ARGENTINA * 105 



" What is the pampa was in former ages covered by a body 

 of water, now commonly known as the Pampean Sea. The 

 flood stretched up to and round the Cordoba range standing 

 in the middle of the Republic ; in the south it reached to the 

 tablelands of Patagonia ; north to where the slopes of the 

 Cordillera incline to the watershed of the Parana. The for- 

 mation of the plain marks the different currents that directed 

 the receding waters. We find sand co]lected by erosion of the 

 mountain chains ; vegetable silt carried down by torrential 

 rivers from a tropic interior, mixed with the fossil deposits of 

 a former ocean bed. The general upheaval caused the waters 

 co retire gradually from the neighbourhood of the Andes, the 

 outlet of those subterranean forces which are still continuing 

 their gigantic work, albeit in a more deliberate and less marked 

 degree. 



" If we examine the surface of the land we shall find that 

 although in certain tracts lying between the Cordova and the 

 Andes the sandy formation resembles that of the central 

 pampas, yet it conceals rounded foothills of barren stone, 

 which make stream and reservoir irrigation the only solution 

 of the water question. Wherever we go north to higher ground 

 we find a forest which, from its stunted outposts on the sandy 

 plains, closes and thickens to the impenetrable groves of the 

 Argentine Chaco. Again, skirting down the coast from the 

 broad delta to the Parana, we find that the porous sand has 

 been mixed with, and overlaid by, an increasing thickness of 

 alluvial, packed by the rains to a grazing ground of almost 

 unparalleled richness. So none of these are the lands for which 

 we seek. 



" Take now a rough line 200 miles long between the cities 

 of Cordoba and Rosario. Drop further a 400-mile perpendicu- 

 lar from Rosario due south towards Bahia Blanca, leaving 

 outside it all the rounded coastline of the Queen province. 

 Complete the figure by a southern boundary that roughly 

 parallels the Rio Colorado, and on the west skirts the detached 

 spurs of the ancient Cordoba range. We have now 80,000 

 square miles, or, roughly, 10,000 square leagues of the true 

 central pampas, the ' outside camps ' of the coast belt. . Our 

 parallelogram is not a very exact one. We must bulge it here, 



