On the eastern slope of Aconcagua is the limit of the crescent of tropical forest, which begins about three thousand miles away, on the flank of the Venezuelan and Colombian Cordilleras, and is connected in the centre, in the equatorial zone, from Guaviare to Mamore, with the forests of the Amazon region. At its two ends it is reduced to a narrow belt which does not reach, in the east, the alluvial plains, the savannahs of the Orinoco and the scrub of the Chaco. The humid forest of the Argentine Andes is nowhere more luxuriant than near its southern limit, above Tucumán. There are no palms or tree-ferns, but the convolvulus abounds, and the evergreen trees are covered with epiphytes. Aconcagua is one of the sharpest climatological limits in the world. In the latitude of Salta one has only to go about 150 miles to pass from the moist forests of the sub-Andean chain of the Lumbrera to the arid valley of Cachi. On both sides of Aconcagua there are less than fifty-five miles between the sugar-cane fields won from the forest and the oasis of Andalgala, or that of Santa Maria, which are right in the desert zone. According as one approaches Aconcagua from the east or the west, one finds, from base to summit, either the successive stages of vegetation of the humid Andes—from forest to grain-sown prairie (paramo or pajonal)—or those which are characteristic of the arid Andes, from the spiny scrub of the valleys to the fields of resinous tola of the Puna. The contrast of climates is repeated in the character of the soils. Aconcagua contains in itself the entire Andes in miniature. At the foot of the narrow zone of Alpine crests, in the few square miles of the elevated valleys of Tafi and Pucara, there is a small agricultural and pastoral world, in a temperate climate, that has nothing quite like it elsewhere, narrowly confined between the forest and the desert.32

The sugar district of Tucumán is not, properly speaking, an oasis; that is to say, it is not an irrigated canton in the midst of a desert, but a moist patch in the heart of a less favoured region. The traveller who comes from the Chaco finds that the dust disappears from the moister air as he approaches Tucumán. The rainfall approaches 974 millimetres at Tucumán. Irrigation is a valuable aid to the farmer, but it is not indispensable. Maize is generally raised without watering, and part even of the sugar-cane crop is raised on land that is not irrigated. It is not the relatively heavy rainfall that has led to the development of the sugar-cane estates at Tucumán, but the evenness of the temperature, together with the atmospheric moisture and the rareness of frost. The mists which develop at the foot of Aconcagua form a protecting mantle above Tucumán which prevents nocturnal radiation. The nearer one gets to the mountain, the later, rarer, and lighter the frosts are. If, on the contrary, one goes out some distance westward toward the plain, the frost becomes more severe, and it is impossible to grow sugar-cane. Not only the humidity, but the contour also, has some influence on the changes of temperature and the distribution of frost. The depressions in which the cold air accumulates, in virtue of the well-known meteorological phenomenon of inversion of temperature, are more exposed than sloping districts, where the air circulates regularly and freely. The eastern limit of the zone spared by the frosts passes about thirty-five miles from the foot of Aconcagua. It has only been made clear by experiment, and one can still see there the traces of abandoned plantations.

The water-supply in the Tucumán district consists, primarily, of numerous evenly flowing streams which come down the eastern flank of Aconcagua (Lules, Famailla, Angostura, Gastona, Medinas, etc.). They join the Sali to the south of Tucumán. The Sali is an irregular torrent which rises in the sub-Andean depression to the north and Tucumán, and, after squeezing Aguadita between the north-eastern extremity of Aconcagua and the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, enters the plain at Tucumán. It then flows southward, meandering over a large bed of shingle in which it has not had force enough to excavate a valley, and the inclination of the land on its left bank (to the east) is toward the east and south-east. The lands on the right bank of the Sali are consequently better provided with water than those on the left bank. The difference is so marked that, as the estates on the right bank get most of their supply elsewhere, the water of the Sali nearly all goes to the left bank. In 1912 a siphon was actually constructed underneath the bed of the Sali to convey the unused water of the Rio Lules to the right bank. Lastly, to the north of Tucumán the Sierra de Burruyacu provides a few intermittent streams of water, which the estancias (ranches) formerly conducted, with great labour, to their represas. These do not suffice for irrigation on a large scale.

The sugar-cane was first grown at the gates of the town and, to the east, at Cruz Alta, on the left bank of the Sali. These were some distance from the mountain because, as there was less rain and the soil was fairly dry, the natural vegetation was less luxuriant, and it cost less to prepare the ground.33 The Central Córdoba Railway, which passes along the right bank of the Sali south of Tucumán, is the axis of another zone of cultivation and of old factories. Colonization afterwards went further west. A new provincial railway, describing a section of a circle, was grafted at Tucumán (1888-90) and Madria upon the Central Córdoba line. It keeps close to the foot of the range, the falda, and enables farmers to settle on it. The new estates have not confined themselves to the alluvial plain; they have crept up the foot hills, and are constantly going higher. In the latitude of Tucumán the mountain approaches within eight or twelve miles of the Sali, and the possibilities of extension westward are strictly limited; indeed, they are already exhausted. Further south, on the contrary, the plain extends more than fifteen miles to the east of the provincial railway. West of Monteros, Concepción, and the existing line of works, there is a reserve of available land; there is room for a fresh advance westward. There is also room for expansion to the north-east, at the foot of the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, where the frosts are slight. It is in this direction that most of the clearing is now going on.

These various districts do not offer quite the same conditions to the farmer. The Falda is the most suitable, not only on account of the rareness of frost, but because of the fertility of the soil, as the tropical forest has accumulated inexhaustible stores of humus. The sugar-cane returns are higher there than anywhere else. Irrigation is not necessary, but, on the other hand, the humidity reduces the proportion of sugar in the cane. Irrigation is the rule in the next belt, between the local railway and the Central Córdoba line (on the right bank of the Sali). On the left bank a large number of the estates must still do without watering.

The most original feature of the organization of the sugar industry at Tucumán is the maintenance of a class of independent cultivators, the cañeros, side by side with the large enterprises. This survival of small and medium properties is a fact to which we find no parallel in the other sugar districts of tropical America.34 Everywhere else, in Brazil and in the Antilles, the farms which worked up their own produce, on primitive methods, have been absorbed by the central works. The home-worker has lost his land as well as been ruined in his industry by the competition of the modern factory. At Tucumán, on the contrary, the sugar industry never passed through the stage of domestic production. It was set up in full development, some devoting their capital to building works, others to growing the cane. Irrigation seemed from the first to dictate a concentration of ownership; the refineries at Cruz Alta constructed costly special canals to bring the water of the Sali. It is only large proprietors who have the resources needed to carry out work of this kind, and sufficient influence to secure permission to conduct the water over adjoining estates. However, the law of 1897 reorganized irrigation and withdrew the water-supply from the control of a few privileged big capitalists. Public works, undertaken by the provincial authorities, brought the water within the reach of every farmer. Since 1897 the number of water-concessions has risen from 230 to nearly 2,000.

The interests of the factory (ingenio) and the farmers (cañeros) are not indissolubly connected. Their respective parts in the final product of the sugar industry are not invariable. The increase in the number of factories means an increase in the number of cane-buyers, and so tends to raise the price. During the years antecedent to 1895 the refineries improved their machinery, and their productive capacity increased faster than the cultivated acreage. The price of the cane then rose to about twenty piastres a ton. As this figure is far above the net cost, the refineries endeavoured to profit themselves by the advantages that accrued to the cañeros, and they bought land for cultivation. It is to this period that the big concerns of Cruz Alta belong. Afterwards the production of cane increased, and nearly met the demands of the refineries, so that their competition relaxed. They ceased to buy land, and the price of cane was lowered.

The refineries now deal with cane which they grow themselves, with paid workers of their own; with cane that they buy at a reduced price from tenants (colonos), who grow it on their own estates; and with cane sold them by cañeros who own their own fields. The range of the country absorbed by each refinery is often very extensive. The Sugar Congress of 1894 estimated that half the cane-harvest was transported by rail, and that freight from one canton to another in the sugar district brought the railways more than a third of what they got for conveying sugar from Tucumán to the coast. Each railway company tries to keep along its own line the cane it carries to the refineries, so that the transport of the sugar when it is made will fall to itself. Thus the cane-market is divided into two separate compartments, with very little exchange between them. The first comprises the zone that depends on the Central Argentine and the State Railway; the second is the zone of the Central Córdoba and the old local line bought by the Central Córdoba.

Certain parts, such as Cruz Alta and the district round the town, have too many works in proportion to their production of cane, and they are centres of import. The price of the cane is always higher here than in the agricultural districts. Each works has its customers. At the stations it instals weighing machines for receiving and weighing the cane. It is only the more important cañeros who have the privilege of selling by the truck-load, or selling to distant works. The small growers are compelled to deal with the local refinery. They sell it their canes direct, or, sometimes, through agents and dealers. In the days when the works were competing for cane it became the custom to sign the purchase-contracts as early as possible; sometimes at the beginning of October, as soon as the harvest of the year is over. In order to make sure of the loyalty of the cañero the manufacturers advance money to him, in proportion to their difficulty in getting cane.

Cañeros and mill-owners have had to work together to settle the problem of labour. There was not enough at hand, and it had to be recruited elsewhere. Agents were sent all round—to Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, and even to the province of Córdoba—to collect and bring gangs of workers. They were a mixed, unsteady, undisciplined lot. The owners of the works advanced them money in order to keep them, and then, fearing to lose the money advanced, would not dismiss them for laziness and irregularities. These troubles are not felt as much now as they were at the time when the industry was expanding. The population of immigrant workers has settled down and taken root. Besides creoles it includes a small number of Italians and Spaniards; but while the creoles have been definitely incorporated in the sugar industry, the European immigrants use their savings to buy a bit of land and take to farming.

In normal times Tucumán has all the labour it requires, but the harvest always compels it to seek help in other provinces. In May and June the agents, well supplied with money, set out for the Salado, the districts round the Sierra d'Ancasti, etc. The temporary attraction of Tucumán at this season is felt over a considerable distance. At Santa Maria, on the far side of Mount Aconcagua, 600 people—men, women, and children—emigrate for five months, and live on the cane-fields. The merchants of Santa Maria make them advances, in the name of the refiners, to the amount of about sixty piastres per worker. Further north the Tucumán enganchadores come into collision with those from Salta and Campo Santo, and they divide the available labour between them. Some of the temporary immigrants settle down permanently every year, and swell the normal population of the sugar industry.

Outside the Tucumán district an unfortunate attempt was made to plant the sugar industry at Santiago del Estero, and large works were constructed. But the frost is severe there. For some years they tried to keep the Santiago works going with cane brought from Tucumán, but the freight was too heavy, and the works had to be abandoned, or else dismantled and set up elsewhere. The valley of the Rio Grande, from Jujuy to 200 miles north of Tucumán, in the sub-Andean depression between the Sierra de Zenta and the Lumbrera, has, on the other hand, suitable conditions for the cultivation of the cane. Frost is rare. The climate is warmer than at Tucumán, the canes ripen more quickly, and the average return is higher. The water-supply also is good. There have long been plantations in this region. Their first market was the region of the tableland and the valleys, where they chiefly sold brandy: a traffic of long standing, which one always finds round the cold districts of the Andes, from Colombia to the north of Argentina. The modern refineries of Ledesma and San Pedro took the place of the primitive mills as soon as the railway approached Jujuy, and even before it entered the valley of the Rio Grande. They then sent their sugar by waggon in November and December, between the close of the sugar season and the commencement of the rains, which spoil the roads.

The sugar district of Jujuy now has a very different economic and social organization from that of Tucumán. Here there are no farmer-proprietors. Each centre is a large estate, in the midst of the forest, where the workers are lodged and fed by the works that employs them. The contractors who clear the ground for them are obliged by the terms of their contract to import their workers directly from the south, so that they will not take any away from the farming. There is no available labour, no free market, on the spot. Since the completion of the Quebrada de Humahuaca line, however, there has been a good deal of immigration, to settle or temporarily, of the mountaineers of the tableland. The sphere of influence of San Pedro now extends as far as Bolivia. For the harvest, which, like that of Tucumán, requires a good deal of additional manual labour, the works look to the wild Indians of the Chaco. This curious stream of seasonal migration, which the sugar campaign of Jujuy provokes every winter outside the zone of white colonization, is of very old date, going back more than sixty years. Belmar notices it about the middle of the nineteenth century. The recruiting agents of San Pedro and Ledesma set out from Embarcación, where the railway ends, and enter the Chaco, from which each of them brings a troop of some hundreds of natives between March and June. The number of these temporary immigrants seems to be about 6,000. The Chiriguanos of the north leave their families on the Chaco, and the men come alone. The Matacos immigrate in whole tribes. They camp in huts like those of their own villages, under the shelter of the works, and are paid in maize, meat, and cigars. In October, when the algarroba flowers and makes them dream of their own country, they receive the remainder of their pay in money, and spend it in brandy, clothing, knives, and firearms.

The history of Mendoza resembles that of Tucumán in many ways. In the province of Cuyo, as at Tucumán, urban life has been precocious. In the middle of the eighteenth century Mendoza and San Juan exported wines, dried fruit (pasas and orejones), and flour to the coast and to Paraguay. Part of the so-called "Chilean flour" consumed on the Pampa, really came from Jachal and Mendoza. This trade ceased in the nineteenth century, but San Juan and Mendoza found another source of wealth in fattening cattle and sending them to Chile. Belmar, in 1856, estimates the extent of the lucerne farms of Cuyo to have been 150,000 cuadres(440,000 acres). 35 As at Tucumán, the present period is characterized by a rapid expansion of cultivation and a rapid growth of population. But, whereas at Tucumán the neighbouring provinces have provided the whole of the manual labour required, and the actual population is essentially creole, at Mendoza there has been a larger number of foreign immigrants. In 1914, foreigners were 310 per 1,000 of the entire population of Mendoza: a larger proportion than for the whole country. The immigrants going straight to Mendoza from the ports numbered 12,000 in 1911, and 15,000 in 1912; almost as much as for the province of Santa Fé, and more than for the province of Córdoba. Thus Mendoza plays a part of its own in the charm which Argentina has for the imagination of Europe. When we examine a chart of the population of South America, we notice that the oases of Cuyo contain the only important groups of European population at any distance from the coast.

The prosperity of Mendoza to-day depends upon the cultivation of the vine, just as that of Tucumán depends upon sugar. The cultivation of the vine is possible in the greater part of Argentina. In the early days of colonization there were vineyards as far as the Paraguay. They still flourish at Concordia on the Uruguay and at San Nicolas on the lower Paraná. But the wet summers of the eastern provinces are not suitable for them. The climate for them improves as one goes westward, and there is less rain. The dry zone of eastern Argentina is the special field of the vine. There it has spread over nearly twenty degrees of latitude, and it depends, like other cultivation, upon irrigation. In the Andean valleys of the north-west it rises to a height of 7,500 feet. South of Mendoza the higher limit of the vine sinks rapidly, and there are no vineyards in the mountainous district itself. On the other hand, its range increases; in the east it spreads as far as the Atlantic coast, in the valley of the Rio Negro.

The former centres of viticulture in the north-west, in the oases of the costas of La Rioja, Catamarca, and Salta, have scarcely been affected by the advance; and, in any case, their extent is very limited. The vine-district of the Rio Negro is only in process of creation, and its output is still small. Thus the area of production on a large scale is limited to the three oases of San Juan, Mendoza, and San Rafaël, which in 1913 yielded 4,750,000 hectolitres, out of the total Argentine production of 5,000,000 hectolitres. These three centres differ from each other to-day rather in their economic development than in their physical conditions. At San Juan, the transformation of the earlier methods of production and the traditional creole industries is only now taking place. At Mendoza it is quite finished. The San Rafaël centre, on the other hand, is of recent origin; it was created on the site of a fortress which guarded the Indian frontier until 1880. Cultivated areas have appeared on virgin soil, in the midst of the desert. These different circumstances account for diversities which, though they will disappear in the course of time, are still obvious to the traveller. The general scene is the same everywhere. Arid and desolate mountains close the horizon in the west; at their feet spreads the immense alluvial deposit on which the vineyards, surrounded by rows of poplars, grow wherever water is to be found.

There are so few gaps in the lower slopes of the Cordillera that the available water is gathered at a small number of points. The Rio San Juan alone drains a belt of the Cordillera at least 140 miles broad. Each of the two oases, Mendoza and San Rafaël, has two streams of water to feed it. The Mendoza and the Tunuyan at Mendoza, and the Diamante and the Atuel at San Rafaël, approach each other, when they leave the mountains, so closely that the estates they water blend into a continuous area. Then, however, instead of uniting, they diverge and are lost, separately, in the plain. These streams have less fall than the thinner torrents of the oases of the north-west, and the average inclination of the dejection-cones which bear the vineyards is slight. The upper slopes of the cone, where thin beds of clay lie upon shingle, give clear wines of excellent aroma. Hence, in the Mendoza district, the vineyards of Lujan and, further down, of Godoy Cruz, Guaymallen, and Maipu produce choice brands. On the plain, to the east of Mendoza, at San Martin and Junin, the harvest is larger, but the wine is rough, and one can often taste the saltpetre of the clayey soil. There is the same difference between the upper and lower district at San Juan and San Rafaël.

The oases of San Juan and San Rafaël spread evenly over the most suitable parts of the alluvial talus, but the oasis of Mendoza has a peculiar shape which can only be explained by historical causes. The cultivated belt is a narrow strip along the Tunuyan, for more than sixty miles, as far as the heart of the plain, out of sight of the Cordillera. It is one instance, out of a thousand, of the influence of traffic on colonization. As a matter of fact, the road from Mendoza to the coast, by which the cattle convoys of San Luis went to the invernadas, passes along the Tunuyan. The estates grew up by the side of it. The villages of Santa Rosa, Las Catitas, and La Paz, which mark the various stages of it, are all of ancient origin. Strangers are rarely found there. One still sees in them very old houses, built before the railway was made, dating from the days of the carril or waggon-road. The importance of this line of water across the desert is clearly seen on the Woodbine Parish map.

The use of irrigation in this district raised different technical problems from those of the north-western provinces. In this latitude the torrents of the Andes are formidable when the snows meetmelt, at the beginning of summer. The flood is all the greater and more sudden as the heat is late. From all the ravines of the mountains the muddy waters then converge toward the valley. The flood scours the bed of the river, erodes its banks, and threatens to find a way amongst the estates. Even the towns of Mendoza and San Juan have more than once been in danger. The fear of diverting the flood and of bringing it upon themselves compelled them to be content with raising only light and frail dams in the path of the torrent. At San Juan they used, for a long time, the waters of the Arroyo del EesteroEstero, a small brook fed by infiltration from the Valle de Zenda, and it was some time before they ventured to draw upon the river itself.

Another problem, which the smaller oases of the north-west hardly know—the problem of drainage—is of paramount importance at San Juan and Mendoza, as far as a large part of the irrigated surface is concerned. The water infiltrating into the soil forms a subterranean sheet which approaches more or less to the surface according to the topography. It comes to the surface at the foot of the cone, where the slope diminishes and the cone gradually passes into the plain. Hence the cone has, at its base, a belt of marshes (ciénagas), and sometimes a line of good springs (barbollon). At San Juan, if you move far enough away to get a comprehensive view of the whole of the estates, you see that they occupy the middle belt, half-way down the cone, the top of which is composed of coarse shingle, while the bottom is too wet. The advance of the plots upward and the steadily increasing use of the available water tends to raise the level of the underground sheet and enlarge the area of marsh.

There is a fine black soil, very fertile when it is drained, and no irrigation is needed; as it is possible, according to the depth of the drainage-trenches, to regulate the level of the underground water so as to make it reach and feed the roots. The draining of the marshes, again, opens up a field for the further expansion of the estates, especially at San Juan, where it has scarcely begun. Moreover, the water that is obtained by draining the marshes enables them to create new irrigated estates further on. At Mendoza there is already a considerable area irrigated by drainage-canals (desagüe).

The level of the water in the marshes sinks in the summer and rises in winter, at the time when the irrigation of the upper districts is suspended or greatly reduced, and when the surplus of the acequias, which the fields no longer take, flows or infiltrates downward in any way that it can. Thus, contrary to the torrent itself, it is in winter that the drainage-canals are at their fullest. At Barriales (Mendoza), and on the lower course of the Zanjon canal, thousands of acres, watered by the drainage-canals and exposed to drought in the summer, have the right to take water from the river or the canal during the three summer months, from November to January. During the remainder of the year they are restricted to the use of the drainage-canals. This sort of concession seems to provide a means of using the surplus of the river during the summer.

With this exception there are no temporary rights limited to the high-water season and enabling them to raise quick crops, that ripen in a few months, round the area of perennials. At least, the expansion of the estates and the wish to use the full water-supply have led to the creation of eventual rights, besides the definitive rights. They do not come into play, theoretically, until the definitive rights have had their full supply, and then only in a fixed order. They are subordinated to the ordinary rights, and the market value of land with eventual water-rights is much lower than that of land with definitive rights.36 At San Rafaël, where colonization preceded the systematic inventory of the natural resources, the concession of eventual water-rights was a means of facilitating the development of estates; though they were very badly informed as to the surplus of the Atuel and the Diamante and the area that the new land might cover.

In practice, the co-existence of eventual and definitive rights presents many difficulties, and more than one pretext for fraud. Somtimes Sometimes the owners of eventual rights have access to the river higher up than the older intakes, which ought to be served first. A whole group of canals feeding land with eventual rights is in this way grafted upon the Tunuyan above La Paz, the rights of which are definitive and ancient.

At Mendoza and San Juan the water-rights, codified in provincial laws which date, like the dams, from the end of the nineteenth century, are very different from the water-rights which hold in the Andean provinces of the north-west. The variety of the physical conditions is reflected in the institutions. Here water is not an object of private ownership independently of the soil. The concession of water is assigned to a definite estate, and it is formulated in superficial measurements. The law fixes the volume of water that goes with each unit of surface. If the output of the river is not large enough to provide the volume stated in the law to the whole of the irrigated district, all the lands with definitive rights receive at least an equal amount, and the available water is shared by the canals in proportion to the extent of the surface they irrigate.

No law could secure for the farmers of Cuyo, even those with definitive rights, a constant supply of water, or save them from suffering in common from the variation in the volume of the torrents, and it was not even possible to guarantee them water in any permanent fashion. The turno is used everywhere when the water is low. Lower down, where the drought lasts nearly the whole year, the turno is the standing rule. At La Paz, on the fringe of the irrigated area, it has to be applied rigorously. The turn of each owner comes every eight, ten, or twelve days. In normal times he receives the suerte de agua; that is to say, the output of a sluice of a fixed size during a half-hour for each hectare (a little over two acres) of land. But if the river runs low, it becomes impossible to supply several neighbours simultaneously, and, in order to avoid making the interval between supplies too long, the duration of the suerte de agua is reduced by half or three-quarters.

The oases of Cuyo are like the small oases of the north-west as regards the function of those who are engaged in the administration of irrigation. The water-laws give the provincial functionaries general directions. Below them, however, to arrange the distribution of the water and the upkeep of the canals in detail, they have allowed to survive, and have merely regulated, certain primitive democratic organisms. At San Juan the superintendence of the irrigation is entrusted to elected municipal councils and the governor of the department. At Mendoza, the owners appoint a council of three delegates and an inspector for each canal, and these settle the annual budget of the canal, submit it to the provincial authorities, receive the taxes, carry out the necessary repairs, and so on. The great subdivision of property and the large number of electors make these little republics very lively; and they are very jealous of their autonomy.37

Even within the narrow limits of the Cuyo district the climatological conditions, which control the growth of the vine, are not everywhere the same. The opening of the vineyards varies by several weeks, according to the locality.38 The northern slope of the cone, exposed to the sun and protected from the southern winds, is more precocious. Some districts, poorly sheltered from the southern winds, and very liable to have late frost, have not been planted with vines (district of the Tucuyan below San Carlos, to the south of Mendoza). Everywhere the dryness of the atmosphere causes the ripe grapes to remain long on the vine, so that the harvest may last two months or more without any harm. It thus requires a relatively small supplement of manual labour, and does not necessitate seasonal migrations. The length of the harvest, moreover, facilitates the trade in grapes, which is one of the special features of the Argentine vine-industry.

The climate is not so suitable for making wine as it is for growing vines. The temperature is high at the time of the harvest, and it retards fermentation in the cellars. The grapes have too much sugar and too little acid for the transformation of the must to proceed of itself. Hence it is necessary to have an expensive equipment, improved cellars, and skilled workers. This industrial organization is beyond the reach of the small cultivators. The cultivation of the vine and the making of wine are, therefore, not always associated. They are taken up by two different classes of the population. Tucumán has its cañeros and factories, and Mendoza, by a division of labour which seems to the European visitor as strange as the climate which partly explains it, has its vine-growers (viñateros) and its manufactures (bodegueros).39

Each of these two classes has had its share in the common work. The viñatores have created the vineyard. The creole vine, imported into Peru from the Canaries and spreading over the whole of the southern Andes, yields great quantities of a sugary, but rough fruit, which does not lend itself to imitating the wines of Europe. At Mendoza it has almost entirely disappeared, though it survives at San Juan. It is grown on trellis-work, wooden frames resting on forked branches of algarroba; though sometimes the strong stems rise without support to a height of about six feet and are crowned with shoots and leaves. The new vine has been grown from French cuttings. While the creole vines look like orchards, the French vines are grown in rows of iron wire.

The plantations were first made by creole workmen, who were paid by the day. Afterwards, as immigration from Europe increased, long-term contracts came into vogue, in virtue of which the colonist received the bare land and undertook to have it planted with vines at the end of three, four, or five years. The owner supplied the material, and at the end of the contract the colonist received a few centavos for each vine, or sold the whole or part of the first harvest. On account of these contracts there were always a great many foreigners in the districts where vineyards were in course of formation. The proportion is now less at Mendoza than at San Rafaël, where colonization is more recent. Whenever they could, the owners left to the colonists, not only the business of planting the vines, but the upkeep of adult vineyards. In those cases the colonist receives a fixed sum per hectare (100 piastres, for instance), and has to dig, prune, irrigate, etc. A large number of these agricultural workers and small contractors have saved a small capital, and purchased land of their own. This they have planted, and they thus form a new class of working owners.

While the viñatores were multiplying vineyards, the bodegueros were transforming the methods of making wine. The weakness of imperfectly fermented wines, which turn sour and evaporate quickly, was all the worse for the growers of the colonial period because transport was slow, and there was no protection against the sun, which cooked the algarroba casks or the leather bottles on the backs of the mules. The vineyard-owners often preferred to distil their wine and export brandy, flavoured with aniseed, to the Andean tablelands or the coast. The climate and the risks of transport had brought into existence an astonishing variety of methods of treating the must. Sometimes it was concentrated by boiling until it became a thick syrup (arrope), something like, apparently, the thick wines of the Mediterranean in former times. At other times the must was cooked without thickening it, to prevent immediate fermentation, as is done with the chicha in Chile to-day; or sour wines were mixed with boiled must and ashes of the shoots, which masked the acidity.

These traditions are now lost, but it is curious to see the bodegueros still endeavouring to meet the taste of the creole population of the north-west, which has retained the preference for sweet and fruity wines. San Juan, which caters to these customers, manufactures mistelas—fresh boiled must with an addition of alcohol—which are mixed with mature wines in order the imitate the imperfect fermentation of earlier days. Perhaps there is no part of the world where the art of wine-making has been pushed so far as in the bodegas of Mendoza. The correction of the must, and the analysis and treatment of diseased wines, follow the most modern of methods. The bodegas produce a very steady wine, which is guaranteed by their trade marks. The wine of the Mendoza type, which they endeavour to produce, is a strong red wine, of heavy colour, with twelve or thirteen per cent. of alcohol. It may euphemistically be called a blended wine, but is in reality diluted wine. Argentina does not produce very light wines, and has no use for diluted wine.

The number of wine-making cellars in 1913 was 997 at Mendoza and 336 at San Juan. But they differ very much from each other in size. Most of them have only a small equipment and modest capital. Some, on the other hand, are large enterprizes which could produce enough to supply a city: vast constructions of brick or adobe, with light roofs as a precaution against earthquakes.

The owners of the cellars almost always have their own vineyards, but they also buy the harvests of cultivators who have not cellars. In 1908 it was calculated that 140,000 tons of grapes were sent to the press by the owners and 175,000 tons bought by the bodegueros.40

The conflicts of the interests of the viñateros and the bodegueros are the very woof of life at Mendoza. The price of grapes is infinitely more variable than that of wine, and the viñatero who has no cellar is at the mercy of the bodeguero. If he does not want to see his harvest go to waste, he has to accept unconditionally the price that is offered him. The bodeguero has, moreover, the advantage of disposing of the grapes grown on his own estates. If the circumstances do not encourage him to produce all he can, he sends to the press merely his own harvest and will not buy any other. Thus the whole burden of commercial crises falls upon the vineyard with no cellar.

The prices paid for the grapes differ a little for different parts of the vineyard, but the variation is more due to the number of bodegas in the district and their capacity than to the quality of the grapes. Transport of the grapes to a great distance is very expensive. In exceptional times grapes have been brought from San Rafaël to the Mendoza cellars, but each bodega gets its supply as far as possible from its own district. At San Juan the capacity of the cellars is proportionately less than at Mendoza, and the bodegueros have imposed very hard conditions on the growers. The price fixed in the purchase-contract does not of itself give a complete idea of the benefits which the bodeguero enjoys. The grapes are purchased by weight, but the bodeguero reserves the right to say at what date they are to be delivered. He begins to harvest his own vines when the fruit is scarcely ripe, but he puts back the harvesting of the grapes he buys as far as possible, even to April or May. These grapes exposed on the plant to the heat of the sun, become overripe; they gain in sugar and lose in weight. They make vineswines with a higher percentage of alcohol, and with these he can correct the lighter wines made during the preceding weeks. Finally, the bodeguero does not advance money to the viñatero, as the manufacturer does to the cañero in the sugar industry.

The only safeguard of the vine-growers is the lack of understanding between the bodegueros and the competition between them. Although there are conventions amongst the bodegueros which lay down officially, before the vintage, the basis of all transactions, they are not respected except in so far as they serve a man's interest. If it is expected that the wine will easily be sold, and that grapes will be short, buyers are abundant, and contracts are signed before the fruit appears. It is a sort of gamble, as in the case of wheat and cotton. Bulls and bears struggle for the market. If the bulls win, the viñateros grow rich.41

When we compare the diagrams which show the production of wine and sugar in Argentina during the last thirty years, we see that they clearly illustrate the condition of dependence of the vineyard industry and the sugar industry as regrads regards the home market. The prosperity of the region of the Pampas, especially during the years before 1914, is reflected at Mendoza and Tucumán. The expansive movement of the estates is similarly bound up with the construction of railways to connect them with the coast. Industry, on a large scale, began at Tucumán in 1876: that is to say, at the opening of the Central Córdoba line. The area planted with cane rose from 2,200 hectares in 1876 to 14,800 in 1886. The production of sugar was trebled in four years, from 1876 to 1880. But the Central Córdoba was a narrow-gauge line, expensive to use and necessitating a transfer of goods at Córdoba. In 1891 the broad-gauge line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was extended to Tucumán; and in 1892 the narrow-gauge line from Rosario to Santa Fé, San Cristobal, and Tucumán was also brought into use. The following years were marked by rapid advances of the sugar industry. From 1891 to 1895 the area planted with canes rose from 14,200 to 40,700 hectares, and the manufacture of sugar from 31,000 to 135,000 tons. At Mendoza, also, the development of the vineyards dates from the completion of the San Luis Railway in 1885. Plantations were at once started, and three years later they came into touch. In 1887, the railway carried 27,000 hectolitres of wine from Mendoza to the coast; in 1890-91 it carried 268,000 hectolitres. Production had increased tenfold in that short space of time.

As the home-production of wine and sugar increased, the imports from abroad fell. As early as 1885 Tucumán was able to meet the home demand for raw sugar, and refined only was imported. In 1888, a refinery was erected at Rosario to deal with Argentine sugar which came by rail, and foreign sugar which came up the river. Import ceased at this date, or there have since only been occasional years of import, to meet a scarcity. The imports of ordinary foreign wines continued to increase until 1890 (800,000 hectolitres), or as long as the wine produced at Mendoza did not suffice to meet the demand. They have steadily declined since that date (350,000 hectolitres in 1913), and are now only seven per cent. of the national production. We should add that, even in regard to ordinary wines, the Mendoza and the imported wine are not strictly comparable, that the competition between them is not simply a matter of price, and that some customers continue to prefer foreign wine.