84 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA 



their fullest. At Barriales (Mendoza), and on the lower 

 course of the Zanjon canal, thousands of acres, watered 

 by the drainage-canals and exposed to drought in the 

 summer, have the right to take water from the river 

 or the canal during the three summer months, from 

 November to January. During the remainder of the 

 year they are restricted to the use of the drainage- 

 canals. This sort of concession seems to provide a 

 means of using the surplus of the river during the 

 summer. 



With this exception there are no temporary rights 

 limited to the high-water season and enabling them 

 to raise quick crops, that ripen in a few months, round 

 the area of perennials. At least, the expansion of the 

 estates and the wish to use the full water-supply have 

 led to the creation of eventual rights, besides the 

 definitive rights. They do not come into play,theoreti- 

 cally, until the definitive rights have had their full 

 supply, and then only in a fixed order. They are 

 subordinated to the ordinary rights, and the market 

 value of land with eventual water-rights is much lower 

 than that of land with definitive rights. 1 At San Rafael, 

 where colonization preceded the systematic inventory 

 of the natural resources, the concession of eventual 

 water-rights was a means of facilitating the develop- 

 ment of estates ; though they were very badly informed 

 as to the surplus of the Atuel and the Diamante and 

 the area that the new land might cover. 



In practice, the co-existence of eventual and defini- 

 tive rights presents many difficulties, and more than one 

 pretext for fraud. Somtimes the owners of eventual 

 rights have access to the river higher up than the older 

 intakes, which ought to be served first. A whole 

 group of canals feeding land with eventual rights is 



1 There are at present in the Mendoza province 275,000 hectares 

 with a definitive right, and 303,000 with an eventual right. The 

 concessions fed by the Diamante and the Atuel at San Rafael, which 

 amount to 120,000 hectares with a definitive right and 150,000 with 

 an eventual right, are not yet entirely developed. 



