HORSE-BREEDING 181 



Aires province in the middle of the nineteenth century 

 give us a very clear impression of the stage of transition 

 between exploiting the natural increase of a herd that 

 multiplies without man's intervention, and breeding 

 in the strict sense. The value of a horse in the former 

 case is almost exclusively the cost of breaking it in. 

 The breeder is actually anxious when he sees his horses 

 increase, as he fears he may not have the resources 

 for breaking them in. The most formidable of the 

 dangers that threatened the feeble discipline of the 

 herd was drought. That in the year 1827 was a disaster. 

 The animals left the ranches in a body to go south- 

 ward, where they mixed. 1 



1 The water problem is not as important for the history of coloniza- 

 tion in the Pampean region as in the north. Primitive breeding was 

 confined to natural supplies of water, lagoons or streams, and to shallow 

 wells (jagueles) dug down to the superficial sheet, which is generally 

 not deep, but is liable to dry up. As colonization improved, the 

 breeder, and subsequently the farmer, were better equipped for boring 

 wells, and no longer feared drought. They got down to the deeper 

 waters, semi-artesian (Buenos Aires district) or artesian (west of the 

 Santa Fe province, round San Francisco). In other places the super- 

 ficial waters, which are fresher than the deeper layers, were used by 

 adapting new types of filters to the wells (Buena Esperanza district). 

 The only two districts where the quest of water offered any difficulty 

 are the south-west corner of the Pampean region and the northern 

 extremity of the prairie in the Sante Fe" province. The sheets of 

 water are very irregular there, often saline, and it was a long time 

 before the ranches got an assured supply. 



One remarkable circumstance is the importance of the dunes in 

 connection with the distribution of the underground water. The 

 rain-water accumulates in the dunes and flows slowly through the 

 sand to the sub-soil. The level of the underground sheet in the clay 

 on which the dune rests is always nearer the surface in the neighbour- 

 hood of the dune. The dune itself has often a greener vegetation 

 than the land around it. Nothing is more surprising than to find 

 at Medanos (west of Bahla Blanca), in the middle of a plain of arid 

 aspect, fields of lucerne and orchards lodged in the hollows of dunes 

 that are still fresh. In the whole of the Buenos Aires province the 

 dead district of the dunes is, on account of its water-supply, a good 

 place for habitation. D'Azara notices the numerous water-spots 

 which ran along the foot of the dead dunes of the Cerillada. All 

 round were the white bones of the baguales. In the valleys of the 

 central Pampa, where the sheet of water in the centre of the valley 

 is often saline, the underground water improves gradually as one 

 approaches the line of the dunes. 



