The Pampean formation consists almost entirely of loose deposits, sand and clays of various sorts. There is no gravel.80 Even in the vicinity of the sierras the beds of gravel, with round or angular pebbles, are almost always covered by clay, and are exposed only in the banks of the streams. Olascoaga mentions the surprise of the gauchos of General Roca's army when they found Patagonian pebbles on the ground during their stay at Choele Choel on the Colorado, in the course of the compaign campaign on the Rio Negro. Officers and soldiers dismounted to pick them up. Sand and clay form a thick bed of continental alluvia. The Tertiary maritime transgressions, which have left their mark in the clays and limestones of the left bank of the lower Paraná, and the layers of shells at San Pedro on the right bank, never penetrated far into the interior of the Pampean region, and one finds no trace of them when one leaves the coast or the river.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Primitive breeding affords few examples of periodical migration for the better use of pasturage. In 1822, in the course of a journey amongst the Sierras de Tandil and de la Ventana, Colonel Garcia noticed that the Indians kept their cattle round the temporary lagoons of the plain in the winter, and went up to the mountain-streams in summer. Transhumation movements of this kind were difficult for the creole ranchers, whose fairly large herds could not be handled easily. The Chascomus breeders, however, at the close of the eighteenth century, drove their cattle to the low banks of the Salado during the dry season.91 Garcia also notices the importance of the Salado pastures for the ranches of Salto, Areco, and Lujan.92 The need to remove the herds in the dry season, and to find invernadas within reach of the former ranches, was due to the change brought about in the natural vegetation of the Pampa and the spread of the pasto dulce. The annual herbs which compose the pasto dulce die and disappear after fertilization. Until the autumn rain they leave the ground quite naked, whereas the tough grasses of the pasto duro afforded a thin but permanent pasture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The number of cattle increases rapidly. In 1875 it was estimated that there were 5,000,000 head of cattle in the province of Buenos Aires. In 1889 there were 8,500,000. Since that date the variations have been comparatively slight. The Census of 1895 gives 7,700,000; that of 1908 gives 10,300,000; that of 1914 gives 9,000,000; and that of 1915 gives 11,300,000.94 But the value of the cattle has gone up rapidly. The exports of live meat, which lasted from 1889 to 1900, were the beginning of the rise. It was strengthened when the refrigerators ceased to confine themselves to killing sheep and began to buy cattle. The exports of chilled or frozen beef increased after 1898. The value of them rose to 10,000,000 gold piastres in 1904, double that in 1909, and more than quadruple in 1914.

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

The lucerne spread southward and south-westward from this point; and the improvement of the herds kept pace with it. I have shown elsewhere how this improvement was checked north of a line along the course of the Paraná, the northern frontier of the Constitución and General Lopez departments, in the province of Santa Fé and on the Rio Cuarto, and in the Córdoba province, by the presence of the garrapate, which inoculates the cattle with a dreaded disease, Texas fever. The creole cattle are immunized against the garrapate, but pedigree cattle quickly succumb to it. In order to protect the southern zone, where the garrapate does not reproduce, the Argentine Government imposes severe restrictions on the transport of cattle from north to south; the cattle have to have disinfectant baths at the frontier-stations. This cuts pastoral Argentina in two. While the Durham cattle of the south are intended for the refrigerators, the creole cattle of the north still supply the saladeros, which have disappeared from Buenos Aires, but survive on the Uruguay. Yet the advantages of crossing with European breeds are such that the northern breeders, in spite of the risk and the expense, have not given up all hope of accomplishing it. The transformation of the herd, however, is bound to be very slow. Pedigree breeders are brought from the south and kept in the stable. Their progeny, born on the spot, resist Texas fever better and can be put out to pasture. There has been more progress in the contaminated zone on the right bank of the Paraná than in Entre Rios and Corrientes. Pedigree animals have been introduced at Santa Fé, not only in the region of the colonies, but further north, in the extreme northern corner of the Pampa (San Cristobal department), colonized by ranchers from the north of Buenos Aires and the south of Santa Fé, who were ousted by the progress of maize. They have brought with them to the new lands the cultivation of lucerne and the methods they followed on their former property. At Corrientes, on the other hand, breeding is an historic industry. The staff of the ranches is indigenous. The pastoral traditions are unchanged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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