SANTA CRUZ
This Territory is bounded on the North by Chubut, on the West and South by Chile, and on the East by the Atlantic Ocean.
Santa Cruz is not by any means so desolate, on the whole, as Chubut. It is the land of the sheep, and its large, very large, estancias, either on the Andine side of it or on the banks of its rivers, mostly belong to British settlers, who have brought their own architecture, orchards and gardens with them to this really out-of-the-way spot. Anyone weary of the crowded world and its busy ways might live and die under the shadow of the ever-lessening, as one gets south, heights of the Andine range, in some snug, sheltered valley through which a rippling stream runs close to where he would sit on a green sward in the shade of his own orchard.
This is no fancy picture. As has been indicated elsewhere in these pages, nothing is so English, temperature, vegetation, the very breeds of sheep (Romeny March largely predominating), in America than some favoured spots in Santa Cruz. Only the climate is different in being drier, the rain mostly falling in blustering showers.
There is, of course, a contrast when one emerges from among the Andine valleys, rivers and lakes out on to the dry, wind-swept, desert-looking plains. Still, even there one comes at times to oases, on the banks of one or other of the several considerable rivers. Shelter from the furious winds which seem to blow eternally over Patagonia is the one necessity for man, beast and crops in Santa Cruz. Transport also is lacking. Even the railway which the National Government has partly constructed to run from Puerto Deseado, and for the rest has under advanced consideration, is apparently to strike almost immediately Northwards up into Chubut; leaving Santa Cruz, as it is now; almost a world of itself apart, as far at least as communication with the rest of Argentina is concerned. Its most fertile parts, like those of all these western and southern territories, are much more get-at-able from Chile than from their Atlantic sides.
However, a cold-storage establishment has been built at Gallegos, the chief port and the capital of this Territory; so that Santa Cruz may become a centre of the frozen and chilled mutton industry instead of, as formerly, exporting only wool and slaughtering sheep merely for their fat and skins. It is a good sheep country in the regions at all suitable for grazing, since disease is extremely rare in, if not entirely absent from, flocks reared in its cold dry climate. In respect of cattle and cereals the outlook is not so promising. Still, one cannot have everything even in Argentina. And one can grow wheat, oats and alfalfa, besides apples and pears in Santa Cruz.