But of all the forms of traffic that have enlivened the valles the most constant, and the form that has had the most profound influence on their existence, is the movement of cattle. The cattle trade has been of fundamental importance in the history of the colonization of South America. Animals were the only goods that could be conveyed any great distance. At the beginning of the conquest the productive regions of the continent, which supplied the export trade with Europe, were very limited in extent. Pastoral colonization began at once, and spread over a very wide area. Herds of oxen, for meat or draught, horses, and mules, made their way toward the centres of consumption: towns like Lima, Bahía, and Rio, the Peruvian mines, and the sugar-refineries of the north-east of Brazil, and later toward the yerbales of Paraguay or the seaports of the Caribs and the Rio Grande do Sul, where the jerked meat industry developed. The cattle routes converge upon these centres.

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

Finally, the Chilean market was opened to the Argentine breeders about the middle of the nineteenth century. In the time of Martin de Moussy the convoys of cattle to Chile were so numerous that the lucerne fields of both slopes were stripped bare at the very beginning of the season; and they were rented at a high price.23 Not only the mining provinces of the north, but central Chile also, bought Argentine cattle. The opening of the Chilean market was followed by a remarkable expansive movement in the pastoral colonization of Argentine territory. We can follow the progress of this not only in Martin de Moussy's book, but in all contemporary works of travel. Its chief theatres are the provinces of San Luis and of Santiago del Estero, north of the Rio Dulce, where Hutchinson, in particular, describes the activity of the ranches.24 Finally, after the Pacific War (1880) the nitrate district, taken from Bolivia and Peru by Chile, received a great influx of population, and works sprang up in the midst of the desert. The nitrate fields, wholly barren and doomed, under their shroud of grey dust, to an unalterable desolation, became at once one of the chief centres of consumption for Argentine stock.

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

An article in the Telegrafo Mercantil of September 9, 1801 (reproduced in the Junta de Historia y Numismatica americana, Buenos Aires, 2 vols., 1914-5) contains very valuable information in regard to the mule trade. From 1760 to 1780 Salta sent between 40,000 and 50,000 mules annually to Peru. At Salta they were worth ten piastres each before they were broken in, and thirteen or fourteen afterwards; and they were sold at the age of four years. The arrieros, who conveyed European goods and home products (ropas y frutas), bought a large number of them. The Telegrafo complains that this trade has been gradually transformed. The mules now came from Santa Fé and Córdoba to Salta two years old, and after the invernada they were still, at fair time, barely three years old. They suffered much during the long journey to Lima, and the losses of the caravans were heavy. They could not be loaded for the journey, and, as the arrieros could no longer secure adult and strong animals, the freight to the tableland had risen, to the serious loss of merchants on the coast. The reply of a Potosi mule-dealer (December 13th) clearly shows that the last years of the eighteenth century had been marked by increasingly heavy demands from Peru for Argentine mules. In order to meet these demands the Córdoba breeders had developed production. The buyers, coming to Salta from Lima, Cuzco, and Arequipa, took, without discussion or examination, the batches that were offered them. The correspondent of the Telegrafo complains bitterly of these caballeritos who came from Peru with their 100,000 piastres, and raised the price at Salta, alleging that their instructions were to get mules at any cost.

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

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

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

The length of the journey and the difficulty of keeping the animals in good condition in the poor pastures of the breeding districts made it advisable to stay longer in the oases. There thus arose lucerne-farms—the invernadas—to receive and fatten the cattle which passed through. Lucerne is the characteristic and most profitable produce of the valles. It is grown wherever there is an assured supply of water, and is invariably found in the upper section of the system of irrigation-channels; the cereals are sown lower down, and are the first to suffer from drought. In the quebradas, where space is more limited, the lucerne-fields cover the entire oasis. Every cattle track has a corresponding line of invernadas, which is often completed on the opposite slope by a last group of lucerne-farms where the beasts recover from the journey before they are sold and dispersed.

Besides the official routes there have for a long time been clandestine tracks, through more difficult ravines, by which stolen cattle were conveyed with impunity. Guachipas was the gathering place for cattle of suspicious origin, and, to avoid being seen in Salta and Jujuy, they passed through the Quebrada del Toro or the Quebrada d'Escoïpe. When Brackebusch visited Guachipas in 1880 the inhabitants still kept something of their reputation as smugglers.

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

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

The centre of this trade is Salta, or, rather, the little village of Rosario de Lerma, nine miles south of it, where most of the caravans are formed. The saltpetre works make yearly contracts in advance with the Rosario dealers, fixing the number and price of the beasts to be delivered at Calama. The cost of transport includes, besides the pay of the cattle-drivers—eighty to a hundred piastres a journey—the shoeing of the mules, the rent of pasture at San Pedro, and the value of the beasts which die on the way. In 1913 the number of animals exported by this route was put at 30,000. The saltpetre works buy also draught-mules for their waggons. Draught-mules must be heavy, and only animals over five feet in height are sent to Chile. Bolivia is now the only market for the smaller mules and for asses.

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

The business done in the fairs of the southern Andes is very varied in character, but their main function was always as markets for stock.29 They are held in March or April, when the rains do not fall, but pasture is still abundant and travelling easy. The fair at Vilque, north of Lake Titicaca, is no longer visited by dealers in Argentine mules. The Salta fair which was held at Sumala, near Rosario de Lerma, has ceased to be important; at the close of the eighteenth century it was the chief centre of the mule-trade. The fair held at Jujuy is still, like the annual pilgrimage to the Virgen del Valle de Catamarca, one of the great dates in the life of the Andes. In the eighteenth century it was mainly a cattle-fair, but it is now frequented only by mule-dealers. The development of the railways is gradually causing it to decline.

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

A large proportion of the stock sent to Chile now comes from the Andean valleys themselves. The most arid and desolate regions round the oases breed only goats and asses; but as soon as the soil improves sufficiently to give a better vegetation, it is found good enough for a hardy and tenacious breed of horned cattle. The land is divided into large ranches, and the owners have also lucerne-farms, either individually or communally, the tillers of the oasis each putting in their beasts, which wander about in small groups without control. During the summer they go of their own accord up to the cerros, where the rains have brought out the vegetation, and drinking-water is found in the ravines for several months. In the winter they return to the valley, within range of the reservoirs and permanent acequias. Bodenbender gives us a few details about movements from place to place owing to such differences, as they are in vogue in the western part of the province of La Rioja, in the district of Guandacol. There the herds are taken during years of drought up to the mountains of the west.

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

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

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

The cattle live in the scrub during the summer, when the rains have brought out the grasses. In winter they go up to the moist forest, with perennial vegetation, which covers the flanks of the range.30 The comparative abundance of water lessens the labour of the breeders and, at the same time, the discipline of the herds. When the time comes, the whole ranch is mobilized for the purpose of collecting the adult cattle and making a convoy of them. Horsemen, with the double leather apron which hangs at the saddle-bow to protect them from the branches, ride up the range with their dogs and plunge into the scrub. The savage beasts are rounded up and held at bay. The procession is formed, and sets out, either by the rugged paths across the forest and mountain or along the easier tracks over the plain to Embarcación or Lumbreras, where they reach the railway. If buyers from the sugar-refineries at Jujuy do not take them, the cattle are put into trucks and sent to the Salta market, where there are sales all the year round. At Salta the beasts are fattened on the lucerne-farms before crossing the Cordillera. There is hardly any tillage, either because the winter drought makes the result dubious or because the breeders are not good at agricultural work.

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

The two costas form the historic territory of the Llanos. It was from there that colonization swarmed over the plain long afterwards. This expansive movement began about 1850; that is to say, at a time when the breeders enjoyed comparative peace and security, and especially when the invernadas of San Juan and Mendoza were developed, together with the export of cattle to the agricultural provinces of Chile. The price of stock rose, and the unoccupied land became of value. The occupation and exploitation of the plain was the work of the last two generations. They pushed on to the very edge of the salt lakes, leaving no vacant space. The travesias which surrounded the narrow inhabited zone of the costas were filled with life. The Sierra and its two costas are no longer an oasis in the desert, as they were in the time of Sarmiento; though they still differ from the remainder of the pastoral zone in the density of their population and the variety of their resources.

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

The economy of the Llanos is less simple than that of the Chaco Salteño. There is agriculture as well as breeding. There is not much rain, and it is confined to the summer months. The mean rainfall is, no doubt, higher than what we find at La Rioja (about 30 centimetres), but it is not good enough to dispense with irrigation. The aguadas, springs and brooks at the foot of the range, are the only provision of permanent water, and it is very limited. The oases watered by these springs and brooks cover only a few acres at the foot of the steep cliffs of the range. It has not been possible to cultivate the land far from the mountains. At Chamical a trench that was made to convey water to the railway dried up. All that can be done is to follow for a few miles with a line of wells a subterranean stream of fresh and not very deep water. At Bella Vista a comunero has dug an acequia several miles long, and he sells the water at a rate of five piastres for forty-eight hours. But when it reaches the end of the acequia, it is lost between the trench and the field to which they would conduct it. At Ulapes, though it is one of the chief centres, it takes the full outflow of the spring during sixteen hours to irrigate one cuadra (a little over two acres), and each man's "turn" is for seventeen days. The entire oasis measures about fifty acres. At Olta the thin stream of water is surrounded by so many cupidities that the "turn" comes only every fifty-eight days, so that each field has to live fifty-eight days on one watering. At Catuna where a trickle of brackish water is eagerly collected at the foot of a dejection-cone, the water-right is regulated by an arrangement of turns that covers ninety days, so that plants die of thirst in the interval. The plots vary according to the quantity, quality, and regularity of the water. The orange-tree is the most exacting, the fig the most tenacious, of the trees. The poorest oases consist only of a few gardens of dusty fig-trees.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The memory of the worst years of drought—the "epidemics," as the Llanero calls them—lives for a long time. They make a deep impression on the popular imagination, and legend makes plagues of them, in the Biblical way. The drought of 1884 was particularly disastrous. The herds were destroyed, and families that had been wealthy the day before set out on foot, "having nothing to put a saddle on": a touching picture of misery for this race of centaurs, people who feel themselves mutilated when they are not on horse. The rain returns next year. The pasture grows all the better because the herd is smaller, and the Llanos give the traveller who crosses them an exaggerated impression of their natural wealth.

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

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

This commercial revolution has led to a rise in the price of cattle, and this in turn has raised the value of land. When the value of the land rises, the methods of working it are necessarily improved, there is greater security, and thefts of cattle (cuatrerismo) become impossible. The farmers are not content merely to enlarge their represas or dig deeper wells. They divide the fields by fences—cheap iron wire stretched on home-made posts, or hedges of spines like those which protect the bañados. Thus pasture can be reserved untouched for the difficult months.

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

CHAPTER III
TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

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

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

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