Yet the indirect advantages of the forestry to agriculture are numerous. Just as in the whole of southern Brazil, it affords a good market for agricultural produce. The crops from the colonies are stored in the shops at Posadas, and from there they go to the obrajes and yerbales. In addition, the industry finds work for more men. On the Rio Grande do Sul, and later on the Paraná, the wages paid for collecting maté have long been the surest resource of the colonies, and it is this that enabled them to subsist during the difficulties of their early period. In Misiones the attraction of the yerbales is not so strongly felt by the inhabitants. There are comparatively few colonists who are willing to leave their plots and hire themselves for distant work. The yerbales find their recruits, not amongst the immigrants from Europe, but amongst the ancient pobladores; that is to say, men who hold land without a title, whose position was recognized when the colony was formed—a floating population, not deeply rooted in the soil.
Agricultural colonization in turn will react upon the forestry industry in developing the cultivation of maté. Large plantations of ilex have already been established above Posadas. Already they enter the common life. They are scattered either over the estates of the national colonies or over the larger estates of the richer colonists; for planting demands a considerable expenditure. Some of them belong to dealers who also work natural yerbales elsewhere. They are, if possible, set up in the forest, or at least on the fringe of it, in order to have a good supply of wood to dry the leaves. Thus the primitive industry of collecting maté is undergoing transformation while the natural growths are disappearing.
[CHAPTER V]
PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING
The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes—The first settlements on the Patagonian coast and the indigenous population—Extensive breeding—The use of pasture on the lands of the Rio Negro—Transhumation.
The northern limit of the Patagonian region passes to the north of the Colorado, in the latitude of the Cerro Payen and of the ridge which leads from Malarüe to the Rio Grande in the sub-Andean zone (36° S. lat)., and to the Sierra de Lihuel Calel in the southern part of the Pampa province. South of this line, from the Andes to the Atlantic, on the territory of the Neuquen, the Rio Negro, the Chubut, and the Santa Cruz, is the region of the sheep farms, their refuge since more profitable branches of farming have driven the sheep from the Pampa. The extensive breeding practised on these poor lands is not profitable enough to justify much expenditure, and is therefore all the more controlled by the physical conditions. It is true that cattle-breeding was once undertaken in the Spanish settlements of the lower Negro, and still exists in western Patagonia at the foot of the Andes, but one never finds there the particular combination of cattle-breeding and sheep-breeding which is characteristic of the Pampean region, in which the main function of the cattle is to improve the pasture and make it ready for sheep.
The climate is trying. The west winds are violent during the greater part of the year, especially on the coast, and merely relax a little in the winter. The mean temperature on the Atlantic coast falls nearly one degree for each degree of latitude (14.6° at San Antonio, below 41° S. lat.; 8.5° at Santa Cruz, below 50° S. lat.; and 5.3° at Ushuaia, below 55° S. lat.). The summer temperature falls even more steeply, but the difference is less notable in winter (21.4° at San Antonio, 14° at Santa Cruz, and 9.2° at Ushuaia). The low summer temperature does not allow cereals to ripen south of the Chubut. In the sub-Andean valleys the summer is comparatively warm (16° in January at Diez y seis de Octubre at a height of 1,800 feet), but there is severe frost, especially at the beginning of the winter, and no month of the year is quite free from it.
Rain is plentiful in the Cordillera, and on its western border: 800 millimetres at Junin, nearly two metres at San Martin (which the wet westerly winds reach by the gap of Lake Lacar), and nearly a metre at Bariloche, on Lake Nahuel Huapi. It diminishes rapidly, however, as soon as one leaves the mountainous region and goes further east over the tableland. The whole tableland has a rainfall of less than 200 millimetres (Las Lajas 180, Limay 150, San Antonio 180, Santa Cruz 135). It is only south of the Rio de Santa Cruz that the rainfall rises once more (Gallegos 400 millimetres, Ushuaia 500 millimetres). Hence Patagonia as a whole is, with the exception of a narrow belt at the foot of the Andes, a semi-arid region with a sub-desert climate. In the Patagonian Andes the rain falls, as on the coast of Chile, mainly in winter. Between Mendoza, which has the summer-rain feature of central and tropical Argentina, and Chosmalal, in the Neuquen Andes, the contrast is absolute. The summer months there (January and February) are dry, and the rain is confined to the winter months, from May to August. It is the same further south, at Bariloche and at Diez y seis de Octubre. On the Atlantic coast the winter-rain feature is less regular and uniform. At San Antonio the heaviest rains fall in autumn (April and May). There is a secondary maximum in August, and a few more showers in the spring (September and October). South of San Antonio the winter maximum, which is always marked, is cut by a short dry period (July and August at Camerones, June at Deseado and Santa Cruz).[50] In the interior, on the other hand, the winter-rain system remains unchanged. The predominance of the precipitations of the cold season is of great importance to the breeders. As a rule, they come down in the form of snow, which melts slowly, and the small quantity of moisture is at least all absorbed in the soil. South of the Santa Cruz the humidity increases, but the rainy season alters. At Gallegos the wettest month is December; at Ushuaia, the rains last from September to March. The snow-season (May-August) is the dry season, and the snowfalls are not heavy enough to interfere with breeding.