282 Annual report o^ the . Off. Doc. 



with ax and knife. On the plains there are great areas having so 

 dense a growth of tall grasses or thistles, wild pineapples or other 

 matted annuals, that the horseman finds it almost or quite impos- 

 sible to force his mount through. 



Springs are not as numerous as they are in our own Alleghenies, 

 but there are many cascades and waterfalls in the mountains, both 

 east and west. Nearly all the larger streams overflow their wide, 

 level valleys every year, the flood period corresponding to the period 

 of heaviest rainfall in the wet season, a period generally lasting 

 several weeks. 



Although the major part of South America Is in the torrid zone, 

 there is a temperate region comparable in extent with the United 

 States or Europe. The temperate region includes the upper pla- 

 teaus and valleys of the Andes within the tropics, a small part of 

 the tropical eastern highlands, and all of the continent south of 

 Capricorn, with the exception of the Andean summits. That is, 

 temperate South America comprises a large part of Venezuela, 

 Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia; a small part of Brazil; and 

 practically all of Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. 



Naturally, the agriculture of the vast trojjical territory of South 

 America is limited to the products of the torrid zone, products to 

 which the American husbandman gives little direct attention be- 

 cause they are so different from his own crops. On the other hand, 

 the farmers of the United States are becoming more or less con- 

 cerned in the possible products of tem])erate South America because 

 of the reiterated reports that the cheaply produced grains and meats 

 of this territory are on the point of gaining control of the foreign 

 markets we have come to look upon as our own, and because of 

 their supposed likelihood to invade our domestic markets within 

 a very few years. We shall see shortly how little foundation there 

 is for these predictions. Throughout all the great temperate ter- 

 ritory of the continent, a region of a thousand million acres, all 

 the field, orchard, and garden crops, and all the domestic farm 

 animals, of temperate climes will thrive. Here is a domain capable 

 of feeding and clothing well hundreds of millions of people, yet 

 anomalously the continent's sparse population of barely sixty mil- 

 lion draws a considerable part of its food and clothing from foreign 

 farms. 



Cattle graze over all parts of temperate South America, and in 

 the open forests of Brazil and Paraguay, not wild and unclaimed 

 as was the case a few decades ago, but in branded herds that are 

 coming to be cared for and managed with no inconsiderable skill 

 by many ranchmen, although some still receive only the most primi- 

 tive attention. No reliable information is available from which 

 to determine with any degree of accuracy the number of these cattle. 

 They can hardly exceed 50,000,000 head, and possibly are no more 

 than 35,000,000. 



North of the Tropic of Capricorn inferior sheep are found in small 

 -numbers, but farther south they feed in ever increasing flocks of 

 better breeds. They number not over 120,000,000 head, and may be 

 even less than 100,000,000. 



Horses run wild or half wild throughout the temperate parts of 

 the continent, but in the tropics they are rare, speedily succumbing 

 in all hot districts to a disease known as mal de cadera, a malady 



