ARGENTINA 127 



Between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca there is none worthy 

 the name, and Buenos Aires port itself is largely artificial. 

 Within the queen province every ton of freight and every 

 bucket of water must be brought to its destination by arti- 

 ficial means. Without railways and wells, the pampa would 

 be as impossible for modern settlers as it was for the 

 Indians who formerly lived on the fringe of the great grass 

 desert, crossing it only in times of stress, and then in forced 

 marches. 



" The first impulse to colonisation was given in the year 

 1856, when General Mitre — Argentina's grand old man — 

 granted to the Central Railway the most liberal concession 

 ever accorded in this country. It included the free gift of a 

 league of the nation's land on each side of the line along the 

 total length of its construction. The railway, which was the 

 first to connect the towns of Buenos Aires and Rosario, formed 

 a separate department to deal with its real estate, which it 

 sold, and is still selling in small lots and on easy payment 

 terms to bona fide settlers. Thus, the districts through which 

 the line passed were soon colonised. As an unlooked-for con- 

 sequence, agriculture for over twenty years was practically 

 confined to the north. 



" It seems nowadays almost incredible that landowners 

 should for so long have remained ignorant of the possibilities 

 of the great alfalfa zone in the centre, or that the finest wheat 

 farms in the Republic (those within the radius of Bahia Blanca) 

 should have remained untouched till a few years ago. Perhaps 

 the real reason lay in the absence of any experimental farms. 

 Landowners in the Argentine are a conservative class, and 

 incline to a tried and well-worn routine rather than to ex- 

 periment. 



" Intensive farming is practically unknown in the Plate. 

 The reason is that the safest investment for a farmer's spare 

 cash has hitherto been the lands around him, which within 

 twenty years have doubled, trebled, and even quadrupled in 

 value. While fine stock may die and buildings deteriorate, 

 land has none of these drawbacks, and ' is bound to go up.' 

 So many new districts have been opened up, and their pur- 

 chase and repurchase have absorbed so much of the estanciero's 



