140 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING 



is the land of the sheep. There it has displaced cattle, 

 even in the area which the early breeders at the 

 end of the eighteenth century had filled with cattle. 

 Between the sheep-area and the cattle-area is a mixed 

 region, where the two are combined. It extends more 

 or less according as the transition from a moist to a 

 desert climate is gradual or sudden. It is especially 

 important in the districts where colonization is already 

 old, as in the Fuegian and Neuquen regions. It is 

 lacking in districts where the colonization is recent 

 (Chubut and Santa Cruz), where the sheep-breeders 

 have had a free run as far as the Andes. The ranches 

 of the Cordillera, which specialize in cattle-breeding, 

 all have small flocks of sheep for their own use, their 

 staff being so small that it does not pay to kill the cattle. 



The sheep-area is by far the more extensive of the 

 two. The patches of agricultural colonization are 

 very scattered and small on its surface. They are 

 restricted to the river-oases of the Rio Negro and 

 the Chubut. These small tilled districts have preserved 

 a remarkable economic independence as regards the 

 pastoral zone, in which they seem lost. Thus the 

 farmers on the Chubut exported their wheat to Buenos 

 Aires until about 1900, and they still send their bales 

 of dry lucerne there. Some of the ranches have 

 tilled small oases in suitable places, but these are merely 

 intended to increase their stores of fodder ; not for 

 their flock of sheep, but for the saddle-horses used in 

 watching the estate and the draught-horses used for 

 transport. 



The pastoral capacity of the Patagonian scrub is, 

 on the average, from 800 to 1,200 head of sheep to 

 25 square kilometres : less than a tenth that of the 

 prairies of the eastern Pampa. The ranch fixes its 

 residence in the best part of the estate, where there is 

 least fear of a shortage of water, and where pasture is 

 most plentiful. To this the sheep are brought periodi- 

 cally to receive disinfecting baths against the scab, 



