| Wheat. | Maize. | Oats. | Flax. | Lucerne. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1896 | 25,000 | 14,000 | — | 5,600 | 8,000 |
| 1900 | 33,000 | 12,000 | — | 6,000 | 15,000 |
| 1902 | 36,000 | 18,000 | — | 15,000 | 17,000 |
| 1905 | 56,000 | 22,000 | 700 | 10,000 | 29,000 |
| 1910 | 62,000 | 32,000 | 8,000 | 15,000 | 54,000 |
| 1912 | 69,000 | 38,000 | 12,000 | 17,000 | 59,000 |
| 1913 | 65,000 | 41,000 | 11,600 | 17,000 | 66,000 |
| 1914 | 62,000 | 42,000 | 11,400 | 17,000 | — |
| Wheat. | Maize. | Flax. | Oats. | Totals. | Average. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosario | 782 | 1,757 | 275 | 13 | 2,829 | 2,716 |
| 242 | 1,952 | 248 | 1 | 2,445 | ||
| 717 | 1,790 | 366 | — | 2,875 | ||
| Buenos Aires | 441 | 1,389 | 246 | 240 | 2,318 | 2,051 |
| 297 | 906 | 55 | 78 | 1,537 | ||
| 511 | 1,349 | 342 | 96 | 2,299 | ||
| Bahía Blanca | 927 | 2 | — | 462 | 1,393 | 1,075 |
| 241 | — | — | 222 | 463 | ||
| 921 | — | — | 442 | 1,364 | ||
| S. Nicolas | 5 | 910 | 74 | — | 989 | 651 |
| 1 | 430 | 60 | — | 492 | ||
| 5 | 420 | 48 | — | 474 | ||
| La Plata | 333 | 358 | 14 | 170 | 876 | 459 |
| 160 | 51 | 16 | 49 | 278 | ||
| 152 | 45 | 6 | 16 | 222 | ||
| Santa Fé | 265 | 51 | 158 | — | 476 | 278 |
| 7 | 23 | 128 | — | 159 | ||
| 114 | 7 | 77 | — | 199 | ||
[CHAPTER VII]
ROADS AND RAILWAYS
Roads on the plain—The salt road—The "trade route"—Transport by ox-waggons—Arrieros and Troperos—Railways and colonization—The trade in cereals—Home traffic and the reorganization of the system.
The chapter devoted to primitive breeding and the transport of cattle contains a sketch of the network of routes over the Andes. One cannot expect to find in the scheme of routes over the Argentine plains the stern and obvious influence of natural conditions. The surface of these plains is, as a whole, broadly open to traffic. Still, the map of the roads bears much evidence of geographical exigencies.
The hills which rise like islands out of the alluvial plain are not all incapable of being crossed, and the roads do not always skirt them. The road from Buenos Aires to Peru runs north of 30° 40′ S. lat. on the very axis of the granite peneplain which forms the northern part of the Sierra de Córdoba. The Dean Funes ridge, which begins with an altitude of 2,500 feet between the Sierra Chica and these tablelands, has always been used for communication between Córdoba and the north-western provinces. There the railway has taken the place of the primitive track. Another important track crosses the Sierra de Córdoba in the north of the Pampa de Achala, and used to join Córdoba with Villa Dolores and the north of the San Luis province. The southern part of the Sierra de Córdoba and the Sierra de San Luis are, on the other hand, an insurmountable obstacle, which diverts southward the high road to Chile via Achiras, San José, del Morro, and San Luis.
The sierras of the Buenos Aires province are not so high and extensive. They are, moreover, broken into isolated hills with the plain passing between them. As early as 1822 Colonel Garcia pointed out the importance, in connection with the migrations of the Indian tribes, of the passage between the Sierra Amarilla and the Sierra de Curaco, that is to say, the Olavarria ridge. It is there that the first railway between Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca crosses the line of sierras. It then skirts the Sierra de la Ventana, to the north, by the Pigüe ridge, between the mass of Curumalan and the Puan hills. The dunes of the western Pampa also are an impediment to traffic, not so much because of their height as because of the looseness of the ground. The strip between General Acha and Toay was very trying for the stage-coaches. Travellers had to cross the dunes on foot during the winter season, when the horses were in a bad condition.[105]
Natural supplies of water increase in number as one gets away from the Andean zone toward the east. Still, the chief work, often the only work, to be done in making a road is the arrangement of permanent supplies of water. Martin de Moussy mentions the digging of wells on the new road from Córdoba to Rosario, which was opened about 1860. The aiguade was generally a represa, a reservoir, where the water accumulated behind a barrier of earth raised across the course of an intermittent stream. The upkeep of the represa is the chief duty of the post-master. The edge of the sierras and the opening point of the ravines which come down them is a good place for making represas, and the roads frequently keep to these (variant of the road from Córdoba to Tucumán via Totoral, Dormida, Rio Seco and Sumampa, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de Córdoba, etc.) Long stages with no water supplies, the travesías, are not found on the made roads, as a rule, except west of the meridian, of Córdoba. However, the direct road from Santa Fé to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los Porongos, which was used in the eighteenth century, seems to have been abandoned afterwards, as much on account of the difficulty of supplying water as because it was exposed to attack from the Indians.