The Fertile Pampas of Argentine 



455 



area of 72 square miles, is the largest 

 and most important city of South 

 America, the largest city in the South- 

 ern Hemisphere, and the second larg- 

 est city of the Latin race in the world. 

 Measured by foreign trade standards, 

 it ranks second among American cities, 

 its outward and inward tonnage being 

 more than half the size of that credited 

 to New York and four times as great as 

 the tonnage of San Francisco. Liver- 

 pool, a representative old-world ship- 

 ping center, ranks below Buenos Aires 

 in area and population, and its tonnage 

 is only 50 per cent greater than that of 

 the Argentine capital. As regards 

 situation, Buenos Aires lies as far south 

 of the Equator as Norfolk is north of 

 the Equator. It is distant from New 

 York 5,868 miles ; from Liverpool, 

 •6,154 miles; from Hamburg, 6,500 

 miles ; from Cape Town, South Africa, 

 5,218 miles; from Sydney, New South 

 Wales, 6,300 miles, the last two cities 

 named being on the same parallel of 

 latitude with Buenos Aires. The city 

 spreads over a level plain situated on 

 the right bank of the great La Plata 

 Estuary, 150 miles back from the sea 

 and 125 miles west of the city of Mon- 

 tevideo, Uruguay, which lies on the 

 northern side of the same estuary. It 

 extends 11 Y /\ miles from north to south 

 and \$y 2 miles from east to west, with 

 a circumference exceeding 38 miles. 

 The low-lying character of the city's 

 situation, which ranges from 15 to 50 

 feet above sea-level, combined with the 

 shallow and shifting character of the 

 •channel of La Plata, has forced the con- 

 struction of extensive and enormously 

 expensive harbor works ; these works 

 now provide facilities for handling 

 shipping in excess of 20,000,000 tons a 

 year. 



Buenos Aires is the commercial as 

 well as the political center of the Ar- 

 gentine Republic, being the gateway 

 and primary market for the larger por- 

 tion of the trade of the Republic. x\l- 

 though the largest Spanish-speaking 

 city in the world — double the size of 



Madrid — almost every language is 

 spoken within its limits, four-fifths of 

 its citizens being of foreign birth. Ital- 

 ians are more numerous than natives 

 and there are 100,000 Spaniards resi- 

 dent within the city. Eighty per cent 

 of the immigrants to the Argentine Re- 

 public come to Buenos Aires and it is 

 the permanent home of 18 per cent of 

 the population of the country. 



THE ANNUAL HARVEST 



Taking agriculture, one of the great 

 industries of the country, as an illus- 

 tration, we find the total area under 

 crop to be only 17,464,958 acres. This 

 is one-twentieth of the area available 

 for crops. Indeed, it is estimated that 

 in the provinces of Santa Fe, Cor- 

 rientes, Cordoba, and Buenos Aires 

 alone there exist over 157,000,000 acres 

 of land capable of growing fine crops 

 of wheat without artificial watering. 

 From an area one-quarter the size of 

 this, the United States now raises one- 

 fifth of the world's wheat supply. To 

 rightly measure, then, Argentine prob- 

 abilities in the matter of agricultural 

 development, we are thrown back upon 

 the development already existing in 

 certain provinces where wealth and 

 energy have concentrated. Following 

 this line of investigation, we discover 

 that the Province of Buenos Aires, with 

 an area of 69,000,000 acres, about two- 

 thirds as large as California, in 1901 

 had 1,974,404 acres under wheat, pro- 

 ducing 27,996,288 bushels; 1,683,287 

 acres under corn, producing 51,690,298 

 bushels ; 259,390 acres under linseed, 

 producing 3,650,968 bushels ; 27,529 

 acres under oats, producing 577,654 

 bushels ; 7,286 acres under barley, pro- 

 ducing 66,782 bushels. This same prov- 

 ince carried 52,630,451 sheep, 7,745,896 

 cattle, 1,675,385 horses, 248,720 pigs, 

 11,955 goats, 10,273 asses and mules. 

 Within the limits of this one province, 

 including the capital city, Buenos Aires, 

 there were located, when the census of 

 1895 was taken, 14,000 manufacturing 

 establishments, employing a capital of 



