SHEEP-RANCHES 139 



of 1914 gives 81,000 inhabitants altogether for the 

 territories of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, 

 the Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. A well-kept 

 ranch of 25,000 square kilometres has only a staff of 

 about a hundred men at the most, counting strangers, 

 settled on its land ; three hundred inhabitants, or 

 scarcely more than one to ten square kilometres. 

 This population falls into two distinct classes. One 

 is the class of proprietors with regular titles : a rooted 

 and stable class. At first the Government granted 

 enormous concessions, which were taken up especially 

 by English buyers, but it now seeks to break up the 

 land, and the plots which it puts on the market for 

 new pastoral colonies have not more than 625 hectares. 

 This is too small for breeding, no matter how good the 

 situation may be, and there will inevitably be, one 

 would think, a concentration of estates in the hands 

 of a few proprietors. The other part of the population 

 occupy lands which they do not own. They are dis- 

 placed steadily as the regular concessions are sold to 

 new ranches. They live, so to say, on the margin of 

 colonization, and are more and more restricted to the 

 poorest lands. Sometimes these intrusos or pobladores 

 get hospitality for their herds on the land of some 

 ranch in return for their services. They have little 

 capital, and never make material improvements. They 

 take no care to nurse the pasture, and it matters little 

 to them if it is impoverished. 



The climate divides Patagonia into two distinct regions. 

 In the west, the moist Andean zone is suitable for 

 cattle-breeding. About 1870 the Chileans of Valdivia 

 hunted wild cattle in the Nahuel Huapi district. 

 Similarly the Frontier Commission met large herds 

 of wild cattle on the shores of Lake San Martin, which 

 were not yet occupied. Sheep do not get on well in 

 the moist zone, where the rains have washed out the 

 soil and carried away the salts which seem to be indis- 

 pensable to the sheep. It is the arid tableland that 



