Señor Villafañe’s establishment is not of very great extent, its area being only 18,000 acres, but is notable for the great number of its pedigree cattle and the purity of type to be observed in his sheep. He devotes himself chiefly to breeding Durham and Hereford bulls, Lincoln rams, Hackney and Clydesdale stallions, collie dogs, fox-terriers, Brahma fowls, Catalans, Dorkings, and Plymouth Rocks.
We must also mention the Estancia San Pascual del Moro, the property of Señors Adolfo and Rufino Luro. It is famous for its stud of race-horses, from which issued, in 1904, the great winner of the season, Old Man.
This long list of breeding establishments would still be incomplete indeed, did we fail to make special mention of the Estancia Chapadmatal of Señor M.-A. Martinez de Hoz, who has made the greatest efforts to raise his establishment to the level of the best European models.
“Equal to the best in Europe,” was the judgment of a competent and impartial observer, Colonel Holdich, who, in his last book, entitled Los Paises del Fallo del Rey, bestows upon it this well-merited praise:—
“A well-known estancia, that of Señor Michel-Alfred Martinez de Hoz, near the Mar del Plata, surprised me by the singular character of its surroundings. The soil, with its irregularities, had the look of an English park. Little
hills and knolls, one after another, stretched away, covered with their golden harvest, with soft undulations, to the precipitous borders of the sea; instead of the eternal barbed-wire fence, living hedges were already springing up, dividing the fields and the pastures. On the highest hillocks rose stacks of oats, carried up from the fields in the high-wheeled wagons characteristic of the country-side; and there the stacks were being rapidly built by hand-labour. It was a beautiful rustic scene.
“Lower to the right, on the softer soil by the banks of a stream, which descended babbling to the sea, through beds of rushes and buttercups, was a pasture; here, standing in the branches of the bank, were the Shire horses; they formed animated groups, and placidly watched our movements; they were the most magnificent examples to be found out of Lincolnshire. Further down still, on drier soil, was a troop of mares, of an English-Creole cross, with their foals. These animals were for draught, and the excellence of their breeding is proved by the registers of the Argentine Rural Society, which record the prizes awarded to the Estancia Chapadmatal.
“In a higher part of the estate, in a quarter reached through long avenues of poplars, which lead thither from the house, and where the ground is covered with forests of eucalyptus or willows, are the bulls and cows. The Argentine stock-breeder does not consider expense when it is a matter of importing good English cattle for breeding purposes. The chief estancia has a series of breeding bulls, which are led before the visitor, each by his special keeper, with the same pomp and ceremony as the stallions which precede them in the brilliant review. It is not only near the capital and the principal centres of population that we find these model estancias, which afford their owners every European comfort. They are to be found also in the extreme south of the country, in the solitudes of Patagonia, near the 50th degree of south latitude.”[55]
[55] Cf. Annales de la Sociedad Rural Argentina, No. 4, 30th April 1902, p. 159.
“From the River Coyle, from Puerto Gallegos and Magellan Straits, to a point near Last Hope,” says an Argentine traveller, Mr George J. M’Lean, who visited these