The value of Argentine annual wool exports now totals over £9,000,000.
The real commencement of the pastoral as well as the agricultural industries of the River Plate in systematized form was the introduction of fences by a landowner named Olivera, in 1838. As may be conjectured, the erection of boundaries where none had ever been before, on properties the titles to and limits of which were of the vaguest description, mostly partook of the nature of an arbitrary proceeding. So evidently thought Manuel Rozas, the tyrant; who summarily prevented Olivera from continuing the fencing the latter had begun on his estancia “Los Remedios,” although Olivera’s new boundaries were but ditches crowned with quick-set hedges of “Añapinday” (Acacias affinis).
After the death of Rozas, however, in 1844, an English estanciero, Richard Newton, first employed iron wire for some of the enclosures of his property; and, later, another landowner, named Halbach, completely enclosed the whole of his estancia.
The founder of the Argentine Rural Society, Dr. Eduardo Olivera, says in one of his agricultural essays:—
To these three men (Olivera, Newton and Halbach) the Republic owes the transformation of its pastoral and agricultural industries.
It was only after the enclosing of lands that refining of stock became possible. Previously, a stock-owner was always subject to invasion by stray animals (often in large numbers) belonging to his neighbours.
Thus, as we have seen, the first step, the introduction of wire fencing, towards the present development of the Live Stock industry of the River Plate was initiated by an Englishman, and it was another Englishman, Mr. John Miller, who, in 1848, imported from England, for a Mr. White, the owner of the estancia “La Campana,” Tarquin, the first shorthorn bull ever seen on the River Plate.
Therefore the River Plate Territories really owe their pastoral development as well as their railways to the Anglo-Saxon race.
Some ten years later it became the fashion to import stallions of the carriage and riding kinds; it not being foreseen that the heavier breeds would also prove useful.
Then came the turn of sheep-breeding; first from imported Merinos. Later, Rambouillets were introduced and a little later again the Lincoln began to assert its right to the predominance it has since attained.