THE PRINCIPAL STREET OF MENDOZA.
A MENDOZA VINEYARD.
The crops of Argentina are well distributed, and some regions produce great varieties. Buenos Aires, of course, leads in wheat, and produces more than Santa Fé and Cordoba, which occupy the second and third position, combined, while Entre Rios, which comes fourth, nearly equals the total of all the other minor sources of supply. It may be, however, that some day Patagonia will be a serious rival to Buenos Aires, but now, being unirrigated, her chief product is wool. The Province of the capital also supplies most of the maize and practically all the oats, but in linseed is far out-distanced by Santa Fé. Apart from Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Cordoba, and Entre Rios, the grain production, except wheat, is insignificant.
Tucuman is the great sugar district, and tobacco is largely grown there and in several of the other northern Provinces. Mendoza accounts for more than nine-tenths of the wine raised in the country, but San Juan, Salta, Cordoba, and La Rioja are of some importance. La Rioja in Spain, it may be added, has given its name to a special kind of red wine, and we have Peruvian Rioja just as we have Australian Burgundy.
Agriculture in Argentina is carried out on an enormous scale, and the hopes of travellers who visited the country a century ago have been realised. But the country is too new, there is too much virgin soil for settled agricultural conditions, and farmers prefer pushing further afield and taking larger holdings to tilling a farm with care for his son to hold after him. Consequently there is little of that petite culture which beautifies European countries and adds to the comfort of life; and, further, in most parts of Argentina, good as are the means of transporting staples, they are not of the kind which would make minute farming industries profitable. It is not probable that these conditions will change until there has been a large increase of population. As long as the increase is due to immigration—and many of the settlers look forward to returning to their native land when they have obtained a competence—farming methods will be hasty and extensive.
The forest industries of Argentina, though not fully developed, are very valuable. There are said to be 60,000 square miles of timber in the Gran Chaco, and parts of Patagonia are well wooded. Much of the wood is of great value, and the following are among the most useful for commercial purposes. The ñandubay, a kind of acacia, reaches a height of about 25 feet and is used for making fences and rafters. The wood is extremely hard and durable. The algarroba also yields good timber, and its fruit and leaves are used for fattening cattle, while the Indians brew a kind of beer from the pods. The lapacho, of the bignonia species, rises to a height of 100 feet, and its wood is used for cabinet work. The urunday is a tree of similar appearance but larger, and its building wood is said to last two hundred years. The palo amarillo is a mimosa and used for making furniture. There are in the north cedars of excellent quality, both red and white, which attain a height of 160 feet. The Jesuits introduced into the country several varieties of palms, and there are many of the trees known in Europe, such as poplars, willows, and walnuts. But by far the most valuable tree in Argentina is the quebracho,[120] which grows in two varieties, red and white; its full height is 80 feet, and it takes a hundred years to come to maturity; the trunk is about 30 inches in diameter. It is the commercial staple in Argentine timber, and the railways have given a great impetus to the trade, in which the Province of Santiago del Estero seems to have been the pioneer. In 1884 it had five thousand men engaged in cutting railway sleepers, but it was not till 1889 that the export trade began, when 14,000 tons of round logs were shipped from Santa Fé.
In the past few years many companies have been formed for cutting wood in the Gran Chaco and also for extracting tannin. The district of Resistencia is extremely rich in quebracho, and Santiago del Estero continues to produce it in increasing quantities, as well as firewood, which is extensively used by the sugar-mills of Tucuman. Firewood and posts are also largely produced in Cordoba, and Tucuman and Salta provide woods for building and cabinet-making. The timber industry has now been extended to Tierra del Fuego, where saw-mills have also been established; and when internal communications have been improved it will doubtless be developed on a large scale, for the wood is used for sleepers, building, and furniture-making. It has been suggested that the abundant poplars might be employed in making paper pulp; and, indeed, the timber resources of Argentina, although less vast than those of most of her neighbours, are certain to be a source of increasing profit. The export of quebracho logs, which now amounts to 254,571 tons, has been almost stationary for some years; but the figures for the extract, which in 1902 were only 9,099, are now 48,161.[121]
The oldest and most celebrated of the forest products is yerba maté. Pedro Lozano declared that the tree which produced that vegetable surpassed all other trees in utility. "The tree,"[122] he says, "is very high, leafy, and bulky. The leaf is also somewhat bulky, very green, and in shape like a tongue. The yerba is obtained by cutting the branches, and placing them upon brushwood, and roasting them slowly; by hand labour they grind the leaves thus roasted in holes sunk in the ground and lined with skins. In all this process the labour of the Indians is so severe that they sweat profusely, because they work the whole day without intermission and with very little food. They eat nothing all day but such forest fruits as chance gives them, and when they have had their supper at night their repose is brief, for within four hours they are obliged to rise and carry on their shoulders the ground leaves to other places, where they make leather packages to take them to other provinces." Lozano speaks with indignation of this cruelty to the Indians, which had depopulated all that part of the world except the Misiones. He gives an elaborate account of the history and uses of yerba maté. Its popularity has never waned, among the country people at least, for its bitter taste and stimulating properties are invaluable to the tired rider, and it fills the place that tea does to the Australian Bushman or coffee to the South African Boer. The tea is drunk through a bombilla, or tube, which is placed in the maté, or gourd containing the infusion, and it is passed round among the company. Yerba maté is raised more extensively in Paraguay and Brazil than in Argentina; but the value of the crop is well recognised, and recently the Government distributed fifty thousand plants among settlers.
The mineral wealth of Argentina is very much less than that of most South American countries. In every part of the Continent the difficulty of extracting the ore and bringing it to the coast is considerable, and tends to impair the value of even rich mines; but in Argentina, where the mineral veins are usually not very abundant, the difficulties have seemed almost insuperable, and consequently the capital employed in mining is small. As might have been expected, the Andine and sub-Andine regions almost monopolise the mining interest.