful charm of Montevideo for after our journeyings. Then down South; where I should quite disabuse my gentle companion of any ideas he might have that the owners of square miles of wheat and thousands of cattle live in top boots and shirt sleeves in one-storied, corrugated-iron verandahed houses in the foreground of threshing machines. I would get him invited—and myself as well—to stay a day or two at an English estancia; the large, well-appointed two or three storied red-brick house of which, surrounded by lawns and spreading cedar trees, would make him rub his eyes several times before he were convinced that he had sailed out of England. He would surely find a house party from Buenos Aires or neighbouring—a wide term meaning, probably, many leagues away—estancias in possession; all the members of which would retain their old habits of dressing for dinner and breakfasting off a choice of several hot dishes and a tempting array of cold things on the sideboard. An English country house, in fact, with hall and magazines and illustrated papers complete.

Then we should make plans for the following, and, probably, many other morrows; plans which would almost inevitably include a neighbourly race meeting or polo match.

Amid all this he could dree his own weird for as long as might please him. I should not disturb any of his promised projects.

But one day I should take him North again; and still further North, to Córdoba, “The Learned City,” show him the Cathedral, the University and its Library, and let him breathe the monastically mediæval atmosphere of it all. And, outside the city, the wildness of cactus growth and gaucho life.

Back eastward to Rosario, merely to change train for Santa Fé, and across the Uruguay to Paraná. From thence to Concórdia; where at least one tranquil orange-scented morning must be spent before one crossed the Province of Entre Rios to where the Argentine North-East Railway should take us to Misiones.

After San Ignacio, the Iguazú Falls and the trip thereto and therefrom up and down the Upper Paraná, I should ask him if he ever wanted to go anywhere else again? Whether he has ever even dreamed of anything so beautiful? Then by river all the way back to Buenos Aires; and, one night, across to Montevideo. There we would sit awhile in the evening and listen to the band in the square where the little coloured lamps swing in the fresh sea breeze; and bathe next morning and roll ourselves in the hot dry sand of Pocitos or Ramirez.

Then we would take railway trips in Uruguay. Over billowy pasturage and through waves of wheat; not flat expanses such as those we shall have seen on the Pampa, but seas of corn-covered, undulating ground.

Then he could go back to Europe, if he liked. I should stay.

If a detailed sketch of each of the Departments of Uruguay be not given here it is not because they are altogether uniform in their landscapes; but rather because, apart from the hilly rockiness of some of the northern parts, the scenery of Uruguay does repeat itself. While the climatic differences are relatively slight in a country which barely extends over, from the point of its extreme northern angle to its most southerly point, five degrees of latitude; in comparison with those of Argentina, which extends over thirty-five degrees.

Uruguay, therefore, has no striking variety of climates; and except that the surface of the Northern Provinces is more broken with jagged mountain ranges and that in the neighbourhood of the River Uruguay and its affluents the country is more thickly wooded, there is not much change to be noted anywhere from its general character of an undulating grassy plain, with here and there a mount, or clump of low wood and brushwood, and an abundance of running streams.

Its indigenous flora comprises a rich wealth of rosemary, acacia, myrtle, laurel, mimosa, and the scarlet-floweredCEIBO; while its natural pasturage is gay with red and white verbena and other brilliantly coloured wild flowers. The best natural grasses are to be found in the Departments of Soriano and Durazno and in parts of Paysandú and Tacuarembó. That is to say where what is known as the “Pampa mud” of the soil is mingled with calcareous and siliceous matter and contains less aluminium, which last ingredient imparts cold and damp qualities.

A TYPICAL SMALL “CAMP” TOWN (RIVERA, URUGUAY)

It should not be assumed from the above short general description that the scenery of Uruguay is monotonously uninteresting. It is not; on the contrary, it is often very beautiful indeed, with sudden and delightfully surprising changes as the train speeds along. But these changes areon a small scale, if one may so express oneself, compared with those which one experiences when passing from one distant Argentine Province or National Territory to another.

Indeed, as a glance at the map will show, geographically, Uruguay and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul can almost be considered as parts of Argentina; as, politically, they once very nearly were.

The real great division of the nature of the surface of Uruguay is practically formed by the course of its Rio Negro; on each side of which are vast rolling plains, the northern of which, however, are, as has been said, traversed by ranges of indented rocky hills.

The whole of Uruguay is subject to abrupt changes of temperature and frequent strong winds of which thePampero, from the South-West, is the most violent.

Generally, the climate is pleasantly mild. For while the summer suns are hot, especially in the North, sea breezes and winds from the snow-capped Andes modify the temperature. It is, however, from these conflicting elements of sun and wind that Uruguay gets her quick changes of temperature and frequent storms. The whole country is subject to alternate overflowing of its rivers and drought.

Uruguay is rich in table fruits. Grapes, oranges, lemons, apples, pears, quinces, melons, passion-flower fruit, peaches, apricots, cherries, medlars, figs, chestnuts, almonds and, in the North, olives, dates and bananas, grow in abundance. The list of her flora also includes sarsaparilla (very abundant), quinine, camomile and many other valuable medicinal plants. Uruguayans have also given themselves the trouble to produce relatively much larger quantities, and, generally speaking, better qualities of ordinary table vegetables than have the, perhaps busier, inhabitants of the larger Republic across the river; to which, however, Uruguay daily sends large quantities of such produce.

Uruguay has several large flour mills and exports flour, chiefly to Brazil.

Most of the soil consists of one composition or another of the Pampa mud before alluded to. This mud is really ancient alluvial deposit.

Of the latent mineral wealth of Uruguay there can be little doubt. The Department ofMinas, as its name indicates, is one of the richest in this respect. Gold, in quartz formation, silver, copper, iron, lead, some coal, marble of various kinds, slate, rock crystal, agates, jasper, graphite, alabaster, black limestone and other minerals of commercial and industrial value are to be found in this Department and in other parts of the Republic. Fine building limestone is found in the Department of Maldonado. The Department of Colonia is rich in granite and other building stone, as well as other minerals. Rocha, Soriano, San José, Florida and Canelones are other Departments rich in mineral wealth.

This wealth has, however, as yet been little exploited. The old trouble here, as in Argentina, being that of insufficient labour to attend to more than the primary industries of Live Stock and Cereal production. Also the Uruguayan Mining Laws, though steps have recently been taken to amend them, have hitherto proved but a poor protection for capital.

Note.—The wealth of the Argentine National Territories ofThe ChacoandLos Andesis, as to the former still practically confined to the valuable forestal products, full mention of which has been made elsewhere in these pages. The future of Los Andes can only be concerned with the exploitation of its, probably rich, mineral deposits; this Mountainous Territory being so cold and arid as to be almost uninhabitable.

The figures representing the progress of Agriculture in the River Plate Republics, especially in Argentina, which has had the advantage of freedom from Civil War during by far the longer period, during the last few decades are truly astounding.

In 1875 the value of the principal Argentine Agricultural Exports was but 114,557 gold dollars; in 1913 the value of these exports was 307,520,854 gold dollars. In 1892 the total of the cultivated areas of the Republic was only 580,008 hectares; in 1912 there were 22,987,726 hectares under cultivation, this figure not including the pasturage improved with foreign grasses. The first ten kilometres of railway line in the River Plate Territories were laid in Argentina in 1857, now the extent of lines in that Republic is over 21,000 miles, and that in Uruguay over 1590 miles, making a total for both Republics of over 22,500 miles, or rather less than the total length (23,350 miles) of the lines in Great Britain. And new lines and extensions are projected in all directions and will prove profitable.

It must not, however, be taken for granted by the above juxtaposition that the railroad has been the whole and direct cause of agricultural extension. That many other causes have been at work is evident since River Plate agriculture and export flourished long before the railway was dreamed of anywhere. During the early years of its life in the River Plate Republics the railroad was busily enough occupied in the endeavour to serve districts already under cultivation;and it is only in very recent times that one of the great English Companies adopted the, even then much criticized, policy of extensions to secure in advance a sphere of future cultivation. It may be added that no adverse criticism of this policy (but only approving admiration) came from anyone practically capable of forming an opinion of the agricultural prospects on which it was soundly based.

Still, Argentine railway enterprise in general is conservative in that it rather waits on than seeks to create a demand for its services; so that the rule in these matters on the River Plate continues to be that the railway very cautiously follows the lead of other progress and enterprise, and much rich land in the more distant Provinces and National Territories lies fallow waiting for the railway, while the railway is waiting till actual production guarantees the immediate profit of new lines at handsome rates.

Time will solve this sort of deadlock as it does other things; but to most people, other than railway directors, its existence seems to indicate a lack of commercial courage and energy. They manage some of these things, in some respects, better in the United States.

At the same time it must be owned that the existing railway policy protects the countries now under discussion from many of the greater evils of local land booms and speculation in Town lots; which in early North American days often left little but disillusionment as the share of inexperienced speculators and paved the way for equally disastrous railway competition.

In Argentina and Uruguay, particularly in the former Republic, the great Railway Companies form something really very like theImperium in Imperiothat the Argentines say they do. Their General Managers are quite as much diplomatic Ministers Plenipotentiary as they are actual Managers of railroads; and, consequently, require qualifications of which the chiefs of even our greatest British systems have no need. The work of a General Manager ofa great River Plate railway system lies a good deal at Government House and with the leading men and politicians of the country. He must know how best to protect the vested interests of his Company and to pave the way for new developments in competition with newly arrived applicants and existing competitors. For such purposes he must combine firmness, serenity in protest if need be, with urbanity and the power to be all pleasant things to all men whose good-will is or may possibly be of use to his Company. The slight diversion of a projected new line is a small price to pay for the easy passage through Congress of the scheme of a whole important extension. A scheme which may menace the aspirations of an existing competitor or an expectant rival concessionnaire; either of whom may also command some “influence.”

All this, however, however true, is a digression from the question under immediate discussion, namely, to what extent the railway has been a cause or an effect of the spread of agriculture in the River Plate. The real answer to this question appears to be that both the railway in these countries and the agriculture have inter-aided and are inter-dependent on one another in the inevitable development of a prosperity fore-ordained by a prodigality of natural endowment.

Comparing the figures representing the cultivable area of these Republics with those relating to the parts already under cultivation, one can see why extensive farming is only just now giving way to intensive systems in those districts the situation of which, in relatively close proximity to the great port of Buenos Aires, combined with the natural fertility of their soil, has rendered them the most valuable of all the lands in the Argentine and Uruguayan Republics. The capital valuation of these lands is now so high, especially in the Province of Buenos Aires, that all means must be adopted which will enhance their annual productivity. In other parts it is often cheaper to put more land undercultivation than to lay out capital in improved working of that already in hand. As facilities for transport and the population grow, so will the need for intensive farming, in gradually increasing complexity, be more and more felt and complied with throughout both Republics.

Contemporaneous with such advance will be the gradual development of those products, other than wheat, linseed, maize and alfalfa (to which the whole available agricultural energies of these countries have till now been almost exclusively confined), for which the natural conditions of one part or another of the two Republics are eminently favourable—such as Cotton, Tobacco, Timber, Rice, Sugar and, perhaps, Coffee.

To quote a pamphlet recently issued by the Argentine Government:—

There are vast tracts of land available for the cultivation of sugar cane. … With the investment of large amounts of money and an increase in the area cultivated this industry will no doubt in a few years be able to supply fully the demand and have a surplus of 50 per cent over for exportation.

This statement, notwithstanding the rather quaint English of the official translator, has already nearly been proved true, and might have become so in actual practice several years ago. To quote again from the same pamphlet and with a similar endorsement of its statements:—

In the extensive regions existing in Salta, Jujuy, the Chaco, Formosa, Misiones, Corrientes and Tucumán (the last-named with 300,000 hectares admirably adapted for sowing sugar cane) the area cultivated will gradually increase.

It should and certainly will do so at some future time. When, depends chiefly, as do many, if not most, other agricultural developments on the River Plate, on increase of population.

In the meantime the Argentine National Ministry of Agriculture has done much good work towards stimulating interest in the undoubtedly great possibilities of cotton,tobacco and rice cultivation. The cultivation of cotton is no new idea on the River Plate. It could hardly be so when there are large districts so evidently and admirably adapted for this crop. The reasons why several former well-meant attempts at cotton growing in Argentina were unsuccessful were the difficulties of obtaining and keeping adequate labour, and a too great reliance on the bounty of nature unaided by much human science. Selection and just appreciation of the time for gathering were matters which did not receive sufficient attention, and a great obstacle certainly was the difficulty of obtaining labour in sparsely populated districts, in which the necessities of life are procurable by all with a minimum of effort. The natives fancied they were being exploited if they did not get commercially impossible rates of wages for what appeared to them extremely arduous and unwontedly continuous and careful work. Work of the satisfactory execution of which, moreover, their primitive mentality was not really capable.

Even now River Plate cotton growing will need to be largely aided by imported or colonist labour. Given that and due scientific management and care, applied in the first place to the selection of the seed most suitable to the soil and climate, there is no sort of reason why River Plate cotton should not occupy a highly remunerative place in the world’s markets, where cotton is always in increasingly large demand.

Many districts in the Argentine Provinces of Corrientes, Santa Fé, Salta, Tucumán, Catamarca and La Rioja and in the National Territories of Misiones, Formosa and the Chaco are eminently suited for cotton cultivation.

It will be observed that Argentina alone is almost always here referred to in connection with these secondary (as they still are) products of the River Plate countries. The reason for this is that, while many parts of Uruguay are equally well suited for their growth, the latter Republic is, owing to her later continuance of civil disturbance, in a less advancedcondition than Argentina in regard to extensive development of the great primary industries of cereal cultivation and stock breeding.

Tentative and apparently successful cultivation of better classes of tobacco has already been commenced in the Province of Buenos Aires and official drying sheds have been erected in each of the Provinces of Tucumán, Salta and Corrientes and the National Territory of Misiones. These facilities should greatly stimulate the increase of production and improvement of quality of the leaf in those, the most climatically appropriate, districts. Even if they should not confer on the growers the “moral and intellectual” benefits explicitly expected from them by the aforementioned translator.

As for rice, even if the question of export be reserved for future consideration, there is an enormous local demand which could very well and profitably be supplied locally.

Experimental cultivation of this crop in large and suitably watered areas of the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios and Córdoba has proved the ease with which it could be grown in them.

Another crop in universal demand in both Argentina and Uruguay isMATE, or “Paraguayan Tea,” the leaf of theIlex Paraguayensis. This shrub grows wild in the Territory of Misiones and in the Republics of Paraguay and Brazil; and Argentina and Uruguay import it from the latter countries to annual values of several millions of gold dollars. The cultivation of mate yerba only presents difficulty and risk of loss during the very earliest periods of its growth; but study has now shown how to avoid most, at any rate, of such risks, so that it has become an absurdity that such an article of universal daily, indeed hourly, consumption in both of the countries under consideration should not be grown by them in districts so suited for the cultivation of this shrub that they have become its home in a perfectly wild condition.

Wherever one goes in Argentina and Uruguay theMATE(as the small gourd in which the infusion of the dust-likeYERBA—“herb”—is made, and from which it is sucked up through a special tube called the “bombilla” from its perforated, bulb-shaped end) is omnipresent and usually in working evidence in the hands of one or other member of the household throughout the livelong day.

Mate is a stimulant of great sustaining and stomachic qualities; and its use is not followed by the depression which follows excessive tea and coffee drinking. A River Platepeonwill go from daybreak to midday, riding or doing physically hard work the whole while, on nothing more than a hunch of bread or a “biscuit” (a hard, dry maize-flour roll) and a few smallmates. With sugar, mate is very palatable and the taste soon develops into a habit, but in the camp it is usually drunk “bitter,” that is, without sugar, both from motives of economy and because it is popularly supposed to be healthier and more sustaining when taken in that way.

At any rate, there can be no doubt that mate growing must one day become a very large and profitable industry in the Northern parts, where the climate is suitably mild, of the two Republics.

The Jesuit Fathers, from whom the Territory of Misiones derives its name, were well aware of the wholesome qualities of mate yerba, and it is possible that the now wild growth of the shrub in that Territory owes its existence to their cultivation.

In connection with their primarily great agricultural industries, the wheat, maize and linseed crops which will always remain a chief pillar of their prosperity (even if stock-raising on the present huge scale should be reduced by the encroachment of agricultural or, as is most likely, mixed farming; or if the Andine regions prove as rich in minerals as some people would have us believe), the River Plate Republics must always occupy positions of ever-increasingweight and importance on the cereal markets of the world.

The world wants meat, but it must have bread, the true staff of human life. Signs are not wanting of the coming of a day when the majority of the human race will be forced into vegetarianism by the growing scarcity of meat; but the time when wheat shall be no longer obtainable by the multitude is so much farther off on the speculative horizon as to be a negligible factor in any but abstract contemplation. As for live stock, most middle-aged people to-day can retrace in their own memories the decline of the meat exports of the United States; where a rapid growth of population and spread of agriculture have so increased the local consumption and diminished the supply that the States not only now eat all their own meat, but already import from Argentina and Uruguay.

When the latter countries arrive at a similar stage of their development, as they must do one day, from whence will they and the rest of the world get meat supplies? Even the greatest and most terrible war the world has ever known has not reduced the population of the globe to an extent which will do more than very temporarily, if practically at all, affect the question of its future food supplies.

Recently the reproductive capacities of the existing Argentine and Uruguayan flocks and herds were brought almost to a standstill in respect of the increase of their numerical value; chiefly on account of the ever-increasing demands and high prices paid by the Cold Storage Export Companies.[37]And purely economic reasons cause more and more land each year to be put under cereal cultivation while numerically large flocks and herds are pushed further into less accessible regions of the Republics, on the boundaries of which vast quantities of finely bred animals already graze.

More transport (and labour), more cereals; more cereals, less live stock: will be the rule of these Countries’ progress, following that of the great Northern Republic. A rule which mixed and intensive farming will only modify in a degree quite incommensurate with the experiences of an ever and rapidly increasing demand.

The future of both Argentina and (later on) Uruguay appears to be bound up in their cereal production (of which wheat, maize, linseed and oats are now the chief elements).

I sayappears, because the Andes may yet yield marvellous mineral treasure; good coal may yet be discovered; it and the petroleum deposits of Comodoro Rivadavia and elsewhere may yet provide fuel for manufacturing industry; and the River Plate Republics may yet become the great pig-producing countries of the world, as a United States expert once prophesied to the present writer that one day they would be. But all these things, even if the future do hold them in store, are beyond the perceptibly practical horizon; while the already preponderating influence of cereal production on the destinies of Argentina is immediately evident. Argentina practically supplies the world with linseed.

Uruguay is still in the infancy of its agriculture. It has as yet but some two million acres of cultivated land as against some thirty million acres of pasturage. But the world’s demands will doubtless lead it on the same course as that imposed on the United States and Argentina; modified, perhaps, to some extent by the more undulating nature of its lands as compared with the flat Pampa. Again, Uruguay is much richer in running streams than is Argentina; which latter country is but sparsely provided with water courses, especially in dry weather.

During the course of the last decade the value of the cereals exported from the River Plate tripled.

The great areas of cereal cultivation are the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Córdoba and Entre Rios and theNational Territory of the Pampa Central. Cereal growing in Uruguay is still chiefly confined to the Southern Departments of that country.

Nevertheless, Uruguayan wheat has received special quotations as the highest quality of any in the European markets; and “Montevideo wheat,” as it is called, is much purchased by Argentine exporters to mix with their own grain. The cultivation of alfalfa (lucerne) is also increasing with enormous rapidity, both for home consumption and export; and is likely to show still greater proportionate increase as mixed and intensive farming grow in favour.

Economic necessity may also soon increase the cultivation of this valuable plant as an alternate crop on, and restorative for, the exhausted soil of many districts where wheat has been grown on wheat since, one might almost say, time immemorial.

Wheat, as all the agricultural world knows, absorbs the nitrogen from the soil on which it is grown; while alfalfa, on the other hand, absorbs nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the soil. These two crops are therefore, as was found out long ago in North America, naturally complementary. And a course of alfalfa prepares ground for the replanting of wheat in a way unequalled by the most expensive artificial fertilizers. The time will therefore doubtless come when Argentine farmers will plough up such of their alfalfa as may be on suitable ground and plant wheat thereon; and, contrariwise, will plough up their wheat and give the ground two or three years of alfalfa before putting wheat on it again.

But this is still, to the vast majority of Argentine farmers, an absurdly impracticable counsel of perfection. Since, does one think, he asks, that he is going to spoil his alfalfa fields, soon after seeing them pass through the critical stage of their tap-roots reaching water, and break his ploughs into the bargain by cutting those thick, tough roots up again? Not he. Alfalfa it is now and alfalfa it is going to remain;to yield him four or even more cuttings annually. Only time and ever-growing land values will force this kind of reasoning out of his mind. He, in the more distant parts of the country at all events, is still in the stage of mentality when what were good enough methods for his forefathers are good enough for him. Nature has been kind to him. He has always reaped much benefit from little labour or capital outlay; and this state of things suits his nature so well that he is altogether disinclined to vary it by following theories which do not appeal to him, be they preached never so wisely by the ambulant Agricultural Instructors employed by the Government to travel about the country and teach improved methods to its rural inhabitants. The deaf ear which even the very well-to-do among what may be called the peasant proprietors, the little-educated rural classes, that is to say, turn to the teachings of modern science is due to the fact that these people have long been too much spoilt by nature’s gifts of highly fertile soil and favourable climate to perceive any very pressing need to bestir themselves to unaccustomed expenditure of energy or money.

Thus, as is told elsewhere in these pages, thousands of head of cattle and sheep die each time a drought occurs simply because their owners will not go to the trouble and expense of boring for water (seldom far from the surface) and putting up windmills to draw it.

Education and economic pressure will in due course end this era ofdolce far niente; which is doomed to disappear from even the most outlying of rural districts as surely as the traditionalMañanahas from the business communities of the great cities. Nowadays, a denizen of Buenos Aires who scents a good stroke of business will pursue and capture it with a rapidity and real vigour which would not shame a citizen of the United States. Only, the Argentine will always conceal his haste under an affected outburst of boisterous humour or an equally assumed dilatoriness of manner. He will, in fact, be politer about it than theNortherner. But he will get there all the same. So will the agriculturist, comparatively untutored as he still often is, once he realizes his own advantage in the matter; as circumstances eventually will force him to do.

Just now the River Plate countries are faced with an exceptionally acute phase of the problem of their increased agricultural expansion; the governing factor of that problem, indeed the whole cause of it, being their lack of adequate rural population.

To appreciate this inadequacy one must realize that the Argentine Republic alone is only a very little smaller than Germany, Austro-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and Switzerland put together; while her population is only some 7,500,000. Of this over a million is in the city of Buenos Aires; and the other cities such as Rosario, Bahia Blanca and the Provincial capitals account for another.

Even were the whole 7,500,000 equally spread over the Republic, we should only get an average of 6·5 per square mile, as against some 193 per square mile as the average of the other countries named above for comparison of area. Uruguay has a considerably larger population (and, it may be added, railway mileage), to the square mile than Argentina; but even then it has only some 1,200,000 inhabitants, or about half the number possessed by the Province of Buenos Aires.

Unless this state of things be remedied, it would appear as if the hitherto rapid advance of both agriculture and stock-breeding in these countries must soon reach a point beyond which they can no further go for want of hands to sow, reap and carry crops and rear and tend cattle and sheep! This situation is not a perfectly new one in modern economic history; but it may safely be called new in degree when it is found in countries where all other natural conditions are normally so entirely favourable to uninterrupted rural production. In countries not (as yet at all events) directlyinvolved in Armageddon; and while so much of the rest of the world urgently needs every grain of wheat and every ounce of meat they can possibly send out.

Great irrigation works now in progress will open up further vast and almost unprecedentedly fertile areas for cultivation; which areas railway lines are practically ready and waiting to serve with transport and for which new ports are in course of construction while existing ones are being enlarged and improved. New agricultural laws have been passed to meet difficulties which have arisen with already increased production and land values; everything in fact has been done and is being done to second and enhance nature’s gifts.

But the question, “Where are the human beings necessary to an advantageous result of and to benefit by all these preparations?” still remains unanswered; except by the apparently very stubborn fact that they have not yet appeared on the River Plate and show no signs of doing so.

At the present moment the outlook from this state of things reveals only a tangled problem, in view of the awful wastage of human life now going on in Europe. But for its occurrence and continuance before the war the Governments of Argentina and Uruguay are almost wholly to blame, and that of the former country in much the greater degree. This because, while Uruguay may be said to have only just emerged from a long period of internal political disturbance which necessarily absorbed all the time and energies of her statesmen, Argentine politics long ago reached their destined haven of sunlit, calm waters.

Argentinahasspent much trouble and money in propaganda; in all sorts of publications giving true and therefore favourable statistics of her ever-increasing rural industries, trade and prosperity. But—and this cannot be insisted on too often for her own good and for Uruguay’s example—she has never even seemed to trouble herself about suitable people who might be attracted by the perusal of her statisticsand pamphlets to wish to know more of her and of their exact individual prospects did they decide to set sail for her shores.

Like so many of the good laws and schemes in which this country abounds, everything concerning prospective colonists is excellently arranged and set down on paper; but nothing is yet in really practical working order for the reception and assignment of land to the real colonist, the man most needed in new countries, bringing with him a small capital which he wishes to invest in a holding which will be the future home of himself and his family.

It seems a hard saying, but I hold it truth that the only provision yet made has been, and is, for the reception and despatch upcountry of the very poorest class of immigrants; glad to get a job at manual labour of any kind, and therefore at the mercy of the landowners who still really govern this pretendedly ultra-democratic Republic.

It is—whether accidentally or of set purpose is needless to discuss here—in point of fact through the influence of landed proprietors, and through their influence alone, that the elaboration and putting into practice of existing colonization schemes and laws lie fallow; while poor immigrants, by a seemingly cynical courtesy, called “Colonists,” are granted the privilege of a share in any immediate profits to be derived from breaking up virgin soil from which they will be turned off practically as soon as it begins to yield—to commence a similar operation elsewhere if they care to—under conditions which leave them little choice.

Congress and the National Provincial Governments are to blame for this, really suicidal, scandal; resulting from a condition of things so patent that the Italian labourers who come for the harvest return back home again to an existence of probably considerable hardship in Italy, in preference to remaining as “Colonists” under the blue and white banner of Liberty.

The root of all this is that the Argentinecannotbring himselfto part with the ownership in land, and the fact of his having done so in the past still rankles bitterly in his mind; forgetful of the fact that then that was the only way to interest foreign capital in the development of his country.

The conclusion is that, if he will not and does not give land to colonists, he will find that his prosperity has reached sticking point for want of labour to advance it any further.

That is to say, the agricultural production of Argentina has almost, if not quite, reached the limits of the power of the Republic’s seven million inhabitants.

“The case for the Colonist” has been put with such admirable accuracy by Mr. Herbert Gibson, in a recent pamphlet by him calledThe Land we Live on, that the present writer has been unable to resist the temptation to cite some passages from it at length. A temptation enhanced by Mr. Gibson’s faculty for hitting exactly the right nails on the head coupled with his command of a vividly virile style.

Mr. Gibson is a member of a family of very large landowners in Argentina; a man of exceptionally high moral and intellectual qualities, and an accepted and respected authority on all matters concerning Argentine rural industry; the best interests of which he has done much to advance, often at his own considerable pecuniary cost.

A born Argentine, he can lay bare to the public eye the weaknesses and faults of the agricultural systems of the Republic in a way and to an extent impossible to a foreigner without a strong likelihood of the latter doing much more harm than good to the cause of reform by what would probably be deemed by Argentines a gratuitously offensive advocacy.

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