Agricultural Argentine Pat agonia is divided into five parts, namely, the territories of Rio Negro, Neuquen, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego, whose com bined areas (about 775,000 square kilometres or 302,250 square miles) exceed the total area of Chile, and constitute between one-third and one-fourth of the entire area of the republic of Argentina, or nearly one-twentieth of the continent of South America. A comparatively small portion of the Patagonian regions be longs to Chile, and forms the Chilean territory of Magallanes. In view of the circumstance that its climate, ranging from temperate to cold (since it extends, roughly speaking, be tween lat. 40° S. and lat. 55° S.), favors the development of vigorous communities, we note with special interest records of Patagonia's agricultural achievements which demonstrate the fertility of the soil, accessibility of the in terior districts, facilities for irrigation, etc. The question whether this distinctly habitable one twentieth of South America possesses such ele ments of substantial prosperity has entered a new phase; and it is obviously a very large question. The 18th century witnessed a race between England and Spain for the control of this region. In 1774 the Jesuit, Thomas Faulk ner, having penetrated to the heart of the country, found the interior so unexpectedly de sirable that he urged England to undertake its conquest. The Spanish government, when this project became known, hastened to take formal possession of the coast by establishing forts there. On 15 Dec. 1778, an expedition was sent from Montevideo, an after a voyage of 22 days, a landing was made on the north shore of Valdez The bay (a por tion of the Gulf of San Matias) where this landing was effected received the name of San Jose. Spanish settlements were established there and at Puerto Deseado — the latter in what is to-day the territory of Santa Cruz. When Spain was on the point of losing forever her control over Argentina, England decided to strike, but aiming first at the capital, neglected to put sufficient force into the blow — and the captured English regimental flags are still to be seen in frames and .under glass on the pillars of San Domingo Church at Buenos Aires. A quarter of a century passed. Argen tina, distressed by war and political dissen sions, was shunned by nearly all Europeans excepting soldiers of fortune. Then, after 1832, the world received from one of its great est men extremely unfavorable impressions in regard to this portion of the far south. When Captain Fitzroy on the Beagle was devoting his attention to Patagonian hydrography, Charles Darwin, as the naturalist accompanying the expedition, pursued his investigations on land. But inasmuch as Darwin's studies were in the main confined to the dreary repellent wastes of the littoral, he of course depicted the land in darkest colors on account of its lack of vegetation. To this condemnatory judgment was due, in part, the delay in colonizing cen tral and southern Patagonia. Genuine coloniza tion of central Patagonia — the Chubut terri tory — began in the year 1865. In 1862 an im portant emigration society had been formed in England with the object of establishing col onies in Patagonia. Two representatives had examined Chubut Valley and subsequently ap plied to the Argentine Minister of the Inte rior, Dr. Rawson, for an assignment of na tional government lands. In the name of the government the minister stated that he was ready to give to each family of immigrants an adequate portion of the national land. On 28 July 1865, a ship arrived from Liverpool with 153 Welshmen on board, and in September of the same year Colonel Murga, thereto commis sioned by the government, came to point out to the immigrants the land assigned to them in Chubut Valley. On 16 September the colony was formally established. The Argentine flag was hoisted and the place received the name of the Minister of the Interior, Rawson. From the very beginning a lack of means_of_sub sistence occasioned great suffering. Forty-eight newcomers abandoned the community, and the government, whose energies were absorbed by the war with Paraguay, could extend no aid. Fortunately the starving Welshmen obtained a little food from the Tehuelche Indians. The second harvest was a failure because the rain fall was insufficient. When the colonists aban doned their settlement and betook themselves to the neighborhood of the port of Madryn, Dr. Rawson promised support to the poor people and requested them to remain one year longer in the colony. Thereupon irrigation canals were cut. At one stroke the situation changed. Splendid crops of wheat were pro duced. From the year 1867 onward the har vests were good, but communication with the outside world was very imperfect. Application was made to the national government for as sistance in exporting wheat. New bands of Welsh immigrants came in 1874 and 1875. Chu but wheat was then sent to Buenos Aires and the Falkland Islands. The colonists established a species of autonomous government, electing for this purpose a council which consisted of 12 members and which promoted the public in terests and discouraged private quarrels. This council of 12 elected a president. Thus matters stood until 1876, when a commissioner was ap pointed to represent the national administra tion. In 1881 the inhabitants of Chubut Valley numbered 1,000. The law of 16 Oct. 1884 re taring to the national territory prescribed for Chubut the following boundaries: On the north, lat. S., on the east, the Atlantic Ocean, on the south, lat. 46° S., and the Chilean fron tier on the west. Under this law a governor, a Federal judge and other officials were as signed to each territory. The first governor of Chubut, L J. Fontana, installed the territorial administration at Rawson. Governor Fontana promptly realized that he knew nothing about the 10,000 square leagues constituting his realm. Therefore, in the spring of the year 1885 he set out with 30 men to explore the Andean valleys. The entire outfit—provisions, a large number of cattle, etc. — had been supplied by the par
ticipants themselves; and the reason why so many colonists undertook the journey was that certain friendly Indians had told them about the fruitfulness and beauty of the Cordillera valleys, and the agreeable climate prevailing there had been the subject of much praise. The interior of Chubut had, indeed, been studied at certain points by foreign geologists and botan ists but not a word had been said about the agricultural possibilities of the hinterland; and in Buenos Aires the commercial world knew probably less about the southern territories than did the people of Europe.
Fontana's expedition reached the foot of the Cordilleras after a journey of three months, and there the wanderers discovered a beautiful wide valley which their leader, in honor of the day on which the territorial divisions had been decreed, named Valle 16 de Octubre. A stock farming colony was founded there. Fontana has characterized the newly discovered regions in the south as follows: "There were 30 of us and we belonged to four different nationalities, yet all declared to me unanimously that they had seen no other spot on earth where nature had combined on such a liberal scale whatever is necessary for the welfare of A word of explanation is necessary in re gard to conflicting accounts of certain portions of the Patagonian territories. The Rio Negro Valley and Limay region have been described by some writers as very fertile, while other writers have represented them to be entirely worthless for agriculture. If a visitor hap pened to come at the close of a rainy season he found luxuriant vegetation; whereas an other visitor arriving in time of drought could scarcely obtain fodder for his horse. The facts that the wheat grown in the valley of the Rio Negro is as good as or better than the Chu but wheat, and that both are superior to the wheat grown in the warm northern provinces, deserve to be kept in mind.
Increase of Agricultural Resources.— The assertion has been made that the Rio Negro Valley in many respects is like the Nile Valley. Its total length, from the point where the Neuquen and Limay rivers unite to form the Rio Negro to the disemboguement of the latter in the Atlantic, is about 275 miles, and the average width about four miles. Great Britain's old ambition to which we have re ferred has in our own times manifested itself in the construction of railways and the invest ment of very large sums of money in the de velopment of the country. On 1 June 1899 the railway connecting Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires with Neuquen was opened, and this gave ready access to regions which formerly were reached by long stage-coach journeys. The English spirit of daring which undertook the extension of the great system of the Southern Railroad merits recognition. The region to be crossed was in part so poor that the prospect of good financial returns was frankly admitted to be remote, and no colonization could be ex petted to follow except in the Rio Negro Valley. But English capitalists looked far beyond the present and saw in the line connecting Bahia Blanca with Neuquen only the first half of the great Trans-Andean route, which should sup ply, for the products of south Argentina and south Chile, an outlet at that point (Bahia Blanca) which has, as its most valuable asset, a natural harbor, much deeper and better for large vessels than the harbor of any other place in the extreme southeast. As evidence of the interest that the Argentine government takes in the southern territories, we may men tion the construction of the Patagonian Rail road, which was begun in 1908. The discovery of petroleum about 1907 near Comodoro Riva davia is another factor in the growing pros perity of southern or Patagonian Argentina. It is to be noted also that the cultivation of ce reals, with all its promise, is not the most im portant source of wealth. Stock-farming, es pecially sheep-farming, dominates here; in fact, this region sustains a relation to the provinces on the Rio de la Plata analogous to that which the Southwest and West in the United States held to the Middle and Eastern Sates just after the Mexican War. The progress made in re cent years proves that these territories can at least produce all that is requisite for the con tinuance of prosperity. The territory of Neu quen made gains in the matter of population (white and Indian in the proportion of three to one) to such an extent that it had recently about 30,000 white inhabitants, most of whom were Chileans, and about 10,000 Indians; and it was recorded that these 40,000 individuals possessed or were in the employ of those who .ssessed 195,000 cattle, 105,000 horses, 676, 111 sheep, 170,000 goats and 7,000 mules. Con sidering only one item, we note that there were 16.9 sheep for each man, woman and child. Some progress has been made in the plans for rendering navigable the Santa Cruz River. In 1909 a steamer carrying many passengers and a cargo of 80 tons succeeded in going up against the rapid current of that stream as far as the Rincon Chico region, which was for merly regarded as inaccessible. The feasibility of plans for river improvement which shall en able larger vessels to come and go between the wide interior zone and the outside world has to be conceded. It is of highest importance to consider the agricultural possibilities of these very extensive regions, situated in latitudes that favor their development by the more vig orous classes of immigrants. The observation has quite recently been made that Argentina's expansion into the temperate southern regions of the South American continent is in its own way not less truly interesting than are the similar westward movements in the United States and Canada, the eastward one in Russia or the northward one of South Africa. This is Argentina's wide and deep frontier, the borderland in which pioneer conditions give place to rapidly growing settlements, and scien tific methods convert supposedly useless areas into sources of economic wealth.