274 REPORT OP THE COMMISSIONER OP AGRICULTURE. 



entirely from Southern Europe, Italians largely, French, Spanish, and 

 Swiss; nearly all Catholics. About three in a thousand of the foreign- 

 ers in the interior are from the United States ; some intend to settle 

 there, others to get cheap land in a mild climate and get rich and return. 

 They are generally intelligent, energetic, and independent. They gen- 

 erally find the climate agreeable, with an average temperature of 68° 

 F. Less mortality is reported among foreigners than natives, on ac- 

 count of better habits. 



Consul T. B. Wood, at Eosario, says of stock-raisi.:!g in his district, 

 that it is conducted in the style of three hundred years ago, except that 

 very recently importations of fine foreign stock have been made — horses, 

 cattle, sheep, and Angora goats. Primitive practices prevail: a horse- 

 cart has no shafts, but a stout short neap, the end of which is tied with 

 rawhide to a ring on one side of the girth. The saddle consists of a 

 broad girth, with two large rings, two huge pads to protect the bacit of 

 the horse, and several layers of leather, sheep-skins, &c. — a seat by day 

 and a bed by night. This style of saddle, to the value of $160,000, has 

 been exported irom Eosario in a year. The ox-yoke is a simple bar of 

 wood lashed to the horns. So absorbing is this industry that 75 per 

 cent, of the exports of this pl?ce are made up of hides, hair, skius, 

 leatlier, hide-cuttings, horns, bones, bone-ash, and tallow. Prices of 

 uii!ch-cows are 810 to $15; working-oxen, $20 to $25; beeves, $10 to 

 $18; working-mules, $20 to $35; working-horses, $10 to $25; sheep, $1 

 to $1.50; goats, $1 to $1.30. 



Mr. Wood reports further of the agriculture of this district: 



Fruits of all kintla are retailed by couut. Thus, stra-wberries sell for 5 to 15 cents 

 per dozen. Cherriea are clearer; graiujs cheaper. Other small fruits are unknown, 

 save as imported from Europe in ghiss bottles. Peaches thrive all over the country. 

 Some of the estancias have orchards ou them that seem like small forests, yet there is 

 no exportation of the fruit, and in the retail market they sell for 75 cents to $1 per 

 hundred, in the height of their season, and at all other times are cheaper, as imported 

 from the United States in cans, than as oifei'ed in the markets. 



Tomatoes, though indigenous in this country, are almost always cheaper in imported 

 cans thnn in the markets. 



Though the consumption of bread in the country is relatively very small, yet it is 

 only within the last five years that this consular district has produced wheat enough 

 for ItH own demands. The prolitable exportation of the small surplus has given a 

 stimulus to wheat-growing, so that at present it outvalues all other crops combined. 

 But this is not strange, considering that little or no grain is fed to aniuials, so that the 

 production of other crops has but little stimulus. The wheat crop of 1874 in this prov- 

 ince was reckoned at .f 2,500,000. In prices it varies from $2 to $4 per hundred pounds. 



Corn is beginning to receive an impulse from its successful exportation to the adja- 

 cent countries and to Europe. It ranges in price from fl to $2 per hundred pounds. 



The native mode of cultivation is very primitive. Ditches and hedges serve to fence 

 in the small fields. The plow most used consists of a heavy block of hard wood that 

 runs in the ground, pointed ott so as to servo as a share, and a long beam mortised 

 obliquely iuto this at one end, and tied at the other end to the rude ox-yoke. A short 

 upright handle arising from the share-block is used to steady it in the ground or lift it 

 out. 



Thrashing is accomi)lished by the tramping of animals, and winnowing by means of 

 the wind. The transportation most usually is in rude one-horse carts, with largo 

 wheels, and hitched as belore described, or in ox-carts that are still ruder, with still 

 larger wheels, and some of which are made entirely of wood and rawhide, without a 

 particle of iron. Tires of hide answer surprisingly well in a country like tliis, whose 

 soil is entirely destitute of siones or gritty sand, and they have the advantage of 

 shrinking and swelling with the wood-work by the absence or presence of moisture. 



UNITED STATES OF CGLOlilBIA.. 



This tropical country lies on the equator, and includes an area of 

 455,673 square miles. It has a population of less than seven to the 

 square mile, about three millions in all. Scarcely a tenth of the surface 



