CLEARING THE LAND 113 



agricultural work spread over the Central Pampa and 

 the province of Cordoba, as far as the edge of the scrub 

 in all parts of the prairie. Wood-cutting is carried on 

 there, on a small scale, everywhere, at Toay as well as 

 at Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria. The price of the 

 wood he sells is a small supplementary income to the 

 farmer, and clearing the soil helps to fill up his time during 

 the dead season for agriculture. The lands covered 

 with brushwood remained for a long time at a lower 

 price than cleared land. They thus formed a sort of 

 reserve which partly escaped the speculations in land, 

 and on which small owners can find a footing more 

 easily than on the Pampa. There is to-day a movement 

 of Santa Fecinos eastward and southward in the belt 

 of scrub to the south of Mar Chiquita along the line 

 from Lehmann to Dean Funes. 



The forest area of the Chaco, in northern Argentina, 

 between the Andes and the Parana, seems on the other 

 hand to be intended for pastoral colonization. In 

 point of fact, the forest of the Chaco, as well as the lighter 

 scrub which is its southern extension, can be used for 

 breeding without preliminary labour. The Indians 

 have fed cattle and horses on it since the seventeenth 

 century. The herds find food on every side, both in 

 the very numerous clearings (abras) which cross the 

 forest and in the forest itself, where the underwood and 

 the herbaceous carpet grow fairly thick beneath the 

 scanty foliage of the mimosas and quebrachas. 



Over a good deal of the western Chaco pastoral 

 colonization is earlier than the forestry. In the district 

 of Santiago del Estero the farmers had advanced far 

 beyond the wood-cutter and the railway ; beyond the 

 Salado, almost as far as the existing line from Anatuya 

 to Tintina, where there are sheets and wells of fresh 

 water. The old ranches go as far as Alhuampa. The 

 old pastoral population has taken very little part in the 

 forestry industry. It has been content to profit by it 

 b y renting the scrub to the obrajes. It was a sheer gift 



8 



