country is already beginning to owe much of its prosperity. There are two distinct types of colonist—the one who buys his land on a permanent colony, and builds a decent house, and the temporary tenant whose economic principle is to break the soil of new land, and moves to a new district at the end of his term. The latter owes his origin to the cultivation of “alfalfa,” the wonderful clove-like plant that will grow on sand, and requires no rain, but thrives on the surface water which abounds in the country’s flat, low-lying plains. Alfalfa will not grow in hard unbroken ground, and where the land is such, cereal cultivation is necessary for three years to reduce it to a fit condition. This work requires labour which is not available among the gauchos, the horsemen who act as hands on the estancias, and the estanciero himself probably does not possess the knowledge requisite for the cultivation of grain. A contract is therefore made with colonists, usually Piedmontese or Basques, to break the soil and grow cereals for three, or more usually five, years, either at a fixed rent or for a percentage of the crop, the stipulation being that with the last year’s seed alfalfa is sown as well. When the last crop has been cut, the latter grows through the stubble. The growth of this plant is such that as alfalfa is more cultivated, the stock-bearing capacities of the country will easily be trebled.

The main supports of the country are, therefore, cereals and cattle, the latter being undoubtedly the more profitable investment, but requiring a much larger capital. By Argentine, as by French, law property at death is compulsorily divided, and this tends to split up the now immense tracts of land occupied by individuals. Whatever the social advantages of such a system may be, it is not conducive to the most economic working, nor yet to the breeding of the finest strains of stock, for which a large capital is required. A form of evasion, however, has been found in the formation of limited liability companies, often private, to run big estancias. These have everything to recommend them from the economic point of view. A capable manager is put in charge of the work on the spot, and, as capital is usually forthcoming, the estancias are run in such a way as to yield the greatest possible return. They are usually well-maintained, up-to-date in management and fittings, and supplied with good home-bred strains.

There are, however, other natural sources of wealth in the Argentine; notably, the forests of hard-woods (of the acacia order) which abound in the Chaco, in Corrientes and Entre Rios, and are also found in the province of Córdoba and elsewhere; the sugar industry in the north-west (of which more will be said under “The Tariffs”); the hitherto undeveloped fruit cultivation in all parts of the country (this in the sub-tropical and central provinces would be especially liable to suffer from the depredations of locusts); perhaps, too, cotton growing in the Chaco, where, however, the supply of labour is much questioned, and some pests peculiar to the cotton-bole are reported as existing; and, lastly, the minerals, as yet wholly undeveloped. Although these are undoubtedly much more scarce than in Bolivia and Chile, the absence of an impartial geological survey has rendered the flotation of bogus companies easy, and practically prevented any genuine development, in spite of their greater accessibility than in the former country. The recent boom and collapse in gold ventures was the result of stock exchange transactions, probably fraudulent, as, with the exception of the sea-bed to the very south of the country (where it cannot be recovered), gold is probably one of the few minerals which does not exist to a workable extent.

A curious feature in the Argentine is the absence of navigable rivers. With the exception of the treacherous Paraná and the Uruguay, enclosing the provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, there is not a single waterway, natural or artificial. The result of this has been an enormous network of railways spreading over the central provinces with isolated offshoots north and west. The consequent great influx of capital would naturally have encouraged a large import trade; but the prohibitive tariff has succeeded in retaining the money in the country, while the revenue derived has, almost without exception, been uneconomically employed. The result is that, apart from an occasional monopoly that has succeeded, the only large gainers from this policy have been the town property holders.

A large part, however, of the province of Buenos Aires is liable to periodic inundation, and, to obviate this, an extensive system of drainage has been planned, a work of great difficulty owing to the small difference of altitude between the land and the sea. Some canals, however, are in course of construction of which advantage might possibly be taken, if they were made of sufficient depth, for local transport. If this were done, a large and important part of the country would be provided with a cheaper alternative to the railway. In a volume descriptive of the Republic (published, in English, by the Department of Agriculture) this possibility is foreshadowed, stress being laid on the slight fall from the Andes to the coast, and a scheme, chimerical on the face of it, of a system of trans-continental canals is vaguely outlined. But, being so wildly improbable, it seems to have no existence, even problematical, outside the pages of that advertisement.

CHAPTER II.

THE RAILWAYS.

The prosperity of the Argentine Republic would undoubtedly have been impossible without the enormous investments made by British financial houses in its railway development. For many years—in fact, until quite recently—the influx of capital was welcomed and encouraged. Concessions were lavished on anyone ready to take them up, and, far from irksome conditions being imposed, valuable privileges were granted to the concessionnaires. Moreover, the national and provincial governments were only too eager to get rid of such lines as they themselves owned, and invariably worked at a loss, and to transfer them to European concerns. That the railways were financed from motives of promiscuous philanthropy is improbable, but that the English financiers were almost alone in their confidence in the future of the country is not only true, but it is a truth which the most respected and able Argentines fully realise. There exists, however, at the present moment a very powerful feeling of opposition to the “Empresas,” as they are called—the “concerns” that practically control the country—and (so say their opponents) exploit it entirely for their own ends. Apart from the fact that a railway, in order to pay, must humour its traffic, and would be attempting suicide were it really guilty of the exorbitant overcharging and mismanagement of which some lines are accused, there is little or no cause for these complaints. In a country where a mortgage on land pays 8 per cent. interest, and where other investments are expected to give a proportionate return, the 7 per cent. of a railway dividend is far from being excessive, especially when it is remembered that locusts and drought may at any time absorb practically the whole year’s profits of a whole system.

The motive of this hostile spirit, or what may be behind it, is difficult to discover. That jealousy of foreign—especially English—influence exists in a certain section of the people is undoubted. But,