HARDWOOD FORESTS OF SOUTHERN SOUTH AMKRK'X 257 



LOADING QUEBRACHO FROM A HIGH RIVER BANK TO AN OCEAN-GOING STEAMER. 

 On the Parana River, near Rosario, anchorage is found for steamers of considerable draft, but 

 special apparatus is employed to get the logs on board. They are first lowered to the stream 

 by wire rigging and then hoisted to the deck. 



lance, and bamboo bow, are responsible 

 for the line of forts which stretch along 

 the northern frontier. Farther away 

 from civilization, their costume con- 

 sists of a few tufts of ostrich and parrot 

 feathers, or of a white linen head-dress 

 patterned after the ancient helmet of the 

 Peruvian Incas. The stone axe is there 

 in common use, and in many districts 

 fire is still produced by friction. As the 

 fringe of civilization is touched by the 

 Chaco Indians, they add bag loincloths 

 to their feather or linen head-dresses, 

 and those who come down from the 

 wilds to work in the forests or sugar 

 plantations even don the blouse, wide 

 trousers, broad-brimmed hat and flow- 

 ing colored tie of the Gaucho or Italian 

 peon. 



r The cultivation of cane and the manu- 

 facture of sugar are prosecuted over a 

 large extent of northern and north- 

 western Argentina, and in these indus- 

 tries several thousand Chaco Indians 

 and mixed Correntinos are employed 

 every year as unskilled laborers. Many 

 more work in the quebracho forests. 



At the end of the sugar season these 

 savage workmen will return to their 

 homes in the Chaco country, travelling 

 sometimes four or five hundred miles 

 over mountains and through swamps 

 and forests. They will then fell the que- 

 bracho trees on the banks of the rivers 

 and streams, bind them into rafts with 

 lighter woods beneath as floating buoys, 

 get out fence posts and sleepers and 

 assist in preparing the red quebracho 

 for the manufacture of the tannin 

 extract. Another hardwood tree which 

 the Indians and semi-Indians help to 

 get into commercial form is the algar- 

 robo. It goes into street paving (as 

 does the quebracho), its beany fruit 

 makes good fodder, and a liquor is dis- 

 tilled from it which is the source of many 

 a fierce headache to the Chaco man and 

 woman. 



The management of these hardwood 

 industries is chiefly in the hands and 

 brains of Europeans of Latin and Ger- 

 man stock, with a threatened incursion 

 by capitalists of the United States. The 

 Farquhar syndicate, a powerful combi- 



