142 PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING 



lost seventeen miles above its confluence with the 

 Limay, may be traced by a continuous line of wells. 

 It is especially in the coastal districts that the wells 

 have transformed the conditions of breeding. Water 

 was first discovered at the foot of the dunes, along the 

 coast itself (district of Viedma, San Jose, etc.). Since 

 then deep borings have been made over the whole of 

 the Tertiary platform on both sides of the lower part 

 of the Rio Negro, north of San Antonio. There every 

 ranch has its sheet-iron tank, sheltered by a clump of 

 tamarinds, with a windmill to fill it. 



All pastures are not equally available in every 

 season. Those which are at a height of more that 

 4,000 feet in the north, and 2,300 to 2,600 feet in the 

 south, are covered in winter with a thick mantle of 

 snow. These are summer pastures. During the 

 winter the animals are brought down to the principal 

 valleys or to sheltered canadones below the level of 

 the tableland. The mallin is, as a rule, a winter 

 pasture. When it is too wet, however, it is treacherous, 

 and the animals are buried in it. They have to wait 

 for fine weather before going into it. The pastures, 

 too, which have no permanent water supply, or have 

 only manantiales, which dry up at the beginning of 

 summer, can only be used during the winter. Hence 

 each ranch has to have, besides its assured water 

 supply, a suitable combination of summer and winter 

 pasturage, and it is far from certain that this will 

 be found on every estate, cut up geometrically for 

 colonization, as they were, by the administration of 

 lands. 



The constitution of the flock and the first occupation 

 of the land have compelled breeders to undertake 

 difficult journeys, and more than one of these proved 

 disastrous. The earliest arrivals, driving their sheep 

 along little-known tracks, could not avoid losses in 

 crossing the arid parts of the tableland : parts which 

 D'Orbigny, translating literally the Spanish word 



