PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING
The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes--The
first settlements on the Patagonian coast and the indigenous
population--Extensive breeding--The use of pasture on the
lands of the Rio Negro--Transhumation.
The northern limit of the Patagonian region passes to the north of the
Colorado, in the latitude of the Cerro Payen and of the ridge which
leads from Malarue to the Rio Grande in the sub-Andean zone (36 deg. S.
lat)., and to the Sierra de Lihuel Calel in the southern part of the
Pampa province. South of this line, from the Andes to the Atlantic,
on the territory of the Neuquen, the Rio Negro, the Chubut, and the
Santa Cruz, is the region of the sheep farms, their refuge since more
profitable branches of farming have driven the sheep from the Pampa.
The extensive breeding practised on these poor lands is not profitable
enough to justify much expenditure, and is therefore all the more
controlled by the physical conditions. It is true that cattle-breeding
was once undertaken in the Spanish settlements of the lower Negro, and
still exists in western Patagonia at the foot of the Andes, but one
never finds there the particular combination of cattle-breeding and
sheep-breeding which is characteristic of the Pampean region, in which
the main function of the cattle is to improve the pasture and make it
ready for sheep.
The climate is trying. The west winds are violent during the greater
part of the year, especially on the coast, and merely relax a little
in the winter. The mean temperature on the Atlantic coast falls nearly
one degree for each degree of latitude (14.6 deg. at San Antonio, below
41 deg. S. lat.; 8.5 deg. at Santa Cruz, below 50 deg. S. lat.; and 5.3
deg. at Ushuaia, below 55 deg. S. lat.). The summer temperature falls
even more steeply, but the difference is less notable in winter (21.4
deg. at San Antonio, 14 deg. at Santa Cruz, and 9.2 deg. at Ushuaia).
The low summer temperature does not allow cereals to ripen south of the
Chubut. In the sub-Andean valleys the summer is comparatively warm (16
deg. in January at Diez y seis de Octubre at a height of 1,800 feet),
but there is severe frost, especially at the beginning of the winter,
and no month of the year is quite free from it.
Rain is plentiful in the Cordillera, and on its western border: 800
millimetres at Junin, nearly two metres at San Martin (which the wet
westerly winds reach by the gap of Lake Lacar), and nearly a metre at
Bariloche, on Lake Nahuel Huapi. It diminishes rapidly, however, as
soon as one leaves the mountainous region and goes further east over
the tableland. The whole tableland has a rainfall of less than 200
millimetres (Las Lajas 180, Limay 150, San Antonio 180, Santa Cruz
135). It is only south of the Rio de Santa Cruz that the rainfall rises
once more (Gallegos 400 millimetres, Ushuaia 500 millimetres). Hence
Patagonia as a whole is, with the exception of a narrow belt at the
foot of the Andes, a semi-arid region with a sub-desert climate. In the
Patagonian Andes the rain falls, as on the coast of Chile, mainly in
winter. Between Mendoza, which has the summer-rain feature of central
and tropical Argentina, and Chosmalal, in the Neuquen Andes, the
contrast is absolute. The summer months there (January and February)
are dry, and the rain is confined to the winter months, from May to
August. It is the same further south, at Bariloche and at Diez y seis
de Octubre. On the Atlantic coast the winter-rain feature is less
regular and uniform. At San Antonio the heaviest rains fall in autumn
(April and May). There is a secondary maximum in August, and a few more
showers in the spring (September and October). South of San Antonio the
winter maximum, which is always marked, is cut by a short dry period
(July and August at Camerones, June at Deseado and Santa Cruz).[50]
In the interior, on the other hand, the winter-rain system remains
unchanged. The predominance of the precipitations of the cold season is
of great importance to the breeders. As a rule, they come down in the
form of snow, which melts slowly, and the small quantity of moisture is
at least all absorbed in the soil. South of the Santa Cruz the humidity
increases, but the rainy season alters. At Gallegos the wettest month
is December; at Ushuaia, the rains last from September to March. The
snow-season (May-August) is the dry season, and the snowfalls are not
heavy enough to interfere with breeding.
[50] This anomaly is doubtless due to the proximity of the sea
and the respite of the westerly winds in winter. The coast,
with its cold waters and the land-winds causing the deeper
water to rise, has a special climate of fogs and mists. These,
which remind us of the _garuas_ of the coast of Peru, do not
penetrate into the interior.
The surface of the Patagonian tableland is very uneven, though it bears
traces of having been much worn by the agencies of its desert climate,
which seems to have lasted through the whole Tertiary Era. Going up
the Rio Negro, one sees the grey sandstones and Tertiary tufas which
form the cliffs, on both sides of the lower valley. They give place
higher up to the variegated marls and red sandstones of the Cretaceous
which form the tableland at the foot of the first Andean chains. The
core of ancient granites and porphyries crops up at places from under
the mantle of Cretaceous and Tertiary sandstones. The horizon of the
peneplain passes from the Tertiary and Cretaceous tableland to level
masses of crystalline rock, the contour of which has been almost
entirely effaced. Volcanic eruptions have occurred until quite recent
times, and so eruptive areas are the salient features of the tableland,
at Anecon and at Somuncurra, south of the district of the Rio Negro,
in the ridge on the left bank of the middle Senguerr, in the Chubut
province. The basalts have spread out in sheets, the surface of which
seems to have cooled not long ago. Basalt flows are found as far as
northern Patagonia, south of Valcheta and Maquinchao; but their chief
seat is in eastern Patagonia. They cover the inhospitable tablelands to
the east of Lakes Buenos Aires and Pueyrredon. The Rio Chico and the
Santa Cruz cross them for the upper two-thirds of their course, South
of Coile and Gallegos they spread almost to the coast, and the Tertiary
Pampas in this part are dominated by an archipelago of small volcanic
cones.
The tableland is crossed from west to east by deep and broad valleys,
enclosed between high cliffs, often strangled by ridges of basaltic or
crystalline rock, and very little ramified. The ravines (_canadones_),
which make breaches in their cliffs on both sides, go only a little way
into the sandstone Pampa or the lava tableland. Only a certain number
of these valleys are occupied by important rivers (the Rio Negro and
the Santa Cruz, for instance) which are born in the Andes, but receive
little addition from the light rains of eastern Patagonia. Most of
the valleys have only intermittent streams (Sheuen, Coile) or are
altogether dry and sown with salt lakes (Deseado). The west wind is now
the ruler of this network of fossil valleys. It carves their slopes,
and brings into them sand, with which it makes dunes.
We must not confuse with these dead valleys the long depressions, with
no outlet, which are scattered over the granite and sandstone tableland
(_bajos_, _valles_, _cuencas_). Some have obstinately, but wrongly,
sought in these the traces of rivers that have disappeared; and the
_bajos_ of Gualicho and Valcheta have wrongly been regarded as the
former bed of the Rio Negro and the Limay. Erosion by wind seems to
have had something to do with these depressions. Their persistence, at
all events, is one of the effects of the aridity which prevents normal
erosion from moulding the surface of the tableland. The chief of them
are centres for collecting running water. There is a group of valleys
all round them, and alluvial beds accumulate in them.
The climate determines the character of the soil in Patagonia. The
rounded pebbles of granite and eruptive rock, so often described since
the time of Darwin, sometimes free and sometimes embedded in red sand
or limestone,[51] are spread over the tableland like aureoles round
the masses of rock, and they are particularly abundant in the coast
region. On the Rio Negro they seem to be confined to the vicinity of
the valley; they disappear as one goes away from it. The progressive
reduction in the volume of the Rio Negro gravels, as one goes downward,
has been observed to begin in the Andean zone, and it is from the
Andes that they come. South of Santa Cruz, in a moister climate, in
which the circulation of the water is less localized, the bed is more
continuous, and it covers the Tertiary sandstones and clays. It is
of fluvio-glacial origin, and comes from the destruction of the old
moraines, before the excavation of the actual valleys. But it is the
wind that explains the concentration of the gravel at the surface.
It separates the pebbles from the more mobile material about them.
Wherever the outcrop-strata contain pebbles, the wind eventually
converts the place into a field of shingle. It has done this with the
terraces of the Limay. The Tertiary marine deposits of the coast region
also are rich in pebbles torn from the rocky promontories of the shore;
hence the extent of stony soils in the coast region. The wind similarly
strips naked the angular stones, of local origin and incompletely worn,
round the isolated rocks of the desert tableland or on the flanks of
the secondary ravines.
[51] The calcareous flag-stone of La Tosca, which is
characteristic of the south-west province of the plain of
the Pampa, stretches in the south as far as the Rio Negro in
the coast-district. On the other hand, it is almost entirely
absent a hundred miles to the west, between the Colorado and
the Rio Negro, along the line of the railway from Fortin Uno
to Choele Choel.
On the other hand, the bedding action of the wind creates deposits
consisting of small and uniform elements from the sands of the dunes to
the finest dust. The lightest particles, caught up repeatedly by the
squalls and carried to a great height in the atmosphere, go beyond the
Patagonian region and reach the bottom of the Atlantic or the plain of
the Pampa. Some of this, however, is deposited in the depressions of
the tableland, where the moisture fixes it and prevents the wind from
regaining it. These aeolian deposits in the depressions, a dark-grey
clay, which hardens when it is dry, but is softened by water, form two
entirely different kinds of soil. If the depression is closed in, or if
the circulation of the water is too slight, there is a concentration of
the mineral salts; this is the _salitral_, either naked or sustaining
a halophytic vegetation, which the saline efflorescences cover with a
white coat during the dry season. If on the other hand, the underground
waters have a free course, the aeolian clay forms the _mallin_. Bushes
and fine grasses grow on it, and, as they decay, gradually give it a
darker shade and modify its composition. The soil above the _mallin_
is rich in organic elements. It covers the bottom of the valleys
between low terraces, covered with faceted pebbles, and dominated by
the vertical cliffs of tufa and lava. The contrast between the verdure
of the _mallin_ and the arid, dusty, yellow steppe of the tableland
is one of the most characteristic features of Patagonian scenery. The
area in which _mallin_ has been formed coincides with the most humid
districts in the vicinity of the Andes and round the higher hills. On
the road that runs along the right bank of the Limay, at some distance
from the river, on the surface of the tableland, the limit between the
country of the _salitrales_ and that of the _mallinas_ passes between
Tricaco and Chasico, a hundred miles south-east of Neuquen; it almost
tallies with the curve of a 200 millimetres rainfall.[52] Though the
word _mallin_ is not used at Santa Cruz, similar aeolian soils are found
in the western part of the tableland up to this latitude. Further south
glacial deposits, clays with moraine-blocks, fill the valleys, and from
Gallegos onward, cover the greater part of the tableland.
[52] G. Rovereto, "Studi di geomorfologia argentina: la valle
del Rio Negro," _Bull. Soc. Geol. Ital._, xxxi. 1912, pp.
101-142 and 181-237.
On the eruptive flows of recent date the rock is naked. The wind
carries away the products of its decomposition, and the dust
accumulates only in the fissures. Traffic is difficult, sometimes
impossible.
* * * * *
Toward the west the tableland is separated from the Cordillera by
a longitudinal depression, though the continuity of this has been
exaggerated. This depression, which outlines the contact between
the folded zone of the Andes and the flat zone of the tableland, is
very important from the point of view of colonization. Just at the
frontier of the steppe and the forest, it is the most hospitable part
of Patagonia, the richest in natural resources. Amidst the glacial
lacustrine deposits which are accumulated on it there rise masses of
different kinds of rock which break it up into compartments, granitic
ridges of laccolites exposed to view, eruptive structures that have
been dismantled. In the south the sub-Andean depression forms a broad
passage between Lake Maravilla and Punta Arenas, about two hundred
miles long, enclosed between the basalt cliffs of the tableland on the
east and the mountains of the Brunswick Peninsula and William IV Land.
The bottom of it is a singular glacial landscape, sown with lagoons,
punctuated by scattered hills, with an impermeable soil of drift and
mud. From Lake Argentina to Lake Buenos Aires the elevated tablelands,
which rise to a height of 5,000 feet, back upon the Cordillera, and the
sub-Andean depression is interrupted. Similarly, between Lake Buenos
Aires and Lake General Paz the contour of the Patagonian tableland is
not very marked above the sub-Andean zone. The glacial alluvia at the
foot of the Cordillera rise to the level of the tableland, which sinks
steadily eastward toward the Genua and the Senguerr. To the north,
between Carrenleufu and Lake Nahuel Huapi, the retreat of the lakes has
left long narrow beds right in the Cordillera, such as the Valle Nuevo
del Bolson, the bed of which has been taken over by the Futaleufu west
of the Cerro Situacion. Further east the topographical features of the
edge of the tableland (the valleys of the Chubut, Tecka, and Norquineo)
lie from north to south. Hence within a space of little more than a
hundred kilometres the sub-Andean zone has a series of parallel roads,
communicating with each other by means of broad, transverse gaps, which
at one time were occupied by the lower lobes of the glaciers. The
sub-Andean depression does not go north of Lake Nahuel Huapi.
The morphological features of the Patagonian Andes begin at 36 deg. S.
lat.[53] The edge of the Cordillera, in the Malargue depression, below
35 deg. S. lat., still presents the typical scenery of the central
Andes. The dejection-cone of the Atuel resembles that of the Mendoza.
The fringe of torrential deposits, distributed in cones over which the
waters spread, is due to the rapidity of the disintegration of the
rocks in a desert climate. Keidel has pointed out the part played by
the summer rains in transporting mobile elements, which the water
drops as soon as the slope diminishes; the amount of precipitation
being too slight to permit the formation and spread over the plain of
a regular network of streams. From the Rio Grande onward the dejection
cones disappear. The streams tend to become permanent, and sink into
narrow valleys. The summer rains cease, and the water produced by the
melting of the snows has only a feeble capacity for transporting stuff.
The soil of the Cordillera is protected by a denser vegetation. The
first thickets of _molle_ appear in the valleys, the first scattered
cypresses on the slopes, at the Rio Agrio, a tributary of the Neuquen.
Then the forest invades the mountain: at first, from 38 deg. S. lat. to
39 deg. 30' S. lat., a resinous forest of araucarias. At length, at Lake
Nahuel Huapi, the forest assumes the general appearance which it has as
far as the Magellan region. It is chiefly made up of different kinds
of beeches. The _coihue_ (_Notofagus dombeyi_) is the most conspicuous
for about three quarters of a mile, rising above an impenetrable
undergrowth of bamboo. Higher up the domain of the _lenga_ (_Notofagus
pumilio_) extends as far as the fringe of the Alpine forests.
The forest does not reach the eastern limit of the lakes. In the
sub-Andean depression it is reduced to thickets of _nirre_ (_Notofagus
antarctica_) and _mayten_ and clumps of _calafate_ (something like
myrtles).
[53] The great mass of the Patagonian Andes differs
considerably in geological structure from the Argentinian
Andes. The Paleozoic sedimentary rocks and the lofty chains
of the pre-Cordillera cease at 36 deg. S. lat. The Mesozoic
beds--variegated breccie and porphyritic conglomerates,
sandstones, limestones, and marls--which form the western
slope of the Andes in central Chile, pass to the eastern slope
at 35 deg. S. lat., where they develop in regular folds, in the
direction south-south-east, obliquely to the general line of
the range. These folds account for the orientation of the
interior valleys, which is remarkably uniform from the Rio
Negro to the Collon Cura. They pass in the south-west under
the sandstones of the tableland. West of this sedimentary
zone, the zone of the sub-Andean granites and diorites, which
have not been exposed further north except at the base of the
western slope, opens out in the Patagonian Andes, of which it
is the main body between Lake Lacar and the Gulf of Ultima
Esperanza. In fine, the Patagonian Andes are characterised by
volcanic formations. They are seen on the eastern slope about
36 deg. S. lat., in the lava-flows and ashes of Payen and Tromen.
Further south volcanoes with acid lava and characteristic
cones are restricted to the central zone (Lanin, etc.) and the
Chilean flank, but flows of fluid basic lava cover enormous
stretches at the eastern fringe of the Andes, and they have
spread over a good deal of the Patagonian tableland outside
the Andean region.
It is on the Alumine, about 39 deg. S. lat., that we find traces of
glacial erosion, as they spread over the landscape. At present there
is no ice on the mountain except on the peaks of Lanin and Tronador,
but from the Rio Puelo onward (42 deg. S. lat.), glaciers clothe all
the summits which rise above 6,500 feet. North of the Aisen they form
a narrow, but almost continuous, line. From the Aisen to the Calen
fiord, and beyond the gap of the fiord as far as 52 deg. S. lat., the
ice spreads in a considerable sheet which in some places attains a
breadth of eighty miles. The tongues of the glaciers reach the Pacific
below 46 deg. S. lat., and Lake San Martin on the Argentine slope
below 49 deg. S. lat. In Tierra del Fuego the snow-line is at 2,300
feet, and the glaciers which the snows feed, reach as far as the
fiords and Lake Fagnano.
Lake Carri Lauquen, on the Barrancas (36 deg. 20' S. lat.), which
was almost entirely drained in 1914 through the breaking down of the
natural dam of soft earth which confined its waters, is not a glacial
lake.[54] The chain of glacial lakes stretches from the Alumine to the
Seno de la Ultima Esperanza, and is continued southward by Skyring
Water, Otway Water, and Useless Bay--genuine lakes in communication
with the Pacific by means of narrow channels. The lakes sometimes lie
in a narrow and deep glacial valley, the bottom of which they fill;
sometimes they branch out into the neighbouring valleys; at other times
they advance eastward beyond the zone of the mountains and spread into
round basins surrounded by circles of moraines. The largest of them
include groups of ramified fiords, which represent their western half,
while the eastern half spreads between lower banks.[55]
[54] Pablo Groeber, _Informe sobra las causas que han
producido las crecientes del Rio Colarado en_ 1914. Dir. Gen.
de Minas, Geol. e Hidrol., Bol. No. 11, series B, Geologia
(Buenos Aires, 1916).
[55] Most of the lacustrine depressions are continued eastward
across the Patagonian tableland in the shape of distinct
valleys. The eastern part of the Straits of Magellan is merely
a submerged valley on the axis of Otway Water. Useless Bay
also is continued eastward by the hollow which ends in the
Bay of San Sebastian. Sometimes the waters of the lakes flow
eastward, toward the Atlantic, along these valleys. Generally,
however, the lakes of the western slope are drained on the
west by means of narrow defiles across the Cordillera, or on
the north and south by rivers which follow the sub-Andean
depression and thread them together in the manner of a rosary.
The valley which joins the lake to the Atlantic is in those
cases a dead valley, and the inter-oceanic dividing line
of the waters is marked by the frontal moraine of the old
glacier, which confines the lake on the east. This arrangement
is found, with surprising regularity, from the Alumine and
the Lacar to the Neuquen, and as far as Lake Buenos Aires and
the Seno de la Ultima Esperanza at Santa Cruz. The capture
of the waters of the eastern slope by the rivers of the
Pacific across the Cordillera is fairly ancient, and certainly
pre-glacial. But during the Glacial Period the glaciers
obstructed the transverse valleys of the Cordillera, and the
waters of the eastern slope found their way to the Atlantic
once more. With the retreat of the glaciers the valleys of the
Cordillera were successively cleared. The lakes, dammed by the
glaciers, were suddenly released and their level lowered. The
valleys of the Patagonian tableland were finally abandoned,
and the topographical accident of secondary importance, which
the ancient frontal moraine of the glacier represents, came to
mark the limit of the domain of the Pacific. The freshness of
the contours of the dead valleys of Patagonia bears witness
to the recent date of this conquest, which was too sudden
or rapid to be called a "capture" in the proper sense. It
has not been accomplished everywhere. From Lake San Martin
to Lake Buenos Aires all the lakes of the eastern slope are
drained into the Pacific by rivers which flow into the Culen
fiord. But further south, Lakes Viedma and Argentino are still
tributaries of the Atlantic. They correspond to the zone of
the Patagonian Andes which is still covered by inland ice. To
the north, in the basin of the Puelo and the Yelcho, where the
trans-Andean valleys long ago ceased to be obstructed by ice,
the lakes of the eastern slope which drain toward the Pacific
are small in size. Their level to-day is much lower than it
used to be, and a network of streams has developed east of
them, on the earlier lacustrine region, which is now dry.
[Illustration: YOKE OF CREOLE OXEN USED FOR THE TRANSPORT OF TIMBER
ON THE EASTERN CHACO, OR CHACO OF SANTA FE.
_On the Central (or Santiago) Chaco mules are used for transport._
Photograph by the Author.]
[Illustration: WORKS AT TARTAGAL (EASTERN CHACO) FOR MAKING TANNIC ACID.
_These works, built by powerful firms, are permanent centres, drawing
timber from a great stretch of forest, while the saw-mills of the
Central Chaco move about freely, to be near the felling sites._
Photograph by the Author.
PLATE XII. To face p. 128.]
Pastoral colonization has now spread over almost the entire surface
of Patagonia. The parts that are not yet occupied are of slight
extent; they consist only of the most desolate regions in the south
of the Rio Negro district and north of Santa Cruz. The expansion of
white colonization began only about 1880. Until then the interior was
abandoned to the indigenous tribes and was almost entirely unknown. The
Atlantic coast alone had been explored. The travels of Villarino along
the Rio Negro and the Limay as far as Lake Nahuel Huapi had left only
a faded memory.[56] North of the Rio Negro, Woodbine Parish (1859),
making use of the notes left by Cruz, who had crossed the Andes and the
Indian territory between Antuco and Melincue in 1806, was the first to
publish definite information, to which no addition would be made during
the next forty years.[57]
[56] _Diario de D. Basilio Villarino del reconocimiento que
hizo del Rio Negro en el ano de_ 1782 (Coll. de Angelis, vi).
[57] It is Woodbine Parish who corrects Villarino's mistake in
confusing the Neuquen, at its confluence with the Limay, with
the Rio Diamante, known in the south of the Mendoza province.
The settlements founded on the coast by the Spaniards at the close of
the eighteenth century (S. Jose and P. Deseado) were ephemeral. Only
one of them maintained an obscure existence, Carmen de Patagones, some
miles above the mouth of the Rio Negro. One of its chief resources
was the export of salt. Expeditions for this purpose began on the
Patagonian coast about the middle of the eighteenth century (_Journey
from San Martin to Puerto San Julian about_ 1753, Coll. de Angelis,
V). After the revolution, Buenos Aires finally abandoned these costly
expeditions by land to the salt districts of the Pampa, and was
supplied with salt by schooners from Carmen. During the war with Brazil
and the blockade of the Rio de la Plata, Carmen, protected by the bar
of the Rio Negro, and the Bay of San Blas were the harbours in which
Argentine, English and French privateers concealed their prizes and did
their repairs after the storms of the Gulf of Santa Catarina. D'Orbigny
visited Carmen during this period of equivocal prosperity. One of the
most curious effects of the hospitality offered to the privateers
was the unloading upon the Patagonian coast of blacks, intended for
Brazil, who were taken from the slave-traders. Thus an unforeseen eddy
brought to the south of the Pampean region part of the current of
the slave-trade intended for the sugar-cane plantations in tropical
America. A number of the Carmen ranches had coloured workers at this
time.
Breeding, in fact, was just beginning to spread in the neighbourhood
of Carmen at the time. The cattle had been brought by land from Buenos
Aires, and had multiplied along the coast and the river above Carmen.
South of Carmen, at San Jose, the cattle had run wild after the fort
was abandoned. The Carmen herds were estimated, before the revolution,
at 40,000 head. They disappeared during the revolutionary period,
but were reconstituted immediately afterwards, and even during the
war with Brazil there was an active export of hides and salt beef.
Carmen profited mainly by trade with the Indians. It lived in terror
of them, and had garrisons to give the alarm on the routes by which
they could approach. But this state of chronic warfare did not prevent
trade. Near Carmen there was a group of peaceful Indians who served as
intermediaries with the tribes of the interior, who were jealous and
hostile. Guides and interpreters were found in this colony, and through
it came the first news of the interior. The traffic with the Indians
continued for a long time to be of great use to the colonists. In 1865
the Welsh colony established on the Chubut, which had many difficulties
at first, was saved from complete disaster by its trade with the
Indians.
The indigenous population comprised two groups: the Tehuelches,
or Patagonians proper, men of tall stature, and the Araucans,
the Ranqueles, the Pehuenches and the Pampas. There was no fixed
geographical limit between them. The Tehuelches lived in southern
Patagonia; but the Araucans advanced eastward as far as the Pampas
region and southward beyond the Chubut. The Indian population of the
valley of the Genua and the Sanguerr, south of the colony of San
Martin, comprised in 1880,[58] and still comprises,[59] a mixture of
Araucans and Tehuelches. The Araucans were acquainted with agriculture,
but, once they had tamed the horse, they became mainly a pastoral and
hunting people, like the Tehuelches.
[58] Carlos M. Moyano, "Informe sobre un viaje a traves de la
Patagonia," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, ii. 1881, pp. 1-35.
[59] W. Vallentin, _Chubut_ (Berlin, 1906).
In so far as they were hunters, the Indians of Patagonia were nomadic.
The taming of the horse only made it easier for them to shift from
place to place, and gave them a greater range. Their nomadism has too
often been regarded as an aimless wandering. They had laws, settled by
the physical conditions; and we can gather a few of these. They kept
away from the coastal districts except in winter; that is the season
when the rains provide water-courses there. It has been observed that
names of Indian origin are lacking on the coast of Patagonia. The
Spanish navigators who landed there during the summer found the country
deserted and the camps abandoned. On the other hand, the share of the
Indians in giving names is very considerable in the interior, as far
as the foot of the Andes. During the summer the Indians approached the
mountains, where they found good hunting grounds. In particular they
chased the young guanacos in the breeding season, December and January.
Popper has indicated similar migrations amongst the Onas of Patagonia;
they approach the coast in winter, and leave it in summer, to hunt in
the interior.[60] The district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and Collon Cura
had some attraction from afar. The forest of araucarias produced seeds
(_pinones_) which the Indians went to gather; and they also liked the
wild apples which ripened on the former estates of the old Jesuit
missions. The clusters of bamboo on the Cordillera provided the lances
of the Aucas and Tehuelches.
[60] J. Popper, "Exploracion de la Tierra del Fuego," _Bol.
Instit. Geog. Argent._, viii. 1887, pp. 74-93.
Lake Nahuel Huapi is the first stage of the busiest of the routes used
by the Indians. It came from the lower Santa Cruz, went up the Rio
Chico, and from there northward followed the foot of the Cordillera.
D'Orbigny was told about it: "All the Indians who live near the Andes
go along the eastern foot of the mountains in their journeys, because
they find water there, whereas they would find none if they went by the
coast; in that way they travel from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio
Negro." The Indian track only left the sub-Andean depression between
the Rio Chico and Lake Buenos Aires, in the district where the high
basalt _mesetias_ extend as far as the Cordillera, and on the Pampa of
the Sanguerr.
From Lake Nahuel Huapi the Indians of the south descended the Limay
and the Rio Negro, and reached the island of Choele Choel, some 230
miles above Carmen, where they met the Aucas and Puelches. There they
exchanged their _guanacos_ hides for woollen fabrics made by the Aucas.
Choele Choel was the only large, purely indigenous market; the whites
never visited it. Geographical reasons fixed the site of this market of
the nomads. In the latitude of Choele Choel the Rio Negro approaches
the Colorado and the archipelago of the Sierras of the southern Pampa,
which mark so many stages on the routes from the Pampa to the Andes.
To the south the coast-route, less exposed to snow than the sub-Andean
track, began from Choele Choel. The Indians followed this to reach
the Gulf of San Jorge and the Santa Cruz in winter, during the rainy
season. Darwin notes the importance of the site and the ford of Choele
Choel. Villarino had suspected it, and had, as early as 1782, pleaded
for the building of a fort there. By holding this point, he said,
they could prevent the tribes from attacking Buenos Aires, or from
approaching the Patagonian coast in the district of San Jose.[61]
[61] _Informe de D. Basilio Villarino a Fr. de Viedma_, Coll.
de Angelis, v.
As far back as we can go, the life of the Indians seems to have been
deeply influenced by their relations with the whites. The Aucas brought
to Choele Choel, not only the products of their industry, but also
objects stolen or bought from the Christians on the Pampa. The report
of Musters, who followed a Tehuelche tribe from Santa Cruz to the
country of the Manzanas ("land of apples"), shows clearly that the
attraction of the Nahuel Huapi region for the Indians was less due to
its natural resources than to the presence of the Chilean settlements
at Valdivia, from which came across the passes of the Cordillera
certain quantities of brandy.
The Indian never took to cattle-breeding. His herd never consisted of
more than mares and a few sheep. But trade in stolen cattle quickly
became the chief occupation of the tribes. It would, however, be a
mistake to imagine that the thievish Indian was merely and always a
dreaded enemy of the ranches of Carmen. They sometimes had recourse to
his services and profited by his misdeeds. After the Revolution, it was
the Indians who helped to fill once more the ranches of the Rio Negro,
bringing runaway cattle which had remained in the San Jose district.
Later, Carmen bought the cattle stolen by the Indians at Buenos Aires.
From 1823 to 1826 the number of the cattle sold by the Indians to the
colonists on the Rio Negro is estimated at 40,000. Hence the breeders
of Carmen had, as regards the Indians, alternate periods of armed
conflict and complicity.
But Chile was always the great market for stolen cattle. Raids
(_malones_) and the crossing of the Cordillera by convoys began in the
eighteenth century, and continued throughout the nineteenth, until
1880, when the consolidation of Argentine authority on the eastern
side gave a more regular form to the cattle-trade. The convoys came to
a halt at Antuco and Chillan from which the Chilean buyers sometimes
accompanied the Indian tribes as far as the _tolderias_ on the edge of
the Pampa. The trade in stolen cattle made use of all the passes of the
Cordillera, from the Planchon pass below 35 deg. S. lat., which Roca
had covered in 1877 by the fortress of Alamito, to the source of the
Bio Bio. The one most used was the Pichachen or the Antuco pass. On the
tableland the cattle-tracks formed a regular network with innumerable
strands, spreading over a width of about two hundred miles. The most
northern route started east of the Poitague district and, after fording
the Salado and the Atuel, and passing the _aguadas_ of Cochico and
Ranquilco, entered the Cordillera at the bend of the Rio Grande.
Another track ascended the Colorado and then reached the high valley of
Neuquen. A third crossed from the Colorado to the Rio Negro, and, above
the confluence of the Limay, to the Rio Agrio or the Alumine.
The first exact information about the range of the Patagonian Indians
is supplied by a group of bold travellers who followed their tracks
from 1870 to 1880: Musters, Moreno, Moyano, Ramon Lista, etc. Their
discoveries had already outlined the geographical survey of Patagonia
when the campaign of 1879-1883 opened it to colonization.
The story of white colonization since 1880 shows us several distinct
streams of population. The first, starting from the region of the
Pampa, went from north to south along the Atlantic coast, and gradually
extended its sphere toward the interior. The breeders used the
sea-route, the ancient Indian track with recognized sources of water,
to convey their first herds. In 1884, the only spot inhabited on the
coast between the Rio Negro and the Deseado was the Welsh colony on the
Chubut. In 1886 Fontana reports ranches in the Punta Delfin district,
south of the Chubut.[62] About 1890 the whole district round the Gulf
of San Jorge was occupied; and a little later the stream from the north
met the stream from the south about San Julian and Santa Cruz. The
expansion of colonization was less rapid in the interior. Ambrosetti
tells us of the establishment of the first ranches round the Sierra de
Lihuel Calel in 1893,[63] and at the same time Siemiradzki still found
few traces of colonization on the Colorado.[64]
[62] L. J. Fontana, "Exploracion en la Patagonia austral,"
_Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, vii, 1886, pp. 223-239.
[63] J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viage a la Pampa central," _Bol.
Instit. Geog. Argent._, xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368.
[64] J. V. Siemiradzki, _Eine Farschungsreise in Patagonien_,
Petermann's _Mitteilungen_, xxxix. 1893, pp. 49-62.
The second stream of colonization came from the Magellan region. It
started in Chilean territory, about Punta Arenas. It was about 1878
that sheep-breeding spread round Punta Arenas, and between 1885 and
1892 was the most rapid growth of the ranches of the Magellan district.
North of the Straits they occupied the lowlands round Skyring Water
and Otway Water, then the plateau south of Gallegos. They spread
along the Atlantic as far as the Santa Cruz. In 1896 the limit of
the sheep-region was on the Santa Cruz about forty miles from the
coast.[65] To the west, Puerto Consuelo was founded in 1892, and in
1896 colonization came up against the mountain barrier which the Cerro
Payen and the basalt tableland of the Cerro Vizcachas interpose between
Lake Argentine and Ultima Esperanza fiord.
[65] J. B. Hatcher, _Reports of the Princeton University
expeditions to Patagonia_ 1896-9 (_Narrative of the
Expeditions_ and _Geography of Southern Patagonia_, Princeton,
1903).
The spheres of primitive colonization in southern Patagonia on the
coast still differ from each other in regard to density of population.
But breeders in search of unoccupied land have not hesitated to push
beyond. In 1895 and 1900 they passed west of the Gulf of San Jorge
toward the basin of the Sanguerr and the Genua, (establishment of the
Sarmiento colony, south of Colhuapi, 1897: establishment of San Martin
on the Genua 1900). Since 1900 the population has also advanced up the
Santa Cruz and the Rio Chico as far as the zone of the Andes, and the
lagoon which still existed twenty years ago, between the district of
the Sanguerr and that of Lake Argentino, and is easily recognized on
the maps of the Frontier Commission, has been almost entirely filled up.
The story of colonization in the northern part of the Patagonian
Andes is more complicated. Immediately after the campaign of 1883 the
valleys of the Neuquen were invaded by Chilean immigrants, half-breeds
of the frontier, who cannot always be easily distinguished from pure
Araucans. A certain number of Chilotes, and even Germans from the
southern colonies of Chile, were mixed with the half-breeds. This
stream of immigration had begun before the conquest. As early as 1881
Host notices that there are at Chosmalal various families of Chilean
farmers who held their lands from the Indian _cacique_. During the
summer they took care of the migratory herds from the Chilean plain.
Once the country was pacified, they grew rapidly in number. It was they
who provided the manual labour for the placer miners of the Neuquen,
where gold began to be worked in 1890. The area of Chilean colonization
extends from the Rio Atuel, where Villanueva found Chilean immigrants
in 1884, to the south of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where Chileans were still
met by Vallentin in 1906, on the Rio Pico, close to 44 deg. S. lat.[66]
South of Nahuel Huapi there is no regularly used route across the
Cordillera.[67] The Chilean colonists of the southern zone came from
the north, therefore, along the eastern foot of the Andes. Bailey
Willis calculated that there were 2,000 Chileans in a total population
of 3,500 in the sub-Andean area from Nahuel Huapi to Diez y seis de
Octubre. The total number of Chilean immigrants may be about 20,000. It
is not on the increase, as immigration from Chile was suspended from
1890 to 1895. Since the reconstruction of the frontier the Chilean
Government has tried to bring back part of the emigrants to its own
territory. Many have gone to settle in the valley of the Lonquimay. In
1896 Moreno saw traces everywhere in the valley of the Collon Cura of
the departure of Chilean colonists who had left the country.
[66] C. Villanueva, "De Mendoza a Narguin," _Bol. Instit.
Geog. Argent._, v. 1884, pp. 171-4.
[67] Chilean woodcutters have sometimes got as far as the
eastern valleys in search of larch, but these were nomads who
did not settle.
At first it was only the Argentinians of the western provinces, San
Juan and Mendoza, who vied with the Chileans for the soil. It is they
whom Furque found in 1888 at Roca, on the Rio Negro. But beginning
with 1890-95, immigrants of various nationalities have settled on the
Neuquen and the Negro.[68] Foreign capitalists organized their first
ranches there. In 1888, on the other hand, the Welsh of the lower
Chubut, led by Indian guides, went from the coast to the sub-Andean
region, and settled in the valley of Diez y seis de Octubre. Between
1895 and 1900 the neighbouring valleys began to be inhabited, and
the colonization areas of Nahuel Huapi and the Sanguerr came into
contact.[69]
[68] Furque, "Descripcion del Pueblo General Roca," _Bol.
Instit. Geog. Argent._, ix. 1888, pp. 124-132.
[69] In spite of their importance we must regard as mere
episodes in the story of Patagonian colonization the influx
of population caused on the eastern coast by the discovery
of placer-gold at Cape Virgenes and on the Atlantic coast of
Tierra del Fuego (1884), and the discovery of petroleum at
Rivadavia (1907) in the course of drilling in search of water.
Rivadavia is already, with its 3,000 inhabitants, one of the
chief centres in Patagonia.
* * * * *
The most striking feature of colonization in Patagonia is the very low
density of population. The Census of 1914 gives 81,000 inhabitants
altogether for the territories of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the
Chubut, the Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. A well-kept ranch of
25,000 square kilometres has only a staff of about a hundred men at
the most, counting strangers, settled on its land; three hundred
inhabitants, or scarcely more than one to ten square kilometres.
This population falls into two distinct classes. One is the class of
proprietors with regular titles: a rooted and stable class. At first
the Government granted enormous concessions, which were taken up
especially by English buyers, but it now seeks to break up the land,
and the plots which it puts on the market for new pastoral colonies
have not more than 625 hectares. This is too small for breeding, no
matter how good the situation may be, and there will inevitably be,
one would think, a concentration of estates in the hands of a few
proprietors. The other part of the population occupy lands which they
do not own. They are displaced steadily as the regular concessions
are sold to new ranches. They live, so to say, on the margin of
colonization, and are more and more restricted to the poorest lands.
Sometimes these _intrusos_ or _pobladores_ get hospitality for their
herds on the land of some ranch in return for their services. They
have little capital, and never make material improvements. They take
no care to nurse the pasture, and it matters little to them if it is
impoverished.
The climate divides Patagonia into two distinct regions. In the west,
the moist Andean zone is suitable for cattle-breeding. About 1870 the
Chileans of Valdivia hunted wild cattle in the Nahuel Huapi district.
Similarly the Frontier Commission met large herds of wild cattle on
the shores of Lake San Martin, which were not yet occupied. Sheep do
not get on well in the moist zone, where the rains have washed out
the soil and carried away the salts which seem to be indispensable
to the sheep. It is the arid tableland that is the land of the
sheep. There it has displaced cattle, even in the area which the
early breeders at the end of the eighteenth century had filled with
cattle. Between the sheep-area and the cattle-area is a mixed region,
where the two are combined. It extends more or less according as the
transition from a moist to a desert climate is gradual or sudden. It
is especially important in the districts where colonization is already
old, as in the Fuegian and Neuquen regions. It is lacking in districts
where the colonization is recent (Chubut and Santa Cruz), where the
sheep-breeders have had a free run as far as the Andes. The ranches of
the Cordillera, which specialize in cattle-breeding, all have small
flocks of sheep for their own use, their staff being so small that it
does not pay to kill the cattle.
The sheep-area is by far the more extensive of the two. The patches of
agricultural colonization are very scattered and small on its surface.
They are restricted to the river-oases of the Rio Negro and the Chubut.
These small tilled districts have preserved a remarkable economic
independence as regards the pastoral zone, in which they seem lost.
Thus the farmers on the Chubut exported their wheat to Buenos Aires
until about 1900, and they still send their bales of dry lucerne there.
Some of the ranches have tilled small oases in suitable places, but
these are merely intended to increase their stores of fodder; not for
their flock of sheep, but for the saddle-horses used in watching the
estate and the draught-horses used for transport.
The pastoral capacity of the Patagonian scrub is, on the average,
from 800 to 1,200 head of sheep to 25 square kilometres: less than a
tenth that of the prairies of the eastern Pampa. The ranch fixes its
residence in the best part of the estate, where there is least fear of
a shortage of water, and where pasture is most plentiful. To this the
sheep are brought periodically to receive disinfecting baths against
the scab, and for shearing. These incessant movements toward the
centre of the ranch cause an almost permanent strain on the pasture,
and this is one of the chief anxieties of the breeder. The area of the
estate is divided as soon as possible into sections (_potreros_) by
steel-wire fences, which enables them to watch over the reproduction
and improvement of the flock and make the best use of the pasture.
Fencing is more advanced near the Cordillera, as timber for the posts
is found there.
Certain districts are still uninhabited on account of the lack of
water. Some of the sources of water are permanent. The water issues
at the base of the volcanic rocks, when the underlying rock is
impermeable, and above the various levels of the marl in the Patagonian
swamps; for instance, in the _canadones_ round the Gulf of San Jorge.
Besides this, the rain and melting snow leave on the surface of the
tableland a great number of pools, which evaporate in the dry season.
These are temporary supplies, the _manantiales_, to which the breeders
are reduced over large areas of the tableland. Most of the stagnant
sheets of water which are permanent are saline. The proportion of salt
in them is very variable, and changes in each case according to the
cycle of dry and wet years. The water of the Carilaufquen was fresh in
1900, and in 1914 it had become brackish, though it could still be used
for the flocks.
Finding permanent sources of water is the first concern of the breeder.
In some districts he has succeeded in tapping sheets of fresh water
by means of wells. There are none of these wells in the crystalline
zones, the closed hollows, where the sheets of water are often large,
but they are always saline. Neither are there any in the red sandstone
district, the dryest of all. In the western region the wells are sunk
in the arid valleys, along the track of the underground stream. Thus
the Picun Leufu, the visible course of which is lost seventeen miles
above its confluence with the Limay, may be traced by a continuous line
of wells. It is especially in the coastal districts that the wells have
transformed the conditions of breeding. Water was first discovered at
the foot of the dunes, along the coast itself (district of Viedma, San
Jose, etc.). Since then deep borings have been made over the whole
of the Tertiary platform on both sides of the lower part of the Rio
Negro, north of San Antonio. There every ranch has its sheet-iron tank,
sheltered by a clump of tamarinds, with a windmill to fill it.
All pastures are not equally available in every season. Those which are
at a height of more than 4,000 feet in the north, and 2,300 to 2,600
feet in the south, are covered in winter with a thick mantle of snow.
These are summer pastures. During the winter the animals are brought
down to the principal valleys or to sheltered _canadones_ below the
level of the tableland. The _mallin_ is, as a rule, a winter pasture.
When it is too wet, however, it is treacherous, and the animals are
buried in it. They have to wait for fine weather before going into
it. The pastures, too, which have no permanent water supply, or have
only _manantiales_, which dry up at the beginning of summer, can only
be used during the winter. Hence each ranch has to have, besides its
assured water supply, a suitable combination of summer and winter
pasturage, and it is far from certain that this will be found on every
estate, cut up geometrically for colonization, as they were, by the
administration of lands.
[Illustration: THE VOLCANO PUNTIAGUDO.
_On the Chilean side, to the north of the road from Lake Nahuel Huapi.
The glaciers come down lower on the western side, as the moist winds
come from the west, and the rain becomes less and less frequent as one
goes eastward toward the Patagonian tableland._]
[Illustration: CERCAS ON THE LIMAY (RISING IN LAKE NAHUEL HUAPI), NEAR
THE CONFLUENCE OF THE TRAFUL.
_Here the Limay enters the sub-desert tableland. Last trees (cypresses)
in the valley in the foreground._ Photograph by Bailey Willis.
PLATE XIII. To face p. 142.]
The constitution of the flock and the first occupation of the land have
compelled breeders to undertake difficult journeys, and more than one
of these proved disastrous. The earliest arrivals, driving their sheep
along little-known tracks, could not avoid losses in crossing the arid
parts of the tableland: parts which D'Orbigny, translating literally
the Spanish word _travesia_, calls "crossings."[70] When the ranch is
established, the breeding does not necessitate any further movements of
the flocks to a great distance, apart from certain special migrations,
or "transhumations," which I will consider later. It is on each ranch,
sometimes on each group of ranches combined in a single estate, that
they pass alternately from winter to summer pasture. The only transport
necessary is that of wool. The fleeces, which the west wind has heavily
laden with dust, are collected in the sheds belonging to the ranch, or,
in the case of the _intrusos_, on the premises of certain small traders
(_bolicheros_) who are scattered over the tableland even at its extreme
limits. Convoys of wagons then take them to the ports on the coast.
[70] The search for possible routes for cattle in the
districts that were not yet colonized helped in the study of
Patagonia. Moyano was doing this when he explored the route
from Santa Cruz to Lake Nahuel Huapi.
For some years now, however, wool has ceased to be the sole product
of the ranches. A little before 1895 the first slaughter-houses, for
killing the older sheep that were no longer fertile, were erected on
the Straits of Magellan. Refrigerators have succeeded these, and were
opened at Puerto Callegos and San Julian. A third refrigerator is being
constructed (1915) at Puerto Deseado. In southern Patagonia, also, part
of the flock is sent to the refrigerators or to the slaughter houses
of the Pampean region. The creation of the refrigerator has compelled
breeders to adapt their work to the new economic conditions. The merino
breed is being eliminated by the Lincoln in all districts which feel
the influence of the refrigerator; the Lincoln is of greater weight and
quicker growth, but the merino survives in arid northern Patagonia.
Besides this, the establishment of the refrigerators has caused
important movements of transport. The flocks which are to go to the
refrigerators or the northern railways are moved in the good season,
after the shearing, from November to April. The routes they take are
not invariable. One of the most frequented, leading from the sub-Andean
tablelands to San Julian, follows the Santa Cruz valley. When the land
was cut up, there was no reason to foresee these movements, and nothing
was done to facilitate them. The roads cross the ranches, which are
compelled to allow it. It is a serious burden for some of them, unless
they can make a profit out of their situation on the road by hiring
pasture for the flocks as they pass.
The Andean zone itself is still mainly pastoral, but it is nevertheless
far more varied and richer in possibilities of development than the
tableland. Agriculture is already combined with breeding in that area.
The name _vegas_, which in the Puna and at San Juan means alpine
pasture, is applied here to tilled patches in the Andean valleys.
They are found in the north in the valley of the Neuquen, round
Chosmalal. In the south, the valley of the Rio Pico marks the limit of
cultivation. Irrigation is almost always necessary north of Lake Nahuel
Huapi, where the _vegas_ have, as a rule, a soil of coarse alluvia or
permeable tufa, which dries up quickly. Water is plentiful, it is true,
and increases in quantity rapidly as one travels southward. The chief
obstacle to the extension of cultivation is the frequency of frost in
spring and summer. The deep hollows of the sub-Andean depression south
of Lake Nahuel Huapi, the height of which drops to 1,000 feet at the
Bolson, and 1,600 feet at Diez y seis de Octubre, have no frosts in
summer, and they sustain small agricultural communities. At higher
levels, in the basin of the lake or on the _vegas_ of the Traful and
Lake Lacar, at an altitude of about 2,600 feet, the distribution of the
summer frosts is closely related to the contour and lie of the land,
which may facilitate or impede the circulation of the layers of cold
air, and the play of what has been called atmospheric drainage. The
valleys which are very open from west to east, at the outlet of the
lakes, where the west winds have a free passage, are little liable to
frost. Wherever frost is frequent, cultivation has to be restricted to
fodder plants. The more favoured cantons, which grow wheat, rye and
potatoes, help to feed the local pastoral population, and export part
of their produce to some distance on the tableland.
Cattle-breeding is, like sheep-breeding on the tableland, practised
both by the _pobladores_ on public lands and by ranchers who have
settled on regular concessions, which they have worked up and fenced
round. The high alpine pastures, above the fringe of the forest, are
partly used, from December to March, as summer-pasture. The forest also
serves for pasture; it is a sort of common land, available both in
winter and summer. Below the height of 3,500 feet the clumps of bamboos
in the underwood provide shelter during the winter and fodder which
is not buried under snow. The fires lit by the breeders have changed
part of the primitive forest into a scrub which has been invaded by a
leguminous climbing fodder, and it has superior pastoral capacity to
the forest. East of the forest, the prairie, which is too much exposed
to the winds, is not generally suitable for winter-pasture. The cattle
take refuge in sheltered valleys and in the _mayten_ thickets which
follow the depressions. Bailey Willis puts the pastoral capacity of the
virgin forest at 400 cattle to each 2,500 hectares, 600 for the burnt
forest, and 350 for the sub-Andean prairies. The essential problem in
connection with the question of completely developing the pastoral
resources of the sub-Andean region is the problem of transit. There
are no roads from one district to another and to the higher prairies.
The fallen trunks which lie about the forest obstruct the way of the
cattle. Collecting the animals for sale and watching them are both
difficult.
It seems that the profit of exploiting the timber must necessarily be
small. The forest, thinned by fire and difficult of access, is partly
composed of trees that are too old. The _libocedrus_ has disappeared
from one-third of it. The larch, which is the most valuable, passes
into Argentine territory at few places. Saw-mills are not so numerous
on the eastern slope of the Andes as they are in the Magellan area.
The essential function of the forest is, according to Argentine experts
on forestry, to control the water-circulation. In this land of glacial
erosion and recent captures, where the water-courses have always a
great variety of form, and there are lakes to make their output more
regular, it is particularly easy to make use of hydraulic power. "White
coal" will, Bailey Willis says, make a great industrial region of
it, and plant an urban life in it. Bailey Willis, whose optimism and
prophetic gift will not fail to surprise the European reader, has drawn
the plans in detail of a future town of 40,000 souls at the eastern end
of Lake Nahuel Huapi. The Patagonian land will supply the raw material
of its industries; timber, leather, and wool.
One, at least, of the indispensable conditions of the development of
urban life is fully realized in the district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and
the Limay. It is a remarkable meeting-place of natural roads, and its
economic value will increase in the future. It is the point where the
road from eastern Patagonia by the sub-Andean depression, from the Gulf
of San Antonio on the Atlantic, and from the Rio Negro by the Limay,
and the roads that lead to Chile across the Cordillera, meet. The whole
zone of the Andes between 36 deg. S. lat. and 42 deg. S. lat., the
latitude of the southern part of the Chilean plain, has numerous and
easy passes. There has always been close communication between the two
slopes, and people have emigrated freely from one to the other. But north
of 39 deg. S. lat. the passes are rarely lower than 5,000 feet. They are
covered with snow in the winter, and can be used for traffic only in
certain seasons. It is not the same south of the volcano Lanin. That
is the beginning of the glacial valleys which go to the heart of the
Cordillera, some of them crossing the mountains from east to west. They
have not yet been entirely explored. The Bariloche pass, south of the
Tronador, by which the Chilean missionaries reached Nahuel Huapi in the
eighteenth century, is no longer used. The Cajon Negro pass, west of
Lake Traful, through which Bailey Willis traces the line of a southern
trans-Andean railway, was only recently discovered, and the valleys
which run into it on the Chilean side are not yet well known. The two
best-known trans-Andean routes to-day are the Perez Rosales road, which
leads from Chile to Nahuel Huapi by the north of the Tronador, and
further north, the road from Lake Lacar to San Martin. Both these have
received some attention, and the lakes are connected by telegraph or
telephone. The frequent need to unload and reload makes the traffic
costly, but it is permanent and is not interrupted in winter. The
reduction of the export of cattle to Chile has cut down the traffic for
a time, but it is sure to recover. The permanent importance of it is
one of the facts most clearly written by nature upon the soil of South
America.
* * * * *
It is not easy, in the absence of documents, to attempt to give for
Patagonia as a whole a detailed description of the pastoral industry,
and to follow step by step on the spot its efforts to adjust itself to
the natural conditions. But the analysis may be attempted in regard
to the region between San Antonio and Lake Nahuel Huapi south of the
Rio Negro,[71] the valley of the Rio Negro, and the tableland which
stretches westward between the Neuquen and the Limay. This part of
Patagonia is now easily accessible, and it is entered by two parallel
railways. One starts from San Antonio on the Atlantic, and goes
westward to Lake Nahuel Huapi. It has (1914) reached Maquinchao, on
the tableland, mid-way across the Andes. The other starts from Bahia
Blanca. At Choele Choel it enters the valley of the Rio Negro, and
ascends it as far as the confluence of the Neuquen. Then it goes 130
miles westward as far as Zapala, at the foot of the first sub-Andean
chains. Each of these lines is ambitious to attract the trans-Andeans.
At all events, they are in a hurry to reach the humid zone at the foot
of the Andes, which could maintain a busier traffic than the desolate
tableland.
[71] This was the area studied by the Commission of which
Bailey Willis was chairman.
The railway from San Antonio, and the road which is a continuation
of it west of Maquinchao, cover a distance of 320 miles from the
Atlantic to the Andes, and cross five distinct regions. The first is
the coastal plain, composed of horizontal marine Tertiary sedimentary
rocks, both of sand and clay. The plain rises slowly toward the west,
and it attains a height of 650 feet at a distance of seventy miles
from the coast. This coastal platform divides, on the north-west,
the enclosed hollow of the Bajo del Gualicho from the Gulf of San
Antonio. Its surface is very even. The gravel on it has formed a sort
of conglomerate, and in spite of appearances, this gravelly soil is
not bad for vegetation. It quickly absorbs the rain-water, which thus
escapes evaporation. The vegetation is comparatively rich. There are
no springs, but the autumn rains sustain _manantiales_ in the marly
surface, and these do not dry up until the spring. During the summer
the plain is deserted, and there is no water. But the flocks return in
the winter and remain there until spring. There is very little snow, as
the temperature is moderate. In spite of the density of the pastoral
population in winter, the pasturage is not injured. The grass grows
plentifully amongst the thickets. This is because the flocks leave
the district before the season when the grasses flower and reproduce,
so the next generation is secured. Part of the flocks which winter
on the coastal plain pass the summer in the south-west, on the high
basaltic tablelands of Somuncura. However, the whole of the surface of
the tableland cannot be used permanently, or during the entire summer.
There is plenty of water in spring, when the snows have melted. In the
middle of the summer the flocks collect round the permanent springs,
and they scatter once more over the mountain pastures during the autumn
rains, before they return to the plain.
The second region is that of Valcheta. From Aguada Cecilia to Corral
Chico the railway follows for sixty miles the edge of the outpour of
lava from the south, which covers the Tertiary clays. In front of the
basalt cliff the land dips in the north toward a closed depression, the
Bajo de Valcheta, the bottom of which consists of clays impregnated
with salt. Tertiary marine strata surround this hollow in the west and
north, where they divide it from the Bajo del Gualicho, but here they
form only a thin skin which covers the crystalline platform. The line
of contact of the basalt and the Tertiary marls is marked by a series
of good springs, and these give rise to permanent streams, such as the
Arroyo Valcheta and the Nahuel Niyeu. At first they flow in a narrow
valley crowned by basalts, with peaty prairies at the bottom, then over
Tertiary marls, and, in the latitude of the railways, they pass into a
gorge cut through the granites before losing themselves to the north in
the _salitral_. A small agricultural oasis is sustained by the waters
of the Valcheta.
The site of Valcheta has an exceptional importance in the story of
Patagonian colonization. It marks a necessary stage in the Indian track
from the Atlantic to Nahuel Huapi, which is now followed by the line
of the railway. Musters halted there. The track from Choele Choel, on
the Rio Negro, to the southern coast and the Santa Cruz also passed
by there. It was so much used, says Ezcurra, that the hoofs of the
horses had hollowed it.[72] The Argentine village dates from 1890.
At first it lived by supplying fodder to the convoys of wagons which
carried the wool. The railway has suppressed this traffic, and the only
outlet of the oasis to-day is the small port of San Antonio, where the
wool is shipped, and where the district is unsuitable for any kind of
cultivation.
[72] Pedro Ezcurra, "Camino indio entre los rios Negro
y Chubut: la travesia de Valcheta," _Bol. Instit. Geog.
Argent._, xix. 1898, pp. 134-38.
Like the coast region, the Valcheta district seems marked out by its
moderate altitude to serve as winter pasture. In point of fact, it
is used during the whole year. The springs do not dry up in summer.
The streams which flow from the south toward the Bajo de Valcheta are
permanent. In addition, a few wells have been bored in the Tertiary
strata. Contrary to experience on the coast, therefore, cattle can be
kept here during the summer. There is less chance for the grasses to
reproduce, and the pasture tends to become impoverished.
The third zone, 130 miles from the coast, is that of the tableland
of the Cerros Colorados, where low masses of red granite rise like
an archipelago amongst the Tertiary formations deposited in the
intervening depressions. In the west its altitude rises from 650 to
1,300 feet. It is one of the poorest parts of the tableland, and the
size of the flock is reduced to 600 head to the square league. The
naked rock crops up, not covered, as it is further east, by a bed of
gravel. In the valleys there is little water, and it lies very deep.
There are no periodical removals of the animals. Winter and summer they
remain within range of a few poor springs, which are caused by various
outcrops of lava of limited extent; and they leave these, and wander
over the tableland, only in the rainy season.
Beyond the Cerros Colorados the line rises rapidly, and at Maquinchao
it reaches the basin of Lake Carilaufquen. This occupies the bottom of
a closed depression, at an altitude of 3,000 feet, dominated on every
side by a plateau of lava, toward which, in the south, a number of
important valleys run (Nahuel Niyeu, Quetriquile, Maquinchao). These
valleys rise in the south in the basalt plateau, at a height of 4,000
and 4,700 feet, and have no running water except at their upper ends.
South of Carilaufquen they open upon a broad plain, round which there
is a sombre cornice of lava, about 350 feet high. Water has collected
on the plain, which consists of alluvial beds redistributed by wind:
angular pebbles from the terraces, fine dust from the _mallinas_, and
sand from the dunes round the lake.
This region is much better than that of the Cerros Colorados. There
are many springs at the base of the lava-flows, on the sides of
the valleys, and it has as yet not been necessary to look for the
subterranean sheets which accompany some of the valleys. The elevated
basin of the Quetriquile, though it is only occupied by _intrusos_,
seems to have a particularly high pastoral density, and, I am told,
feeds 500,000 sheep. In the western part of the region the spring
is late, and there is risk of snow during the lambing season. There
are, however, no rams there; the lambs are brought from Maquinchao.
This arrangement of special zones for the multiplication of the flock
enables them rapidly to improve the breed. Here again there are no
removals of the animals to a great distance in order to use the
pasture. The vegetation of the valleys suffered from the continuous
presence of the flocks during the years of drought before 1914; the
reproduction of useful grasses was prevented. There is, however, less
danger here than on the Cerros Colorados, because the _mallinas_ are
extensive, and they suffice for feeding the sheep during the periods
when the _manantiales_ of the tableland dry up, and the animals are
confined to the valleys.
The fifth region comprises the high ridge which divides the basin of
the Carilaufquen from Nahuel Huapi, the water of which flows northward
toward the Limay and southward toward the Chubut: successive eruptions
have covered the surface with lava and ash, which at Anecon rise to a
height of 6,700 feet. The granite platform which emerges in the north,
at the Cerro Aspero and the Quadradito, rises to a height of 4,400 and
4,700 feet, and in some places presents a bold and rejuvenated aspect.
The whole has been cut up in all directions by erosion, and it affords
comparatively easy means of getting about, which the Indian tracks have
followed. Below the higher slopes the valleys deepen into gorges, and
these broaden out in the soft tufa and are lost at the cross-streams
of lava or the outcrops of the granite. In so varied a land, with
such marked differences of altitude, the winter and summer pastures
are always close together. Precipitation is more plentiful than at a
distance from the Cordillera; the pasturage is richer, and the size
of the flock rises to 1,600 sheep to the league. The sheep pass the
winter on the lower slopes, where they are sheltered from the winds and
the snow. They descend to the _mallin_ when the dry season sets in and
makes the soil firm. In summer they go on to the tablelands, where the
pastures extend to a height of 5,000 feet.
Bailey Willis, studying the improvements that might be made in the
pastoral processes, concluded that the essential point was to use each
pasturage in its best season, and establish a carefully considered
rotation on the various lands. This system, which alone would enable
them to nurse the natural resources of the scrub in the way of plants
for fodder, is used to-day in only a small number of districts--in
the east, where the flocks winter on the coastal plain and spend the
summer on the Somuncura tableland, and in the west, round the Anecon,
where the summer and winter pastures are not far from each other. The
custom ought to be general. The area which ought to be reserved for
winter pasture comprises the coastal plains, the whole of the low-lying
district round Valcheta, and the lower part of the valleys to the
south of the Carilaufquen. They are less extensive than the available
summer pastures, but their capacity could be enlarged by developing
the irrigated areas in the Bajo de Valcheta, and sowing lucerne in the
_mallinas_ of the basin of the Carilaufquen. The low valleys round the
Carilaufquen ought to be reserved for winter pasture. In the summer the
sheep would be taken south to the higher-level valleys, which afford
permanent pasture. From there they would spread after the melting of
the snow, and after the first rains in autumn, over the high tablelands
which surround them.
This plan is obstructed in the first place by the actual terms of
ownership, which were imprudently fixed before the examination of the
country in detail had been concluded. Thus the Maquinchao ranch, in the
lower valley, does not own the upper valley with the summer pastures
that ought to belong to it. A more serious obstacle is that it is
extremely difficult to remove the sheep. It is not merely roads that
are wanting, but a water supply at the various stages.[73]
[73] The district of the Rio Negro is not the only part of
Patagonia which faces the problem of increasing the winter
pasture. Attention has been drawn to the possibility of
enlarging the lucerne farms in the district of Colonia
Sarmiento, south of Lake Musters, and making this a great
wintering area for the Santa Cruz flocks.
Between the railway that runs from San Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapi and
the Rio Negro, there is a desert region about seventy miles in width.
Red sandstone predominates in it, and it remains uninhabited. North of
this _travesia_ the valley of the Rio Negro opens. Its width between
Neuquen and Patagones ranges from five to fifteen miles. Its slope
diminishes gradually toward the bottom (from 0.67 to 0.49 per 1,000
above Chelfaro; from 0.45 to 0.29 per 1,000 above Conesa).
The sandstone and marl cliffs which enclose it become gradually lower
as one goes downward. They dominate the valley at a height of 650 feet
at the confluence of the Neuquen, and are only 100 to 130 feet high at
Patagones. At the foot of them are broad terraces cut by dissymetrical
ravines, in which the beds of sandstone outcrop on the western slope,
exposed to the winds, while the eastern slopes are covered with
gravel. On the banks of the river there is a strip about two miles
wide with abundant herbaceous vegetation between lines of willows.
This is covered by the normal floods. The remainder of the river
plain, to the foot of the cliffs, has only a thin scrub, with dunes at
intervals. Saline clays here overlie the river gravels. The level of
the underground water, which is fed by the river, sinks lower as one
goes from the banks toward the cliffs. Few parts of the tableland have
so desolate an aspect as the bottom of these great Patagonian valleys,
when they have not been transformed by irrigation. The pasturage is
poor. At Conesa, however, the valley (_costa_) is used as summer
pasture when there is a shortage of water on the surrounding tableland
(_planeza_).
The water-supply is good, the volume of the river ranging from 200
to 900 cubic metres a second. Low water lasts from February to April
(end of the summer). From May to July the river has sudden and violent
floods--an effect of the autumn rains. The curve sinks again in August
and September, to rise once more in October and December, when the
snow melts on the Andes. The Limay, the upper basin of which contains
large, lacustrine sheets, is more regular than the Neuquen, which has
very pronounced low-water, as well as dangerous floods in the autumn.
The first attempts at irrigation date from 1885, when the canal of the
Roca colony was dug. Others were made lower down at a later date. The
co-operative groups organized for the administration of the canals have
not been quite as successful as might have been expected. The advance
of agricultural colonization has been slow. Costly preparatory work is
needed to level the ground and organize the drainage, otherwise saline
patches form and spread like leprosy at the expense of the cultivable
areas. Lastly, the centre of the valley is exposed to floods.[74]
[74] The work now (1914) in hand will reduce the risk of
floods, and will enable them to enlarge considerably the
extent of the tilled land. The Cuenca Vidal, which opens
amongst the sandstone, below the level of the valley, on the
tableland to the north of the Neuquen, will be arranged so as
to absorb the flood-water, and it will feed a canal which will
serve the left bank over an area of 100 miles. The waters of
the Limay will be available for the lower valley.
[Illustration: THE PATAGONIAN TABLELAND (NEUQUEN).
_Indigenous vegetation. Rocks eroded by wind._
Photographs by Windhausen, Mining Division.
PLATE XIV. To face p. 154.]
The chief crops are lucerne, cereals, and the vine. All the efforts and
hopes of the colonists are now centred upon the vine. It is for the
purpose of extending the vineyards that they are endeavouring to secure
more workers. These are a singularly mixed lot, Chileans from the
Neuquen rubbing shoulders with Latin immigrants (Italian and Spanish)
from the region of the Pampas.
The lucerne is made up in bales and exported by rail to Bahia Blanca
and Buenos Aires. The economic life of the agricultural oasis of the
Rio Negro is no more connected with that of the pastoral tableland
than is life on the Chubut. Neither sheep nor cattle are fattened on
the Rio Negro. It is a curious contrast to the spectacle offered by
the Andean regions of western and north-western Argentina, where for
generations there has been a close association between the breeding
industry of the scrub and the fattening on the lucerne-farms. This is
because the currents of the cattle-trade are not here as permanent and
stable as they are in the north. The time when the convoys of Pampean
cattle bound for Chile used the valley of the Rio Negro preceded the
agricultural colonization of the banks of the river. The conquest
of Patagonia put an end to this traffic. There was an interval of
twenty-five years between the period of the export of Pampean cattle
to Chile and the export of cattle from the Neuquen to Buenos Aires,
to which I will refer presently. As to sheep-breeding, it did not for
a long time rear the animals for the meat-market, and it is only a
few years since it found transport necessary. The farmers of the Rio
Negro, who have little capital, and who sell and are paid in advance
for their dry fodder, have not yet been able to take advantage of the
reorganization of the cattle-trade.
West of the confluence of the Neuquen and the Limay the railway ascends
the sandstone tableland, from 1,700 to 3,000 feet high, and goes as
far as the foot of the first sub-Andean chain, the Zapala ranch. The
eruptive rocks here have thrown up the sandstone, and the profiles
raised north and south of Zapala, across the Sierra de la Vaca Muerta
and the Cerro Lotena, cut through folds of Mesozoic strata which have
been reduced by erosion to the level of the plateau. One already feels
the vicinity of the Cordillera. Pasture is plentiful, the _mallin_
is thick, and springs abound. The sheep-area stretches westward of
Zapala, as far as the Rio Cataluin and the Rio Agrio. East of Zapala,
on the other hand, the desolate condition of the country gets worse
and worse. The supplies of water dry up in the summer, and the entire
zone that lies east of 70 deg. W. long. is useless, on account of the
lack of permanent water, except as winter commonage. Hence, transhumation
is here indispensable. It has been practised for a long time on the
Chilean slope of the Cordillera from the latitude of Coquimbo and San
Juan to the north of Lake Quillen. At present it tends to disappear
from the Andes of the Neuquen.[75] But there is still transhumation on
the Argentine side. The sheep of the plateau, driven from their winter
pasture when the water dries up, ascend the Cordillera. Sometimes the
mountains are not yet free from snow. In that case the journey is
delayed, and the sheep feed on the way, to the great detriment of the
land they cross.
[75] As a matter of fact, of recent years there has been a
practice on this slope of disguising the smuggling of animals
under the name of "transhumation," as the removal of the sheep
facilitated it and helped to maintain it. The shepherds got
certificates exaggerating the number of their sheep from the
Chilean officials before they crossed the frontier, and under
cover of these they came back to Chile with additions to their
flocks which they had bought on Argentine territory.
There are many routes, and frequently they coincide with those which
were formerly taken by the cattle of the Pampas in ascending to the
passes of the Cordillera. Groeber mentions a transhumation track south
of the Rio Barrancas and Lake Carri Lauquen. From the left bank of the
Neuquen the flocks ascend by Chosmalal and Butamallin to the pasture
of the Pichachen pass, or by Las Lajas to the Pino Hachado pass. From
Zapala and the tableland further south they go to spend the summer
in the Cataluin Cordillera, where the number of sheep in summer is
calculated to be 70,000. Others go still further, to the source of the
Alumine and the Arco pass. The volcano Lanin almost marks the southern
limit of the zone of transhumation. The chief group of migrating sheep
comes from the district of the Coyunco, the Canadon Grande, and the
Picun Leucu.
Transhumation is practised only by the _intrusos_. They go from the
unowned lands of the tableland to the unowned lands of the Cordillera.
The renting of winter pasture to owners is quite exceptional. The
concessions of land granted by the Argentine Government are steadily
reducing the area of the migrators in the Cordillera, and also the
ways of communication between the tableland and the mountains. The
proprietors do not care to receive the migrating flocks, and they
put obstacles in their way by enclosing the land. The routes of the
transhumation are now fixed by the spaces which remain open between the
enclosed ranches. Moreover, the migrating _intrusos_ are haunted by
the fear of finding the winter pasture occupied by others during their
absence, and they have no proprietary title. The splitting up of the
land and the organization of ownership will before long lead to the
extinction of the practice of transhumation, and the greater part of
the winter pasturage will be turned into permanent pasture by boring
wells and nursing the water-supply.
The district round the Zapala ranch has become very busy since the
construction of the railway, which has deeply affected the conditions
of life there. It has made a sort of capital of Zapala. It is curious
to contrast the renaissance which has followed upon the appearance of
the railway in this district with the much less material changes which
it has made at Maquinchao. The life which the railway concentrates at
Zapala includes not only the wool trade, as at Maquinchao, but also
the cattle trade. The herds which are to be exported gather round the
ranch at the same time as the _tropas_ of wagons, and a good price is
paid for the right of pasturage. While the Maquinchao line ends at the
port of San Antonio, which is merely fitted up for the export of wool,
the Zapala railway feeds the refrigerator at Bahia Blanca. It joins up
with the network of railways of the Pampa. Sheep arrive at Zapala, not
only from the surrounding district and from the Neuquen, but from a
good part of the Rio Negro, and even the Chubut. The convoys of animals
coming from the south find it best to keep near the Cordillera, where
the pasturage is better. Only a few of them descend the Limay as far
as Senillosa. From Zapala to Senillosa there is no suitable road in
connection with the railway, and further east it is necessary to go as
far as Choele Choel to find tracks which lead to it. The exporting of
the sheep lasts five months, from November to March.
Zapala station is also a point of convergence of herds of cattle.
There are people at Zapala who still remember the time when the cattle
brought from the Pampa to go to Chile passed through their valley.
Although these exports of Pampean cattle to Chile ceased after 1885,
the whole Andean region of the Neuquen still lived entirely on the
Chilean market until very recently. The attraction of the Chilean
market is one of the reasons for the survival of transhumation. It was
to the advantage of the Argentine breeders to keep near the Cordillera
and the passes through which the buyers came from Chile in the summer.
The life of the small centres in the upper valleys which developed
rapidly after the conquest (Chosmalal, Norquin, Codihue, Junin, and
San Martin) was bound up with the Chilean cattle trade, and was
reflected on the opposite side of the Andes in the prosperity of the
corresponding markets in Chile.
In the years immediately preceding 1914, a sudden revolution upset
the cattle traffic on the Neuquen, and the attraction of Buenos Aires
took the place of that of the Chilean market. The commercial influence
of Buenos Aires was first felt in the wool-market. The _tropas_ of
wagons which brought wool to Zapala loaded up, in exchange, with the
flour and salt that were needed for sheep-breeding in the pastures
of the Cordillera (_pastos dulces_). The import trade followed the
path traced by the export trade. The small Chilean wagons which still
cross the Cordillera now only bring to the Neuquen the coarse flour of
Chile, haricot beans, and wine. They return empty to Chile. After the
wool-buyers, the cattle-merchants of Buenos Aires next found their way
to the Cordillera. The centres where the sales of cattle for Chile used
to be held are now in decay, and have lost part of their population.
The cattle are sent to the fattening centres on the Pampa, or to the
Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires markets. Thus we have under our eyes,
unexpectedly, in the north of Patagonia a transformation that occurred
gradually half a century ago in all the western and north-western parts
of Argentina. In its many forms it is the essential fact in the modern
history of Argentine colonization. The more distant provinces are
detached in succession from foreign markets, and the whole national
life is being organized round the great economic focus which the region
of the Pampas has become.