THE COLONIES 191 



tion began in the nineteenth century. It goes back 

 to the foundation (in 1854) o^ the colony of Esperanza, 

 west of Santa Fe, from which it was separated by the 

 strip of forest which follows the course of the Salado. 

 European immigrants — Swiss, French, and Piedmontese 

 — had settled there. The early years of colonization 

 at Santa Fe were difficult, and the colonies did not begin 

 to develop rapidly until after 1870. About that date 

 we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural coloniza- 

 tion at Santa Fe. The first group of colonies was 

 settled in the north, on the bank of the Parana. In 

 the centre the Esperanza group advanced steadily 

 westward. A third group of colonies lay along the 

 Central Argentine railway from Rosario to Cordoba. 

 The Esperanza colonists had at first grown maize, 

 but the prosperity of the colonies was mainly due to 

 wheat. Zeballos, who visited the colonies in 1882, 

 describes them as a vast lake of wheat. Wheat pre- 

 dominates, not only in the department of Las Colonias, 

 west of Santa Fe, where it survives in full strength, 

 but further north, at Garay, whence it has since been 

 displaced by flax and earth-nuts, and in the south, 

 round Rosario, in the belt which is now given up to 

 maize. It is for the wheat that the mills of Carcaraiia 

 and the granaries of Rosario have been built. The 

 land sown with wheat at Santa Fe rose in 1882 to 

 102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of 

 cultivated land.^ By 1889 the area of wheat was 

 quadrupled. It spread like a drop of oil, reaching 

 Rafaela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the 

 advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has 

 crossed the Cordoba frontier, and spread round San 

 Francisco and east of Mar Chiquita (departments of 

 San Justo and Marcos Juarez). The agricultural 

 regions in the centre of the Santa Fe province and 



' The population of the Santa Fe colonies in 1882 was 52,000. 

 of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier, north of the 

 town of Santa Fe. 



