120 THE WORLD'S MEAT FUTURE 



ceptionalfy rich alluvial stretching some forty miles inland. 

 This is the pick of the maize country. As the cars whirl along 

 the long green rows come down to meet them in seemingly 

 endless parallels, yielding to 80 bushels per acre, even under 

 the rule-of-thumb methods to which the Italian farmer (and 

 they are all Italians here) is wedded. 



"" A short 30 miles south of Buenos Aires is situated the city 

 of La Plata, a stucco sepulchre of mis-spent capital, whose sole 

 claim to importance lies in its title to be called the provincial 

 capital. The mania for establishing artificial towns outside a 

 radius of commercial activity furnishes a curious comment on 

 the Argentine character. 



" Following the coast for yet another 50 miles, we come to 

 Cape Las Piedras, which marks the entrance of the Plate 

 estuary on the Argentine side, and is also the upper cape of 

 San Borombon Bay. It is an insignificant, poor-spirited bay 

 — a quarter bite from the side of a big apple — but its name has 

 a large significance to the most important sheep-breeding 

 disirict in the country. The River Salado, rising at a point 

 200 miles directly inland from Buenos Aires, and resembling 

 a long series of lagoons rather than a river, halts through a 

 series of imperceptible depressions till it reaches the inner lip 

 of San Borombon. Here it meets with a succession of low 

 sand-dunes thrown up along the coast by the action of the 

 tides. After heavy rains the water is sufficiently served by 

 the narrow outlet of the river, whose bar has, moreover, a 

 constant tendency to silt up. 



" As the coastline falls round into the port of Bahia Blanca, 

 it is roughly paralleled by the scattered outcrop of the Ven- 

 tana hills running to meet those of Curumalan, of whose 

 system they form a part. The height nowhere exceeds 4000 

 feet, and on nearing them their rugged outline is found to be 

 fissured by numerous fertile valleys. These collect sufficient 

 moisture to send down half a dozen streams to the coast, the 

 longest of which does not exceed 100 miles, while their volume 

 varies in exact proportion to the local rainfall. 



" The progress of the coast belt — as indeed that of the whole 

 Republic — is inseparably bound up with its railway develop- 

 ment. The sandy shores do not favour a sheltered anchorage. 



