38 AMERICAN LUMBER IN FOREIGN MARKETS. 



Willow. This tree grows very generally all over the Republic, and 

 especially along the water courses. It covers the islands of the Delta 

 of the Panama River. It furnishes nearly all the firewood of the city 

 of Buenos Ayres. Every three years it is cut for that purpose, and 

 new trees spring up from the stumps. It is likewise used for common 

 furniture, for turners' work, for wooden shoes, etc.; and as it flourishes 

 with a rapid growth in the timberless regions of the country it is 

 regarded as one of the most useful trees of the Republic. 



SPECIES AND VARIETIES, AND THEIR EXPLOITATION. 



I have thus, according to request, enumerated thirty-six different 

 species of native trees, all indigenous to the Argentine Republic; and, 

 as has been seen, some of these species have several distinct varieties, 

 the whole number amounting to at least forty, so that really the above 

 enumeration includes not less than seventy-six varieties of Argentine 

 woods. The catalogue might be still further extended; for many other 

 " unusual" varieties are known to exist, though I am not just now able 

 to describe them. 



It will be observed that many of these woods, not having yet been 

 properly classified, still bear the names given them by the Guarani 

 Indians or the early Spanish settlers. Likewise it will be borne in 

 mind that it is only in the far western, northwestern, and northern 

 portions of the country that the timber plantations of the Argentine 

 Republic are to be found in many cases over a tnousand miles from 

 tide water. The Atlantic side of Patagonia is a desert; the territory 

 of the Parnpa is in great part destitute of trees, and the Province ot 

 Buenos Ayres and the southern portion of that of Santa Pe" are also in 

 the natural state without other vegetation than the grasses, though 

 of late years vast artificial plantations have been made in all directions 

 through the interior. Furthermore, it is be considered that all the 

 woods I have enumerated above, except it may be the willow and the 

 poplars, are what are called " hard " woods, whose specific gravity in 

 almost all cases is greater than that of water. 



With such classes of woods to deal with, and with the great forests 

 of the country so far removed from the seaboard, especially from Buenos 

 Ayres, which is the great receiving and distributing focus of the Argen- 

 tine Republic, some idea may be entertained of the labor of getting the 

 timber resources of the interior to market. Yet the exploitation of the 

 timber trees of the upper provinces and territories, especially along the 

 Parana and Paraguay rivers, has been going on with more or less per- 

 sistency for a great many years; and the choppers and the sawyers, 

 without government officials to molest or make them afraid, have used 

 their privileges with so little care and consideration that in some parts 

 of the interior, especially along the water courses, the havoc and whole- 

 sale destruction have been shameful. So little respect, indeed, was 

 paid to the national forests that, a few years ago, the government 



