CHAPTER IV 

 THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS 



Manual labour on the obrajes The land of the banados and the agri- 

 cultural cantons of Corrientes The timber-yards of the Chaco 

 and the tannic-acid works of the Parana The exploitation of 

 the mati The forestry industry and colonization. 



FROM the Andes of Tucuman and Salta to the banks of 

 the upper Parana in the province of Misiones the north 

 of Argentina is now a vast timber-yard for the exploita- 

 tion of the forests. It resounds everywhere with the 

 axe. This exploitation of the forest is of early origin 

 on the river ; in the eighteenth century Buenos Aires 

 was supplied with wood from the Parana. In the 

 western Chaco the difficulty of transport by land 

 retarded the development of the forestry industry. 

 The only market for the timber of Tucuman was the 

 Andean region. It was not sent to Mendoza after the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century, when the willow 

 was acclimatized in the oases of Cuyo. Below Rosas 

 the wood of the quebracho was at first taken in waggons 

 from Santiago to Buenos Aires, but this traffic ceased 

 when the river-route was reopened, and we do not find 

 it resumed until recent times, when railways were 

 constructed. 



The outer fringe of the forest and the scrub where the 

 industry has had to find labour, is inhabited by a very 

 sparse pastoral population. There are, however, besides 

 the thinly populated districts of the farms, certain 

 busy hives which lend animation to the scrub. These 

 over-populated cantons are districts of cultivation by 



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