Plate IX.

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Apart from the bañados of the Dulce and the Salado, the province of Corrientes contains the main reservoir from which the timber industry drew its manual workers. Just as at Santiago del Estero, one finds at Corrientes also the opposition between agricultural and breeding districts which is so common in the older colonized regions of South America. The estancieros (ranchers), who are breeders, are the masters of Corrientes, but the line of low hills of sand and red clay, punctuated by lagoons, which crosses the north-western corner of the province, is not subject to their domination. There the land is subdivided; there are once more fields. Tobacco was an article of export for this fraction of Corrientes, especially after the political isolation of Paraguay, the chief producer of tobacco in the nineteenth century. During the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century the tobacco-buyers travelled all over Corrientes after the harvest, in January and February. The fertile soil, moreover, with a mild climate in which tropical plants flourish as well as those of the temperate zone, provides the elements of a local comfort which is complete in itself. Here again agricultural colonization has created a relatively dense nucleus of population, capable of great increase. Although the administrative divisions do not exactly correspond with the natural divisions, the unequal distribution of the population in Corrientes is made plain by the figures given in the census of 1895. The density rises in the agricultural areas to eight inhabitants per square kilometre, in the department of Bellavista; ten at San Cosma; fourteen at Lomas; thirty at San Roque. It is only between one and two in the purely pastoral departments (Concepción and Mercedes).

Corrientes also has its forests, and in these we find most of the species of the forests of the Chaco, in straight lines, along the water-courses, and in somewhat larger patches on the tablelands which separate the lower valleys near the Paraná. They at first supplied the Curupai bark which was used in the Corrientes tanneries. The yards for the construction of river-boats emigrated from Paraguay to Corrientes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at the same time and for the same reasons as the tobacco trade. The exploiting of the red quebracho did not begin until about 1850. In 1887 Virasaro relates that fifty ships are engaged in loading with Nandubai timber on the banks of the Rio Corrientes and transporting it to Rosario.[46] Born on the left bank of the Paraná, the forestry industry emigrated toward the end of the century to the right bank, whither the workers of Corrientes followed it.

We find the same movement further north, on the Paraguay. The exploitation of the woods is in that case a very old industry on the tributaries of the left bank. D'Azara draws attention to its importance.[47] Robertson found, when he went from Corrientes to Asunción in 1814, a population of wood-cutters in the marshy belt near the river. During floods they took refuge in the agricultural cantons of the frontier on high ground, where they were well received. It seems, then, that wood-cutting was already a seasonal industry at this time. The exploitation of the forests is now rapidly invading the right bank, which was long abandoned to the wild Indians.

The Santiagueños and Correntinos do not mix. The two zones of expansion and of forestry, of which they are the pioneers, are independent of each other. The quechua, which is the language of the bañados of the Rio Dulce, is spoken in the timber-yards of the Chaco de Santiago; the guarani, the language of Corrientes and the Paraguay, is most common along the river, in the Chaco de SantaSanta Fé. Their respective spheres will not come into touch with each other until the Quimili branch of the Central Norte Railway, which comes from the Santiago province, joins the line of penetration at Resistencia, on the Paraná, in the west.

The forestry industry of the interior and that of the river-districts differ not only in the character of the workers, but in their organization and their market. The variety of red quebracho which is exploited in the west is not quite the same as the variety that is found in the east. Each has a name of its own—quebracho santiagueño and quebraco quebracho chaqueño. The former contains ten per cent. of tannin, the latter thirty per cent. The former is cut down for timber, the latter in order to extract the tannic acid. The one is sold in Argentina, and the other sent abroad.

The working of the timber at Santiago has remained in the hands of a number of small capitalists and contractors who do not own the land and do not work there. They are content to buy in small amounts and according to the demand at the moment, the right to exploit the forests (derecho de monte or derecho de leña). The trunks of exceptionally large quebracho provide logs that are sold by cubic measurement, but the district of the quebracho santiagueño mainly exports sleepers. Quebracho sleepers have been used in constructing the railways, both narrow and broad gauge, during the last twenty years on the Pampa. Tall and thin trees make telegraph posts; the smaller branches make stakes for wire fences. In parts of the bush where there is no red quebracho, the retamo is used, to make posts for enclosures, and also the white quebracho, which is sold in round logs. Finally, the forests provide wood for fuel. The works at Tucumán, and the locomotives over a good part of the land, use wood-fuel. The wood of the red quebracho, if left for some years in the yards where the sleepers are made and is rid of the sap-wood, which rots and falls out—the leña campana—is excellent fuel. Charcoal is cheaper to transport than the wood, and can therefore be sent farther over the whole prairie district. It is made in the monte, along all the railways, and especially in the thinner forests on the edge of the prairie.