Chapter X (3)

Time will change this no doubt, and change it as soon as Chubut begins really to advance, but all that time has as yet done for the Welsh colony appears to have been to sap the energy of its forefathers; the men who in the face of discouragement and deaf official ears turned to their just grievances, struggled on, themselves constructing irrigation canals, and changed disaster into comparative prosperity. The Chubut “Welshman” of to-day seems as lazy as his forebears were energetic. A fresh strain of blood is possibly needed for his case.

The superficial area of Chubut is very large. After the Territory of Santa Cruz (to which would seem to have been allotted all that was left over of the Republic except the Argentine half of Tierra del Fuego, after the Government of the more populated parts had been arranged for) it is the largest National Territory of Argentina, and much larger than any Province except that of Buenos Aires.

Its estimated population averages scarcely more than one per ten square miles, so that there is plenty of elbow room in Chubut. With a superficial area approximately equal to that of Italy, the total estimated number of its inhabitants is but 31,000.

However, no doubt there are good times coming for Chubut as elsewhere in Argentina, though, petroleum and its general effects apart, there is relatively little in Chubut to hasten their coming, except its fertile Andine valleys. Sheep certainly thrive on its rough, scanty vegetation, and seem to find just sufficient shelter on its wind-swept plains; but Chubut has little rainfall and its available fresh waters are few and far between at any practicable distance beneath the surface. It has only one great river, the Chubut, from which it takes its name, and this runs very shallow in the summer, while many of the lakes dry up altogether. In the West, the Andine region, however, there is ample rainfall, and this is as yet the only really productive part.

Chubut grows and exports some alfalfa and sends some cattle to Chile, but its chief product is wool. Its wheat, however, though still small in quantity, fetches very good prices. A railway is projected to run East and West across this Territory. It already reaches from Puerto Madryn to Gainam, on the River Chubut, a little west of Rawson.

SANTA CRUZ

This Territory is bounded on the North by Chubut, on the West and South by Chile, and on the East by the Atlantic Ocean.

Santa Cruz is not by any means so desolate, on the whole, as Chubut. It is the land of the sheep, and its large, very large, estancias, either on the Andine side of it or on the banks of its rivers, mostly belong to British settlers, who have brought their own architecture, orchards and gardens with them to this really out-of-the-way spot. Anyone weary of the crowded world and its busy ways might live and die under the shadow of the ever-lessening, as one gets south, heights of the Andine range, in some snug, sheltered valley through which a rippling stream runs close to where he would sit on a green sward in the shade of his own orchard.

This is no fancy picture. As has been indicated elsewhere in these pages, nothing is so English, temperature, vegetation, the very breeds of sheep (Romeny March largely predominating), in America than some favoured spots in Santa Cruz. Only the climate is different in being drier, the rain mostly falling in blustering showers.

There is, of course, a contrast when one emerges from among the Andine valleys, rivers and lakes out on to the dry, wind-swept, desert-looking plains. Still, even there one comes at times to oases, on the banks of one or other of the several considerable rivers. Shelter from the furious winds which seem to blow eternally over Patagonia is the one necessity for man, beast and crops in Santa Cruz. Transport also is lacking. Even the railway which the National Government has partly constructed to run from Puerto Deseado, and for the rest has under advanced consideration, is apparently to strike almost immediately Northwards up into Chubut; leaving Santa Cruz, as it is now; almost a world of itself apart, as far at least as communication with the rest of Argentina is concerned. Its most fertile parts, like those of all these western and southern territories, are much more get-at-able from Chile than from their Atlantic sides.

However, a cold-storage establishment has been built at Gallegos, the chief port and the capital of this Territory; so that Santa Cruz may become a centre of the frozen and chilled mutton industry instead of, as formerly, exporting only wool and slaughtering sheep merely for their fat and skins. It is a good sheep country in the regions at all suitable for grazing, since disease is extremely rare in, if not entirely absent from, flocks reared in its cold dry climate. In respect of cattle and cereals the outlook is not so promising. Still, one cannot have everything even in Argentina. And one can grow wheat, oats and alfalfa, besides apples and pears in Santa Cruz.

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

First of all it may be said that there are no active volcanoes in Tierra del Fuego nor have been within the memory of man. Mr. Paul Walle, in his excellent work, already mentioned, _L’Argentine telle qu’elle est_, suggests that its name may have been given it by early explorers who observed burning on it grass fires lit by the natives for the purpose of improving the growth of certain shrubs the leaves of which they use for food.

Be this as it may, the name “Fire Land,” as my friend the Government official translator naively has it in the English edition of the Monographs attached to the latest Argentine agricultural census, is anything but a warm spot; as certain demagogues who long troubled the industrial peace of Buenos Aires have shown that they are well aware.

These people were at one time periodically deported for inciting to commit or committing overt violence in connection with labour strikes. They were mostly anarchists of the type which tyrannical Governments all the world over persist in regarding as criminal. These men were put on board boats bound for their native countries, the police of which were telegraphically advised of their departure and intended destination. Needless to say, the anarchists took good care to contrive to leave the boat before she reached what was for them a danger zone. Usually they got out at Montevideo and soon were back again at their old work of stirring up strife in Buenos Aires.

At last the National Government had enough of this procedure and Congress passed a law whereby any person having been sentenced to deportation is, on being subsequently found in the Republic, liable to a term of penal servitude; and the fact that Tierra del Fuego would be the penal settlement to which recalcitrant anarchists would be sent was duly and insistently made public. This had a very beneficial effect for the Government and peaceable citizens at large. Dangerous anarchists thenceforth ceased to return to Argentina after deportation. They knew, or at least had read or heard, what the climate of Tierra del Fuego is; and that for people like them, used to fairly comfortable living, confinement there most likely meant burial there also.

Not quite half of this charming island, over which the winds blow straight from the South Pole, belongs to Argentina and forms the National Territory under discussion. The other half of it belongs to Chile. Geologically most of this island is a prolongation of the Andes. On the Atlantic side of its forest-clad hills are sloping plains, the continuation of the Pampean formation. On these a peculiarly hardy breed of sheep graze, finding some shelter in valleys and hollows, and give a wool which fetches a good price in European markets. Grazing of a rough kind does also maintain cattle and horses on the Northern parts of the island. Fish and shell-fish of a multitude of kinds and good quality abound on the coast and afford material for a profitable industry, as also do the seal and whale fisheries, and penguins are hunted for their oil. All these fisheries are supposed to be under Government supervision, regulated by special laws; but, in fact, the practical difficulties of adequate supervision result in an enormous amount of highly destructive poaching.

The official estimate of the total cultivated area of Argentine Tierra del Fuego is 110 hectares, of which 90 are stated to be planted with potatoes and other table vegetables. The number of sheep is given by the same authority (Señor Emilio Lahitte, Director of the Department of Rural Economy and Statistics in the National Ministry of Agriculture) as over 2,500,000 and cattle at about 15,000.

The Roman Catholic Silesian Brothers have a mission, schools and an estancia on the island; and a Protestant clergyman, the late Mr. Bridges, during his lifetime did a great deal towards civilizing and bettering the condition of the native Indians and also kept a self-supporting refuge home for the victims of the shipwrecks of small craft which are still too numerous on this wild storm-beaten coast. This good work is now being carried on by his son, the first child of European parentage born in Tierra del Fuego.

Ushuaia, the Capital, is chiefly notable for the penal gaol above alluded to. Formerly convicts were kept, but not often for long before death overtook them, on an island which forms the very southernmost point of South America. It is a terribly cold, damp region where rain falls on an average 280 days in the year. On consideration, perhaps it is the reputation of this place which has so effectually damped the ardour of deported anarchists; as the Ushuaia gaol is a modern structure, said to be furnished with all the latest requirements for the well-being of prisoners. Still, even it, in Tierra del Fuego, can provide but uncomfortably cold lodging.

Tierra del Fuego is not lonely for it has many fishing ports and all navigation must pass it on the way through the Magellan Straits. For all that, one cannot but wonder why any but prisoners and prison and other officials go there (except, of course, fishermen and the adventurous spirits who are ever hunting in every accessible nook and cranny of it for alluvial gold) when there are so many much pleasanter and more profitable places, with, between them, all varieties of climates to choose from in the wide latitudes of the River Plate Republics. _De gustibus_, etc., one must suppose—and yield obedience to the final words of the saying.

MISIONES

If one has sufficient Spanish, one should read Leopoldo Lugones’ _Imperio Jesuitico_, and also the same author’s _Guerras Gauchas_, before going to Misiones. If not, one should go there all the same.

This territory is bounded on the North-East and South by Brazil, and on the West by Paraguay and the Province of Corrientes. It is sandwiched in between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, but a very much smaller Paraná and Uruguay than we have seen further south.

Many parts of Argentina have been described as “The Garden of the Republic,” and many as its most picturesque region, but the latter description can surely only truthfully apply to Misiones. If not sufficiently trim and cultivated to be called a garden, its superlative beauty and its crowning marvel the Iguazú Falls must leave even the most callous visitor pleasurably astounded; and not a little awestruck with its ruins and reminiscences of the dawn of South American civilization, which was heralded in these parts by the Jesuit Fathers. These Missionaries made most practical Christians of the surrounding tribes; teaching them the arts of architecture, carpentry, and such-like; not forgetting humility and obedience.

If one wants proof of all this one need but look on the ruins of monastery and church now half hidden amid an ever-encroaching luxuriant vegetation.

The descendants of those same Indians can hardly be got to do as much work in a lifetime now as they must have done in a week under the mild but very firm rule of the Jesuit Fathers. Eventually, the power these Missionaries had attained over the surrounding tribes became such as to label them dangerous to even Catholic Spain; and an order was given, and enforced, for their expulsion. They were scattered: and but the ruins of their solid, sculptured masonry, gardens and orange and olive groves now mark the places where once white-clad natives kept fast and feast days with as much solemn orderliness as ever so many timid monastic novices could do.

Nowadays, one can get from Buenos Aires to Misiones either by rail (North-East Argentine Railway) or by the Mihanovich company’s boats. Both ways furnish delightful travelling through interesting and picturesque country, though for pure scenery the river way is the best. The best of all, however, is to go up by rail and down again by boat and to see all there is, and there is a very great deal worth seeing, to be seen.

By either route one can stop at Posadas, the capital, evidently from its name an ancient resting-place for travellers (Posada being Spanish for an inn).

But people who are bent on reaching San Ignacio, a small river port, or rather clearance on the Upper Paraná, near which are the chief of the ruined Jesuit Missions, and the Iguazú Falls will probably leave Posadas for closer inspection if need be, on the return journey.

Once again we board a Mihanovich boat and go up a seeming river of fairyland.

An adequate description of the majestic splendour and beauty of the Iguazú Falls is far beyond the pen of the present writer. One is gradually prepared for the great sight by a series of smaller cascades and cataracts of other converging rivers which one passes on the way to where the Iguazú hurls its large volume of water in downward jumps or in one horseshoe-shaped, thundering, frothy mass. Where it falls one is face to face with the greatest waterfalls in the whole world,[32] as the following comparative figures will show:

Volume cubic
per minute.[33] Breadth. Height.

Iguazú 28,000 ft. 13,133 ft. 196 to 220 ft.
Victoria (S. Africa) 18,000 ft. 5,580 ft. 350 to 360 ft.
Niagara 18,000 ft. 5,249 ft. 150 to 164 ft.

The only point of advantage of the Victoria Falls is their height.

The present chief source of wealth in Misiones is the various kinds of timber and valuable cabinet-maker’s woods found in its virgin forests. One day Misiones will doubtless export its rosewood and other beautiful and valuable products of its forests, which also produce pine and other building timber of superior quality to that which Argentina now imports from Europe. Transport of timber is effected by means of tying it into huge rafts which go down river as far as Corrientes. The timber supply of Misiones will long continue rich, since the tendency of the forest is ever to encroach on the surrounding land.

A growing industry on which great expectations are based is the cultivation of the Ilex Paraguayensis, or mate shrub. The consumption of mate or Paraguayan tea, as it is sometimes called in Europe, is enormous throughout both of the River Plate Republics, which now import very large quantities annually from Paraguay and Brazil, while no sort of good reason seems to exist why the northern districts of Argentina should not grow sufficient to meet the home consumption.

The Jesuits evidently appreciated and cultivated this shrub, but they had the secret of growing it from seed, a secret the true re-discovery of which by modern horticulturists is not yet quite proved.[34]

Up till quite recently all Misiones mate yerba has been gathered from the abundant virgin growth of the shrub. Once Misiones produced larger quantities of sugar than it does now; and there is no reason why this industry should not revive from the almost total paralysis which it at present suffers; nor why one day the wine output of Misiones should not be improved in both quality and quantity.

Maize naturally grows well (it yields in six months) in Misiones; which Territory with the general warmth of its climate, sufficient rainfall and heavy dews, is most favourable to tropical and subtropical vegetation. Oranges, of course, bananas, pineapples, and guavas grow practically, if not quite, wild and ground nuts and the castor-oil plant are among its many valuable products. The whole of Misiones is well watered by a network of very numerous streams, and if its atmosphere by day is rather reminiscent of a hothouse, the nights are usually cool and refreshing.

The unevenness of its surface, while precluding much idea of extensive cultivation, is admirably suited for the shelter and care of the best natural produce of this exotically picturesque region.

Misiones has quarries of valuable granite at San Ignacio; close to the river as if they had been placed there for facility of transport. These quarries furnished the Jesuits with the material for their famous buildings; though that they persuaded the natives, who before their coming had little ambition for anything save inter-tribal warfare, to quarry, transport and build up solid masonry is nothing short of marvellous. Truly Jesuit “influence” was a very real and concrete thing in the Misiones of those days.

One must not forget tobacco, or cotton, as other of Misiones’ hitherto greatly neglected industries.

One cannot insist too much upon the fact that no one who does not himself visit the River Plate Republics in all their length and breadth can really grasp even a faint idea of their diversified latent wealth. One is apt to suppose that because Misiones, for instance, does not produce much tobacco or sugar,[35] there is some pretty solid obstacle at the bottom of its relative non-productiveness. People naturally think, “Well, it’s all very well to chant dithyrambics of the marvellous might be’s of what evidently are your pet countries, but why does all this wonderful wealth of them continue latent, why does not one see, or at least hear, a great deal more about it, if all you say is true?”

The reply for this is, “Give me sufficient capital and sufficient suitable labour (especially the latter) and I will very speedily prove my every word.”

The River Plate Republics have not yet (again I say it) sufficient population to exploit even a part of their possible cereal industry, the one which naturally gets first attention because it combines the attractions of rich profit and comparatively little care or labour, under the almost primitive conditions under which most of it is still carried on.

When there is a surplus of labour after grain and cattle have been duly provided for, all sorts of other things will be attended to. But it is no good expecting ordinary people, without the many more or less occult advantages of early Jesuit Fathers, to get any constantly careful work, such as cotton, tobacco and many other valuable crops require, out of native South American Indians. They can’t or won’t do it, anyway, they don’t; and it is probably easier to rediscover how to grow mate yerba from seed than how to rediscipline for practical purposes the race which built and gardened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The North Argentine Railway has in project a branch from its Santo Tomé-Posadas line to run through the centre of Misiones to the North-West corner where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay join.

FORMOSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

URUGUAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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