THE PATAGONIAN TABLELAND (NEUQUEN).

Indigenous vegetation. Rocks eroded by wind.

Photographs by Windhausen, Mining Division.

Plate XIV.

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The chief crops are lucerne, cereals, and the vine. All the efforts and hopes of the colonists are now centred upon the vine. It is for the purpose of extending the vineyards that they are endeavouring to secure more workers. These are a singularly mixed lot, Chileans from the Neuquen rubbing shoulders with Latin immigrants (Italian and Spanish) from the region of the Pampas.

The lucerne is made up in bales and exported by rail to Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires. The economic life of the agricultural oasis of the Rio Negro is no more connected with that of the pastoral tableland than is life on the Chubut. Neither sheep nor cattle are fattened on the Rio Negro. It is a curious contrast to the spectacle offered by the Andean regions of western and north-western Argentina, where for generations there has been a close association between the breeding industry of the scrub and the fattening on the lucerne-farms. This is because the currents of the cattle-trade are not here as permanent and stable as they are in the north. The time when the convoys of Pampean cattle bound for Chile used the valley of the Rio Negro preceded the agricultural colonization of the banks of the river. The conquest of Patagonia put an end to this traffic. There was an interval of twenty-five years between the period of the export of Pampean cattle to Chile and the export of cattle from the Neuquen to Buenos Aires, to which I will refer presently. As to sheep-breeding, it did not for a long time rear the animals for the meat-market, and it is only a few years since it found transport necessary. The farmers of the Rio Negro, who have little capital, and who sell and are paid in advance for their dry fodder, have not yet been able to take advantage of the reorganization of the cattle-trade.