262 THE POPULATION 



ing the capital), Santa Fe, and the southern part of 

 Cordoba — still had a smaller population than that of 

 the northern and north-western provinces : 626,000 

 as compared with 813,000. The Mesopotamian pro- 

 vinces had then 263,000 inhabitants. 



The proportion was reversed twenty-five years later 

 at the 1895 Census. The population of the Pampas 

 had increased threefold, and was more than a half of 

 the entire population of the country. That of the 

 western and north-western provinces was about a 

 third of the whole, and had only increased by fifty 

 per cent. 



If one considers in detail the distribution of the 

 population of the Pampean plain in 1895, one sees 

 that beyond the suburbs of Buenos Aires the area of 

 greatest density — five to eight per square kilometre — 

 was in the north-west, between San Andres de Giles 

 and Pergamino, a district of advanced methods, where 

 the cultivation of maize was beginning to occupy a 

 good part of the land. The population was confined 

 to the west of the preceding zone, in the agricultural 

 area of Junin, Chacabuco and Chivilcoy. This area, 

 where maize and wheat were next each other, already 

 embraced Viente Cinco de Mayo (five to the square kilo- 

 metre) on the west and Nueve de Julio (2*5) . In the 

 south of Buenos Aires, the departments of the left bank 

 of the Salado, which were entirely given up to breeding, 

 but long colonized, had a density of three to five per 

 square kilometre. The region lying between tne lower 

 Salado and the Sierra de Tandil, a sheep-breeding area, 

 then giving good returns but of recent colonization, had 

 not more than three. The density falls rapidly as one 

 goes westward. It sinks to less than one in the north- 

 west and west of the Buenos Aires province, in the 

 area where the cattle-breeders from the east had 

 settled At Santa Fe, the region of the colonies, at 

 the level both of Rosario and Santa Fe, had five inhabi- 

 tants per square kilometre. But beyond the Cordoba 



