28 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA 



defects of this system of premature military occupa- 

 tion. "To go far away from the populated districts 

 in acquiring new territory is, in my opinion, only 

 an aggravation of the inconveniences of defensive 

 war, and it places a desert between the new lines and 

 the settled regions. . . . Invasions occur at once."^ 

 We should therefore be likely to make serious mistakes 

 if we were to identify the history of colonization with 

 that of military occupation. Moreover, the garrisons 

 of the forts did not take a very active part in the exploita- 

 tion of the soil. The plan which D'Azara proposed, 

 of making blandengues (lancers) colonists and rooting 

 them to the soil by distributing it amongst them, 

 seems to have been purely Utopian. His description 

 of the frontier shows clearly how slight a hold the 

 early colonization had on the Pampa, where the only 

 relatively industrious element was represented by 

 the groups of civilians (paisanos) who gathered about 

 the works and moats of the forts. It was different 

 on the Santiago del Estero frontier, where there was 

 agriculture as well as breeding. Here the fort was 

 identical with the village, and each soldier had his 

 plot of wheat, maize, or water-melons. 2 



The provinces which were to combine in forming 

 the Argentine Republic had no economic unity. They 

 were really two countries, two separate worlds, the 

 coast regions and the mountain regions {de arriha), 

 joined together, but not blended, by the main road 

 from Buenos Aires to Peru, by way of Cordoba, 

 Tucuman, and Salta. They represented two different 

 branches of Spanish colonization. " Two human 

 streams," says Mitre, " contributed to the peopling 

 of the vice-royalty. , . . The first came directly from 

 Spain, the mother countr3^ It occupied and peopled 



' Letter to the Minister of War, October 19, 1875. 



» See the curious picture, which Hutchinson gives us, of miUtary 

 life on the Rio Salado de Santiago about the middle of the nineteenth 

 century. 



