Argentina's Agricultural Progress. 43 



will go into cultivation this season. The virgin area still avail- 

 able for agriculture is vast, though it is doubtful if in the far 

 west and south, where the water lies at a greater depth and is 

 frequently brackish, and the rainfall is scant, the cultivation of 

 cereals would be successful without irrigation. But it would be 

 hazardous at the present time to draw the limits of the wheat- 

 growing area, and while so much good useful soil still remains 

 untouched, the spread of agriculture depends not upon the 

 natural resources of the country but upon the arrival of labour 

 to turn them to account. 



What has most contributed to the spread of agriculture in the 

 Argentine is railway enterprise. With trifling exceptions, all 

 the railways in that country are owned by British companies. 

 However much their willingness to extend their branches has 

 been gratified by results, the fact remains that Argentina might 

 still be an importer of wheat had not foreign capital enabled 

 her to turn her lands to account. It is, perhaps, fortunate for 

 her development that her railways are owned and managed by 

 public companies and not by the State. Throughout the agri- 

 cultural zone new branches are being made, carrying the 

 colonist and the tools of his craft to virgin lands and putting 

 him in touch with his buying market. Every lineal mile of new 

 railway calls fifteen thousand acres of land into cultivation. 



Fifteen years ago the traveller in Argentina would arrive at 

 an estancia where the mobs of cattle numbered thousands, to 

 find that he had to drink tea without milk, and mark as a token 

 of honour to the guest a tin of Danish salt butter on the table. 

 The dairy supply of the great city of Buenos Aires was in the 

 hands of Basques, who milked their cows in unclean yards, and 

 rode off in the morning astride a jangling pannier of tin cans, 

 the cream churning into butter as the horse trotted through the 

 lanes of the suburbs. Thus they cantered into town to dispense 

 their wares from door to door, and their sole competitor was the 

 pedestrian cow-herd, who drove his kine through the busiest 

 streets, and, in answer to the hail of the housewife, supplied 

 milk " fresh from the cow." The process of churning by equita- 

 tion demanded the roughest of trots, and the cowboy of Argen- 

 tina describes the rude gait associated with this interesting 

 function as a " trote lechero" a milkman's trot. 



