Photograph by the Author.

Plate XVI.

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Primitive breeding affords few examples of periodical migration for the better use of pasturage. In 1822, in the course of a journey amongst the Sierras de Tandil and de la Ventana, Colonel Garcia noticed that the Indians kept their cattle round the temporary lagoons of the plain in the winter, and went up to the mountain-streams in summer. Transhumation movements of this kind were difficult for the creole ranchers, whose fairly large herds could not be handled easily. The Chascomus breeders, however, at the close of the eighteenth century, drove their cattle to the low banks of the Salado during the dry season.[91] Garcia also notices the importance of the Salado pastures for the ranches of Salto, Areco, and Lujan.[92] The need to remove the herds in the dry season, and to find invernadas within reach of the former ranches, was due to the change brought about in the natural vegetation of the Pampa and the spread of the pasto dulce. The annual herbs which compose the pasto dulce die and disappear after fertilization. Until the autumn rain they leave the ground quite naked, whereas the tough grasses of the pasto duro afforded a thin but permanent pasture.

The first improvements of the pastoral industry of the Pampa are connected with the development of sheep-breeding. Exports of wool began about 1840, and made great progress after 1855 (17,000 tons in 1860, 65,000 tons in 1870). From 1850 to about 1890 the economic returns on sheep-breeding were far better than on cattle-breeding. During the whole of this period the multiplication of sheep farms was only restricted by the supply of workers. The first shepherds had been Basques, in the south of the Buenos Aires province, and Irish, in the north. The owner settled them as small farmers in the puestos on the edge of the ranch, the central part of which was devoted to cattle. They could thus, while they guarded their sheep, see that the limits of the estate were respected, and prevent the cattle from roaming.

Wool was for a long time the only product of the sheep-rearing industry. From 1866 onward it was decided to use the hides and tallow also. As the material of the grease-works was cheap, they spread all over the sheep zone. Many ranches had works of their own. From 1867 to 1877 the saladeros that had been built long before for killing cattle undertook the slaughter of sheep on a large scale. The number of sheep sold to the saladeros rose to 3,000,000 a year. In 1880 the first cargoes of frozen mutton were sent abroad. The creation of the grease-works had made no difference to the breeding, but the building of the refrigerators brought about a rapid transformation of the flock. The Lincoln breed, heavier and more meaty, displaced the fine-wool Merinos. This substitution of Lincolns for Merinos is now complete throughout the Pampean region.

Until 1880 sheep-rearing was concentrated east of the Salado, north and south of Buenos Aires, beginning with a line that passes through Quilmes, San Vicente, Pilar, and Campana, which marks the limit of the suburban zone. In addition it had spread on the right bank of the lower Salado as far as the foot of the Sierra de Tandil, in an area where the first stations date from 1823, though the population did not make much progress until after 1855. About 1880, after the pacification of the Pampa, the sheep-farms began to expand westward. It was then that the wool of the pasto fuerte appeared on the Buenos Aires market. It came from the Azal district in 1870, from Olavarria in 1880, from Bolivar in 1885, and from Villegas in 1890. The Census of 1889 ascribes 51,000,000 sheep to the province of Buenos Aires; that of 1895 gives much the same figure (52,000,000). Detailed comparison of the two enumerations shows that the expansive movement to the west continued, and was completed during this period. The flocks in the north-west zone of the province (Lincoln, Villegas, Trenque, Lauquen) more than doubled; the flocks of the south-west area (Alsina, Puan, Bahía Blanca, Villarino) continued to grow, and increased by a third. Those on the lands of the central Pampa increased threefold. On the other hand, in the departments north and south of the Sierra de Tandil, where colonization is older, sheep-breeding is stationary. The north-east and south-east areas, between the Paraná and the Salado, have diminished: one losing a fifth, and the other a half, of its flocks.