AWAKENING OF ARGENTINA AND CHILE 



13* 



great diversity of aspect. Proportions of 

 them may be flooded while other distant 

 regions of the same plain are drying up. 

 Portions are suited to the growing of 

 wheat, others to cattle raising, and still 

 others in the warmer, rainy zone about 

 Rosario are adapted best to the raising of 

 Indian corn. 



The Great Southern Railway of Buenos 

 Aires compiles for its own information 

 charts which show the quantities of 

 wheat, oats, linseed, cattle, sheep, and 

 alfalfa received at each of its stations 

 year by year. Thus the management may 

 know not only what income any station 

 yields, but also what is the crop that pro- 

 duces the particular return. It is most 

 interesting to observe the grouping of 

 products — wheat in this district, oats in 

 another, cattle elsewhere — each in its pre- 

 ferred localities predominating over 

 minor quantities of the other products 

 and demonstrating the existence of con- 

 trolling factors which give great eco- 

 nomic diversity to the apparent natural 

 monotony of the pampas. 



In part due to natural conditions, in 

 part dependent upon artificial ones, such 

 as the lack of roads, these factors are 

 changing from year to year ; and they are 

 destined to change constantly in the di- 

 rection of greater security and product- 

 iveness in agricultural pursuits as the 

 country passes from the actual primitive 

 conditions of development to those of a 

 more advanced community. 



THE HUB Of THE ARGENTINE WHEEE OE 

 EORTUNE 



To gain an idea of the extent of the 

 fertile pampa region, one needs but look 

 at a railway map of Argentina. Buenos 

 Aires and Rosario are the two ports of 

 shipment of its products, the centers 

 from which traffic radiates to all sections 

 of the country. English and other capi- 

 tal has been expended to the amount of 

 200,000,000 pounds sterling in building 

 railways to develop the rich lands, but in 

 the more arid and less profitable country 

 the lines have been extended only as 

 trunk lines, aimed to reach some distant 

 point. The pampas are the hub of the 

 Argentine wheel of fortune, of which 

 Buenos Aires, the Argentine El Dorado, 

 is the center. 



The area of the pampas, about 200,000 

 square miles, is one-sixth of the country. 

 In the larger part which lies beyond the 

 pampas, the other five-sixths, there is a 

 great extent of lands destined by the gen- 

 eral scarcity of water to pastoral pur- 

 suits ; there are some real desert areas ; 

 and there are also districts of great nat- 

 ural resources, which are either actual 

 or potential contributors to the natural 

 wealth. 



THE ROME OE THE ANTIPODES 



In the Argentine all travel, all enter- 

 prise, all development, stars from Buenos 

 Aires. Let us place ourselves in that 

 Rome of the Southern Hemisphere, from 

 which all roads lead, and make rapid ex- 

 cursions to the more interesting of the 

 outlying provinces of her commercial 

 dominion. 



An excursion to the northward may 

 pass by rail through the provinces or 

 States of Entre Rios and Corrientes to 

 the Territory of Missiones, which was 

 secured by Argentina through the arbi- 

 tration of her boundary with Brazil by 

 President Cleveland. Entre Rios and 

 Corrientes are lands traversed by ancient 

 watercourses of the Parana, which form 

 wide expanses of swamp among the mod- 

 erately high ridges and plateaus. 



Missiones, an extension of the western 

 table-land of Brazil, is a paradise, like 

 upland Florida, scarcely ever touched by 

 frost. This is the route to Paraguay and 

 the old city of Asuncion, from which the 

 traveler will prefer to return by one of 

 the steamers plying down the river of 

 Buenos Aires or Montevideo ; or, if it be 

 one of the Brazilian Lloyd line, even 

 making the voyage to Rio. 



The line of the Central Cordova Rail- 

 way, after leaving the Parana and Ro- 

 sario, runs through Cordova, the con- 

 servative seat of Spanish aristocracy and 

 learning, and on through the desert of 

 Santiago de Estero to Tucuman, the 

 oasis where the sugar monopoly flour- 

 ishes. Tucuman lies in a local area of 

 greater rainfall at the foot of the superb 

 Aconquija Range, a spur of the Andes 

 which towers more than 10,000 feet above 

 the city. 



Where the streams from the moun- 

 tains spread upon the tropical plain, there 



