SANTIAGO 97 



banados, or the cultivation of flood-lands. There is 

 constant intercourse between these ancient centres of 

 Creole life and the timber-yards of the forest. The 

 forestry industry recruits its workers there, on temporary 

 contracts. The wages paid are brought back to these 

 centres and spent there. They help to maintain 

 social groups of an archaic type, which the meagre- 

 ness of their production would otherwise doom to 

 extinction. 



The haftados are scattered over the range of all the 

 sierras within the limits reached by the torrents from 

 the mountains before they are lost. They also stretch 

 along the two rivers that are considerable enough to 

 cross the scrub, the Salado and the Dulce. The course 

 of the Bermejo, where the natural conditions are much 

 the same, lies outside the sphere of primitive Creole 

 colonization. The tilled lands are not continuous on 

 the Salado or the Dulce. There are no banados wherever 

 the bed of the river is enclosed by high banks which 

 prevent flooding. The course of the Salado threads 

 together, in the manner of a rosar}^ three main groups 

 of banados below 26° S. lat., (Matoque and Boqueron) 

 between 27° and 28° S. lat. (Brea), and between 28° and 

 29"" S. lat. (Le Bracho and Navicha). But the classic 

 country of the banados, where they cover the widest 

 extent and sustain the most considerable body of 

 population, is the interior delta of the Rio Dulce below 

 Santiago del Estero, in the departments of Loreto, 

 Atamisqui, and Salavina. 



Santiago is situated almost at the top of it. In its 

 upper part the Rio Dulce is enclosed between high clay 

 cliffs (department of the Rio Hondo). Below Santiago 

 the river seems to run to the top of a sort of flattened 

 alluvial cone, over which it wanders. Instances of the 

 migration of rivers during the historical period are 

 plentiful in the north of the Argentine plain. The 

 scrub is scored east of the Salado with a network of dry 

 beds, the edges of which gradually disappear as the 



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