ee 
restrictive measures relating to commerce implanted 
by the Spanish Government, the use of woven cotton 
stuffs as a monetary medium became generalized for 
operations of buying and selling. 
Subsequently, in several regions of the country the 
custom of cultivating a few cotton plants of the local 
subaborescent varieties, and which yield a beautiful white 
and smooth fiber, which is used for knitting stockings for 
household consumption and other uses of handiwork, has 
been retained. 
II. 
The importation first and the manufacture at home 
afterwards, of machine woven stuffs with foreign raw 
material had extinguished, almost completely, the original 
cotton-cultivation industry, notwithstanding the recog- 
nised advantages of this country for cotton-cultivation ; 
but in the course of the last few years interest has re- 
vived, due to the excellent financial results obtained in 
the Chaco, in the neighbourhood of its capital—Resisten- 
cia—situated opposite the city of Corrientes. At present 
calculations show 1500 to 2000 hectares (3706 to 4942 acres) 
under cultivation in the Chaco and on the opposite bank 
in the Province of Corrientes, this cultivation extends to 
somewhat south of the 28° of south latitude, while last 
year there were only 400 hectares in the colonies near 
Resistencia and nothing worth mentioning in the Province 
of Corrientes. : 
Some forty vears ago — about 1862 to 1864 — the 
cultivation of cotton in the Republics of the River Plate 
(Argentine, Paraguay, and Uruguay) created a great 
sensation, due to the repeated propaganda of an Englisk 
newspaper in Buenos Aires — “‘ The Standard” — and 
whose eminent editor, Mr. Michael G. Mulhall, author 
of the useful and well-known “ Dictionary of Statistics,” 
ably seconded by the Cotton Supply Association of Man- 
chester, interested in the propagation of cotton cultivation 
