QUEBRACHO TRUNKS LYING AT THE STATIONS.

Eastern Chaco, on the Resistencia line (Santa Fé province). Here the quebracho is exploited for tannic acid, not sleepers.

Photographs by the Author.

Plate XI.

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When one passes to the interior, the pastoral industry at once assumes a more primitive character. The quebracho concerns themselves go in for breeding, in order to make use of their large estates, when the timber has been removed but the works have not yet been set up. They need a large number of cattle, both for moving the timber and feeding their workers, and they endeavour to meet their needs themselves. In this district the forest is capable of feeding a far heavier herd than is the more arid scrub of the eastern Chaco. There are often a thousand head of cattle to 2,500 hectares. To the north and west of that part of the forest where the big companies have taken over the whole of the land, in the province of Chaco, a fairly large number of estates has been created. Further still, on either side of the Bermejo, cattle from Corrientes and the Paraguay have been put on the public lands by men with no rights. As their future is uncertain, they cannot do any expensive work, such as making wells, reservoirs, and enclosures. Sometimes they are compelled by drought to fall back upon the river.

Conditions are quite different in the forests of Misiones. The damp forest of Misiones does not lend itself to breeding. While the forest-workers on the west of the Paraná eat fresh meat, thanks to the proximity of the breeders, in the yerbales and obrajes of Misiones, the use of dried or "jerked" meat (carne seca), which is brought some distance, has remained the common practice, as it is in most parts of tropical America. On the other hand, there is now developing in Misiones an agricultural colonization of an original kind, quite distinct from the ordinary Argentinian type. This is because Misiones is a province apart in Argentina. It really belongs, by its geological structure and its climate, to the Brazilian tableland. The colonies in Misiones are merely an extension into Argentine territory of the great belt of colonies of southern Brazil, which stretches from the neighbourhood of Santa Catalina and the Rio Grande do Sul to the River Paraguay. The Brazilian type of colonization is based upon work with the hoe, in clearings that have been made in the forest by the axe and by fire. Ordinary farming would be impracticable between the large stumps which the clearers have to leave in the ground, to rot there slowly. It would, moreover, be useless, as the land, though rich in humus, is light and aërated. The red soil, a decomposition-product of the diabases which are at the root of all agricultural wealth in southern Brazil, covers a great part of Misiones. The economic inferiority of this agricultural colonization in the forest to the Pampean type which has conquered the grassy plains of the Rio de la Plata, is twofold. On the one hand, the surface that a man can develop is very small. The plots of the Brazilian colonies are ten times smaller than the average estate on the Pampa. On the other hand, it is difficult to get about in the forest, and this hinders the export of the produce.

The colonies in Misiones are still confined to the edge of the great forest, into which they will advance as the agricultural population grows. They form two groups: one on the river above Posadas (Candelaria, Bonpland, Corpus, San Ignacio, and Santa Ana), the other on the slopes of the hills, above the line from Posadas to Uruguay (San José and Apostoles). Foodstuffs, tobacco, fowl and eggs, which they now send by rail as far as Buenos Aires, are their chief resources. As it is possible for them to reach the big markets of the Pampas, by river or rail, they have a certain advantage over the Brazilian colonies. On the other hand, the various elements of their population are inferior. They are very mixed, comprising aboriginals—relics of the ancient Indian or half-breed population of Misiones who have got land but are in no hurry to cultivate it—Poles (grouped in a few villages, such as Apostoles and San José), and German-Brazilians from the left bank of the Uruguay. At the present time there is a constant stream of German-Brazilians through the province of Misiones, to embark at Posadas, sail up the Paraná, and settle, further north, in Matto Grosso. No doubt it would be possible to induce part of them to settle on Argentinian territory by offering them suitable land.

These peasant clearers of the land rarely find means to sell their timber. The tropical forest has an immense variety of species, but only a few of these are of value. The obrajero does not cut down the whole forest; he chooses his victims. In the waste land of the colonist it is by no means possible to utilize everything. Even in the area where the forestry industry flourishes, trunks with no faults, felled in order to make room for farming, are pitilessly burned and destroyed.