| PLAZA RIVERDAVIA, BAHIA BLANCA. |
Gradually this area is being transformed. Estancias, with their eternal clump of trees and inevitable windmill pump, break the line of the horizon. Cattle stray over the prairie. The mud hovels of the colonists are black specks, and when you reach them you find that a big slice of the land has been given to the plough and is fenced with wire. Here also are the sheep farms, and, as I have indicated, Bahia Blanca is the chief market for wool. Yet sheep rearing in the Argentine, extensive though it is, may be said to be stationary. This is not because the limits of expansion have been reached, but simply because cattle and wheat have been found more profitable. The quality of wool, inferior to that of Australia, may have something to do with the restriction. The constant tendency is toward hair, and the natural condition of wool is only maintained by the importation of English sheep. Then the animals are disposed to be gaunt rather than good meat producers. These are drawbacks which have had their influence on breeding as a money-making business. But the Argentines are a practical people, and everything connected with agriculture they tackle in a scientific manner. That the consequence of their experiments in cross breeding will be the production of an acclimatised sheep, valuable for wool or mutton or both, I have no doubt. Farther south toward Patagonia, where the climate is more temperate and where there is fodder, I look upon as one of the great sheep tracks of the world. The European market for chilled mutton will be a spur to sheep-breeding.
Indeed, there are indications that the country at the back of Bahia Blanca is being appreciated as the sheep lands. It has been found that English sheep do better here than elsewhere. The Lincoln, Leicester, Romney Marsh, and Merino sheep do well. There is a good opening in this area for the British immigrant with money. Though there are something approaching one hundred million sheep in the Republic, there is room for hundreds of millions more. But the indifferent strain, consequent on a long-woolled Spanish breed having run wild for over two hundred years, must be eradicated if Argentina is going to secure and hold a foremost place in the wool markets of the world. I have been told this has been done during the last half century, but I am by no means convinced. For a long time the West Riding of Yorkshire had a prejudice against Argentine wool. This no longer exists. The preference is given to Australian wool not for any patriotic reasons, but simply because it is better.
Argentina has for some time been attracting breeders from New Zealand, and they have done much, by the importation of stock from England, to improve the quality. At present three out of every four sheep stations are in the hands of men of British name. You can strike a line from a little north of Bahia Blanca, and then reckon that most of the country lying south, right down to Patagonia, is suitable for sheep. But it is not all of equal value. Sheep that are turned out on the alfalfa lands provide good mutton, but the wool is inferior. The fine grasses of the near south seem inclined to make coarse wool; yet careful crossing is doing much to prevent this. Still, I am strongly disposed to agree with M. Bernandez, that there is no reason why either the coarse or fine wools now produced should be abandoned. The coarse, long wool will always have its use not only in rough goods, but also in the warp of fine cloths, which in the great mechanical looms has to be extremely strong. He looks to the establishment of woollen manufactories in the Argentine, and, as a consequence, the development on a colossal scale of all the breeds.
| A BAHIA BLANCA BANK. |
| THE TOWN HALL AT BAHIA BLANCA |