200 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 



farmers have themselves taken to rearing sheep, and 

 the sheep feed in the stubble and fallow. 



From this short account of the history of colonization 

 we draw certain important conclusions. At the time 

 when agricultural colonization began, it was admitted 

 that farming was the best way to exploit the soil, and 

 that the Pampa would sooner or later pass from the 

 pastoral to the agricultural cycle ; or, to use the local 

 phraseology, that the " colony " would replace the 

 ranch everywhere. This idea was wrong. The only 

 area in which the facts seem to give it any support 

 is the corn belt. The general rule is, on the contrary, 

 that in its progress colonization develops a mixed 

 type of exploitation, combining farming and breeding ; 

 either one alternates with the other in a sort of periodic 

 rotation, as in the lucerne area, or both proceed together, 

 the farmers including breeding amongst their occupa- 

 tions, as in the district of the Santa Fe' colonies or in 

 the wheat area in the south of the Buenos Aires province. 

 It seems, moreover, that the development of coloniza- 

 tion depends not only upon physical conditions, but 

 upon factors of a purely economic or social character, 

 which the geographer must not overlook. It will be 

 enough here to indicate the chief of these. 



We have seen the part that has been played in the 

 exploitation of the soil by groups of colonists who 

 swarm from one area to another. Whether we think 

 of the ranchers of the eastern part of Buenos Aires 

 transplanting themselves to Cordoba or north of Santa 

 Fe, the sheep-breeders moving westward, or the Santa 

 F colonists settling in the lucerne area, they all take 

 with them their own habits and methods of work, 

 and they take time to adjust them to a new environment. 

 The colonist, whether breeder or farmer, is not left 

 to himself. Colonization is sustained and directed by 

 speculation in land, and is influenced by it. Specula- 

 tion discounts the work of the colonist, and attaches 



