43° 



The National Geographic Magazine 



appreciable growth, for the country can 

 sustain a dense agricultural population 

 from its northern border clear down 

 through Patagonia, and settlements will 

 spread through all those regions. Buenos 

 Aires in 1856 had 100,000 inhabitants; 

 today it has more than 1,000,000. It is 

 no wild flight of fancy to prophesy that 

 in another fifty years its population will 

 be 2,500,000, and that on the Southern 

 Continent, 2,000 miles south of the Equa- 

 tor, there will be a city which may not be 

 exceeded by more than two cities in the 

 United States. 



In considering the industrial and com- 

 mercial South America of fifty years 

 hence as relates to the Atlantic coast, it 

 would be better to disregard the lines 

 formed by the boundaries of countries 

 and to consider Argentina, Uruguay, 

 southern Brazil, and part of Paraguay 

 as one section, for in this region are the 

 enormous productive resources which 

 constitute it the world's granary, that 

 will be drawn upon as rapidly as the 

 United States and Canada require their 

 own agricultural products for home con- 

 sumption. The statistics of agricultural 

 output for this central region will be the 

 measure of growth. Another means of 

 measuring it will be the shipping statistics 

 of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. 



THE WEST COAST COUNTRIES 



I have had opportunity to consider 

 recently in a separate volume * the 

 economic effect of the Panama Canal on 

 the west-coast countries of South 

 America, and also have had frequent oc- 

 casion to outline the possibilities of the 

 Pan-American Railway project. For 

 that reason I shall give these subjects 

 only brief consideration here, starting 

 with the premise that the railways will 

 spread across the Andes and make some 

 of the regions on the eastern side tribu- 

 tary to the west coast. In stating that the 

 efforts to pierce the Andes from Tacna 

 and Valparaiso did not come up to the 

 expectations of a half a century ago, I 

 neglected to add that the beginning of 



* Panama to Patagonia. 



the present fifty-year period will be 

 marked by this through communication. 

 The trans-Andine tunnel through the 

 Uspallata Pass from the Chilean side to 

 the Argentine side at Mendoza will be 

 completed within less than three years, 

 and the railway from Arica and Tacna to 

 La Paz, in Bolivia, will be finished within 

 four or five years. These results are to 

 be accomplished under contracts already 

 let. 



In the Intercontinental or Pan-Ameri- 

 can Trunk Line project undoubtedly 

 there will be long halts before all the gaps 

 in such sections as those between Cuzco, 

 in Peru, and Quito, in Ecuador, are com- 

 pleted; but all this is easily within the 

 vista of half a century. The spell of the 

 Inca civilization may come over the rail- 

 way builder in Peru, but from the ruins 

 of that civilization he may take lessons 

 in road construction which can be ap- 

 plied to railway lines. 



It is an engaging theme to inquire 

 whether, in addition to the coast develop- 

 ment, within half a century the heart of 

 South America will really have the arter- 

 ies of commerce pulsating through it. Now 

 Bolivia, in the Andes, may be considered 

 as the heart of South America. Here, 

 too, there have been projects almost half 

 a century old for opening up this great 

 interior to the outside world. Thirty 

 years ago Colonel George Earl Church, 

 one of the most distinguished of Ameri- 

 can civil engineers, entered heartily into 

 the project of railway building in con- 

 nection with river navigation, which was 

 to insure the through route to the At- 

 lantic by way of the Amazon and its 

 affluents. The plan went down in dis- 

 aster due to financial and other reasons. 

 But today Bolivia has the assurance, 

 probably within ten years, of railway out- 

 lets to the Pacific at Arica, at Mollendo, 

 and probably at Callao, while on the At- 

 lantic side there is the certainty of reach- 

 ing the Plata at Buenos Aires through 

 the connection with the Argentina sys- 

 tems, and a later possibility of reaching 

 the Atlantic through Paraguay. 



For the Amazon there is also now the 



