INTRODUCTION 7 



or discovery. Their one object was to enable me to 

 make a provisional classification of the chief types 

 of country and forms of colonization, and to draw up 

 a methodical programme for more thorough research. 

 The work which I trusted to do in a more leisurely 

 way was, however, suspended in 1914, and, in spite 

 of my very strong desire to do so, I was unable to 

 resume it on the spot in 1919. I have therefore been 

 compelled to publish my first observations, completing 

 them, as well as I could, by a bibliographical study of 

 the country. I have made use of some fragments 

 of a popular work which I began, at the request of 

 the Argentine Commission, for the International Exhi- 

 bition at San Francisco, of which several chapters 

 were published in my absence by the University of 

 Tucuman (Pierre Denis, Modern Argentina : Chapters 

 of Economic Geography. Publications of the University 

 during the Centenary of the Congress of Tucuman 

 of 1816. Buenos Aires, 1916).^ 



My knowledge of the publications on Argentina has 

 two conspicuous gaps. The first is deliberate. I 

 declined to study at second hand the documents and 

 chronicles which are our sources, to the end of the 

 eighteenth century, for the history of the various 

 provinces that were to form Argentina. Hence the 

 historical data on colonization which will be found in 

 the following chapters relate almost entirely to the 

 nineteenth century. 



The second gap I was, to my great disappointment, 

 unable to fill up. A large part of the local publications 

 — official or other — maps, statistics, etc., never reached 

 Europe, and Buenos Aires is the only place where 

 one can make a thorough study of them. • These pub- 

 lications were available to me until 1914. Since then 



» I take the opportunity to thank M. J. B. Teran, who undertook 

 to edit these chapters, and to express, with him, my satisfaction that 

 events have falsified his rather pessimistic predictions as regards 

 the author. 



