But Chile was always the great market for stolen cattle. Raids (malones) and the crossing of the Cordillera by convoys began in the eighteenth century, and continued throughout the nineteenth, until 1880, when the consolidation of Argentine authority on the eastern side gave a more regular form to the cattle-trade. The convoys came to a halt at Antuco and Chillan from which the Chilean buyers sometimes accompanied the Indian tribes as far as the tolderias on the edge of the Pampa. The trade in stolen cattle made use of all the passes of the Cordillera, from the Planchon pass below 35° S. lat., which Roca had covered in 1877 by the fortress of Alamito, to the source of the Bio Bio. The one most used was the Pichachen or the Antuco pass. On the tableland the cattle-tracks formed a regular network with innumerable strands, spreading over a width of about two hundred miles. The most northern route started east of the Poitague district and, after fording the Salado and the Atuel, and passing the aguadas of Cochico and Ranquilco, entered the Cordillera at the bend of the Rio Grande. Another track ascended the Colorado and then reached the high valley of Neuquen. A third crossed from the Colorado to the Rio Negro, and, above the confluence of the Limay, to the Rio Agrio or the Alumine.
The first exact information about the range of the Patagonian Indians is supplied by a group of bold travellers who followed their tracks from 1870 to 1880: Musters, Moreno, Moyano, Ramon Lista, etc. Their discoveries had already outlined the geographical survey of Patagonia when the campaign of 1879-1883 opened it to colonization.
The story of white colonization since 1880 shows us several distinct streams of population. The first, starting from the region of the Pampa, went from north to south along the Atlantic coast, and gradually extended its sphere toward the interior. The breeders used the sea-route, the ancient Indian track with recognized sources of water, to convey their first herds. In 1884, the only spot inhabited on the coast between the Rio Negro and the Deseado was the Welsh colony on the Chubut. In 1886 Fontana reports ranches in the Puntá Delfin district, south of the Chubut.[62] About 1890 the whole district round the Gulf of San Jorge was occupied; and a little later the stream from the north met the stream from the south about San Julian and Santa Cruz. The expansion of colonization was less rapid in the interior. Ambrosetti tells us of the establishment of the first ranches round the Sierra de Lihuel Calel in 1893,[63] and at the same time Siemiradzki still found few traces of colonization on the Colorado.[64]
The second stream of colonization came from the Magellan region. It started in Chilean territory, about Puntá Arenas. It was about 1878 that sheep-breeding spread round Puntá Arenas, and between 1885 and 1892 was the most rapid growth of the ranches of the Magellan district. North of the Straits they occupied the lowlands round Skyring Water and Otway Water, then the plateau south of Gallegos. They spread along the Atlantic as far as the Santa Cruz. In 1896 the limit of the sheep-region was on the Santa Cruz about forty miles from the coast.[65] To the west, Puerto Consuelo was founded in 1892, and in 1896 colonization came up against the mountain barrier which the Cerro Payen and the basalt tableland of the Cerro Vizcachas interpose between Lake Argentine and Ultima Esperanza fiord.
The spheres of primitive colonization in southern Patagonia on the coast still differ from each other in regard to density of population. But breeders in search of unoccupied land have not hesitated to push beyond. In 1895 and 1900 they passed west of the Gulf of San Jorge toward the basin of the Sanguerr and the Genua, (establishment of the Sarmiento colony, south of Colhuapi, 1897: establishment of San Martin on the Genua 1900). Since 1900 the population has also advanced up the Santa Cruz and the Rio Chico as far as the zone of the Andes, and the lagoon which still existed twenty years ago, between the district of the Sanguerr and that of Lake Argentino, and is easily recognized on the maps of the Frontier Commission, has been almost entirely filled up.
The story of colonization in the northern part of the Patagonian Andes is more complicated. Immediately after the campaign of 1883 the valleys of the Neuquen were invaded by Chilean immigrants, half-breeds of the frontier, who cannot always be easily distinguished from pure Araucans. A certain number of Chilotes, and even Germans from the southern colonies of Chile, were mixed with the half-breeds. This stream of immigration had begun before the conquest. As early as 1881 Host notices that there are at Chosmalal various families of Chilean farmers who held their lands from the Indian cacique. During the summer they took care of the migratory herds from the Chilean plain. Once the country was pacified, they grew rapidly in number. It was they who provided the manual labour for the placer miners of the Neuquen, where gold began to be worked in 1890. The area of Chilean colonization extends from the Rio Atuel, where Villanueva found Chilean immigrants in 1884, to the south of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where Chileans were still met by Vallentin in 1906, on the Rio Pico, close to 44° S. lat.[66] South of Nahuel Huapi there is no regularly used route across the Cordillera.[67] The Chilean colonists of the southern zone came from the north, therefore, along the eastern foot of the Andes. Bailey Willis calculated that there were 2,000 Chileans in a total population of 3,500 in the sub-Andean area from Nahuel Huapi to Diez y seis de Octubre. The total number of Chilean immigrants may be about 20,000. It is not on the increase, as immigration from Chile was suspended from 1890 to 1895. Since the reconstruction of the frontier the Chilean Government has tried to bring back part of the emigrants to its own territory. Many have gone to settle in the valley of the Lonquimay. In 1896 Moreno saw traces everywhere in the valley of the Collon Cura of the departure of Chilean colonists who had left the country.
At first it was only the Argentinians of the western provinces, San Juan and Mendoza, who vied with the Chileans for the soil. It is they whom Furque found in 1888 at Roca, on the Rio Negro. But beginning with 1890-95, immigrants of various nationalities have settled on the Neuquen and the Negro.[68] Foreign capitalists organized their first ranches there. In 1888, on the other hand, the Welsh of the lower Chubut, led by Indian guides, went from the coast to the sub-Andean region, and settled in the valley of Diez y seis de Octubre. Between 1895 and 1900 the neighbouring valleys began to be inhabited, and the colonization areas of Nahuel Huapi and the Sanguerr came into contact.[69]