50 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST 



Finally, the Chilean market was opened to the 

 Argentine breeders about the middle of the nineteenth 

 century. In the time of Martin de Moussy the convoys 

 of cattle to Chile were so numerous that the lucerne 

 fields of both slopes were stripped bare at the very 

 beginning of the season ; and they were rented at a 

 high price. ^ Not only the mining provinces of the 

 north, but central Chile also, bought Argentine cattle. 

 The opening of the Chilean market was followed by a 

 remarkable expansive movement in the pastoral 

 colonization of Argentine territory. We can follow 

 the progress of this not only in Martin de Moussy's 

 book, but in all contemporary works of travel. Its 

 chief theatres are the provinces of San Luis and of 

 Santiago del Estero, north of the Rio Dulce, where 

 Hutchinson, in particular, describes the activity of the 

 ranches." Finally, after the Pacific War (1880) the 

 nitrate district, taken from Bolivia and Peru by Chile, 

 received a great influx of population, and works sprang 

 up in the midst of the desert. The nitrate fields, 

 wholly barren and doomed, under their shroud of grey 

 dust, to an unalterable desolation, became at once one 

 of the chief centres of consumption for Argentine stock. 



It is difficult to give accurate details of the volume 

 of trade in cattle in colonial Argentine. However, 

 the facts given by travellers (though they often merely 

 borrow from each other) suffice to show how important 

 this traffic was in the life of the country and the extent 

 of the zone that was occupied with it. As early as 

 the middle of the seventeenth century Cordoba seems 

 to have exported to Peru as many as 28,000 to 30,000 



' The fattening of cattle for Chile was no longer done in the inver- 

 nadas of Mendoza at the beginning of the nineteenth century. See 

 an article on Mendoza in the Telegrafo Mercantil, Januarj' 31, 1802, 

 which tells of the development of ranches on the Tunuyan. Mendoza 

 and San Juan were their only markets, and they did not sell cattle 

 to Chile. 



» T. J. Hutchinson, Buenos Aires y otras Provinctas argeniinas 

 (translated by L. Varela, Buenos Aires, 1866). 



