831. The Gran Chaco.—A large area in northern Argentina, west of the Parana, is called the Gran Chaco (Great Forest), although most of the high forest is only along the streams. There is so much good, open grassland farther south, in a cooler climate, that this section has been little used. Parts of it have scarcely been explored. In 1920 an American party went through some of it. They said it was like trying to go through a hedge endwise. The land was•covered with a dense mass of thorny bushes about six feet high. You could only pass here and there by following paths made by deer and other animals. This land might be made to raise animals for meat, and to grow many of the crops of our southern states, such as corn, beans, peanuts, and cotton.
832. The cities of the coast.—Why might we say that Buenos Aires is both the Chicago and the New York of Argentina? (Secs. 321, 340.) Buenos Aires is still growing rapidly and is already a great city, almost as large as Philadelphia. It has splendid streets, beautiful houses, and great news papers. The styles of Paris are copied by its people more quickly than they are copied in New York. Buenos Aires has many places of amusement, and is one of the gayest cities in the world.
In its harbor, Buenos Aires has better machinery for handling freight than has New York. Across the wide river is Monte video, the capital of Uruguay, a finely-built city with three-fourths as many people as Washington, D. C. Southward from Buenos Aires is Bahia Blanca, a grain exporting port, the Galveston of the Argentine. Rosario, two hundred miles up the river Parana from Buenos Aires, is visited by ocean steamers, and has a population larger than Omaha. This city is much like Omaha in its business, except that ocean steamers can reach it.
833. A place for the immigrant.—The un
used, or little used, lands of southern Brazil, Uruguay, and eastern Argentina comprise one of the four good, large regions waiting for the immigrant who wants to farm in the land of frost. Where are the other three? (Secs. 92, 630, 686.) In the Argentine part of this great region is much land that is not yet cultivated, and some day the big estates will have to be turned into one-family farms. Farming has scarcely begun in Uruguay, a country that is still a great sheep pasture of rolling grass land. Most of southern Brazil and northern Argentina is still a great forest waiting to be cleared and put to work producing corn, legumes, meat, and cotton.
But settlers are now going to these empty lands. In this part of Brazil several colonies of German farmers settled years ago. The climate is so mild that the farmer does not need an expensive house or barn. He can live in a tent for months, and in five or six weeks after he reaches his land he can be eating beans and other vegetables from his new garden. The Brazilian government wants immigrants, and will pay the carfare from the Brazilian port to a farm colony for any immigrant with a family. The govern ment will also sell him sixty-two acres of land, and seeds and tools, and will give him eight years in which to pay for all this.
As many as ten thousand immigrants a week landed at Buenos Aires during a part of 1920. Already many hundred thousands of Italians and Spaniards have moved to Argentina, and more are going there. Of late the East Temperate Agricultural Region has been second only to the United States as a place to attract home-seekers. We may therefore expect this region to have more and more wheat, corn, and meat for the markets of Europe and the United States.