SHEEP IN PATAGONIA.
At the port of Gallegos, I had a long conversation with Edelmiro Mayer,
Governor of the Patagonian territory of Santa Cruz. The greater part of
this talk was devoted to the sheep business, the one productive industry
of the region that now pays a profit to all having capital in it. Of the
stories that he told a few will serve as samples illustrating the growth
of the sheep business in this new country.
John Hamilton and James Saunders, British subjects, went to Patagonia in
1885, arriving there with, L500 each and a thorough knowledge of the
sheep business. They bought some land and rented some more from the
Government, and expended the rest of their money in a flock of sheep,
uniting their funds as partners. As time went on, and they were able to
sell wool, they invested their gains in more sheep and more land. In the
season of 1893 they sheared 42,000 sheep and were the owners of
fifty-eight square leagues of land, of which twenty leagues were paid
for in full, and the mortgage on the rest was in such shape as to give
them no uneasiness. By the estimate of Gov. Mayer the sale of the wool
from the 42,000 sheep in 1894 paid the owners just $42,000 gold clean
profit above all the expenses.
Another Englishman--I have lost his name--went to Patagonia in 1886 with
no capital save his knowledge of the sheep business and a good
reputation. Having abundant testimonials as to his character and
qualifications, he got sheep and the use of land on credit: a capitalist
was found to grub stake him, as the miners say. In 1893 this man sold
out his accumulations for L26,000, and with his wife and children went
back to England to live like a lord.
I saw a man at Gallegos who had gone there to work as a carpenter. He
did not have $10 when he arrived--in fact, he went there in the steerage
of one of the Government transports. He had been in Gallegos less than
three years, and he had a family to support out of his earnings
meantime. Nevertheless, he was the owner of 1000 sheep, of which two
thirds were ewes. In the ordinary course, as matters run, he will be a
man of independent income in five years.
There are three sailors in the country, who, within five years, were
wrecked on the coast and landed with nothing but the clothes on their
backs. They went to work on sheep ranches, and now have several thousand
sheep each.
"And how many men have gone into the sheep business and failed?" said I,
when Gov. Mayer had told of these things.
"Not one."
"Have any big companies tried it?"
"Yes, down on the Chili territory."
"Have any of them failed?"
"Not yet. On the contrary, all have paid big dividends, but, of course,
a company may be made to fail by its manager. The business in the hands
of individuals of moderate means is just now the best in the world. It
is better than 100 per cent."
"I should think everybody in Buenos Ayres, Valparaiso, London, and every
other money centre dealing with this region would be rushing into it,
then."
"The country is filling up rapidly, but of course capitalists are
generally shy of a business that offers such big dividends. Besides, one
must learn the sheep business if he would get rich at it, even here."
"How much land remains now for the capitalist to buy?"
"In Santa Cruz territory there are to be had 2500 square leagues of
strictly first-class land. It will carry more than 1000 sheep per
league, and it is held by the Government at from $2500 to $3000 gold per
league, according to location. You can find about 12,000 square leagues
more of fair land that can be had at prices considerably less. It would
perhaps prove a better investment in the long run. The territory has
about 12,000 leagues of worthless land--lava beds, etc., utterly
barren--almost too poor to support a guanaco.
"Of course, a very poor man cannot buy even a single league of good
land, and he doesn't need to buy. One ought to have some capital with
which to buy sheep, but the land can be rented for periods of, say, ten
years, subject to purchase at a stated price. If one can raise the money
for the sheep, the land need not trouble him. The rental of the best
land is but $20 gold, per year for a league."
"What is the cost of sheep now to a man who would invest?"
"From $2 to $2.50 gold per ewe. Rams cost from L2 each up to any price
you want to pay for fancy stock. The ordinary ram at L2 is the one to
buy now."
"Then, for a fair beginning, how much capital should a man have?"
"Five thousand dollars gold."
"But how did the sailors, with neither capital nor a knowledge of the
business, get on?"
"They accumulated both by hard work, and it still can be done readily.
The sheep owners are always glad to hire sober young men who are
ambitious to learn the business and willing to endure the incident
hardships. Their terms are not very attractive perhaps. The learner
signs a contract to work for four years. The first year he gets no wages
in cash. His food and shepherd's outfit are supplied, but he must clothe
himself. The next year he will receive from L2 to L3 per month, and the
last year from L4 to L5 a month, according to his ability. He must be a
first-class man to get L5, however. Meantime, if he has any capital, he
can keep as many sheep of his own as he wants, not to exceed 1000 to
begin with. These he may pasture on the owner's land and the owner
furnishes the rams to run with them. He may also keep the increase of
this flock of sheep on the owner's range, so that at the end of his four
years' apprenticeship he not only may have his experience, but he should
have not less than 7000 head of sheep. That, of course, is for the youth
with capital to start with. With no capital he would get on slowly, for
his wages will not buy many sheep."
"In the United States the presence of young men ambitious to become
owners of herds very often serves to deplete the holdings of those who
are capitalists," said I. "These young men sometimes gather calves that
do not belong to them and re-mark full-grown animals. Are you troubled
so in Patagonia?"
"Not yet. We have read about your rustlers, but have had no experience
with them, though sheep are more easily stolen than cattle."
"Are you ever troubled with drought?"
"Not in southern Patagonia. This country is really a desert, and yet it
is well watered; by which I mean that there are plenty of lakes and
springs south of the Gallegos, although the region between these waters
is either very like a shingle beach or a rock-strewn waste."
In Punta Arenas everybody seemed able and willing to talk about sheep.
Men who owned large herds were in all cases enthusiastic over the
present outlook of the business, but their figures were a trifle less
booming than those of Gov. Mayer. Thus one man who was manager for a
French company owning something over 100,000 sheep, with the necessary
horses, said that they made three francs on every head clear of all
expenses from the sale of wool alone. The increase of the lambs averaged
about 90 per cent. of the ewes, and this was an additional profit. When
told that estimates made up the coast called for 100 per cent. increase,
he replied that that could be had only where labor was abundant enough
to care for the lambs when first dropped. The lamb at birth does not
know anything--not even its own mother. Even on finding her by accident
it does not know where to get its natural nourishment, but is as likely
to suckle a lock of wool as the teat. Such helpless beings need great
care, though after a week or so they require no more attention. The
long-wooled varieties of sheep are in favor. The lowest average of wool
sheared is said to be 7 pounds per sheep. A printed table of statistics
which the manager carried showed that the average yield in 1889 in all
the Argentine was 4.4 pounds, while that of the United States was
exactly that of the lowest yield of his flock--7 pounds. His range was
considered poorer than the average, but it had sustained two sheep to
the hectare--one sheep on an acre and a quarter of the range.
The great difficulty that owners of large herds had in making profits,
he said, was in finding laborers competent to do the work.
The one disease to which Patagonia sheep are liable is the scab. This is
kept under by dipping them in various kinds of baths, the expense for
the bath running from $80 to $90 gold per year for every 1000 sheep. The
next greatest expense is for the killing of panthers. Every shepherd
carries a carbine, and must be supplied with all the cartridges he
wants. These rifles sell for less money in Punta Arenas stores than in
New York gun-shops, but the annual expense for rifles and cartridges on
some ranches is very great.
Foxes and a species of wild-cat make havoc with the young lambs, and so
these must be exterminated, too. What with hunting down vermin and
looking after the sheep to keep them on the range and to dip them for
the scab, the French manager had to employ a man for every 2500 sheep in
his flock. On the whole, his flocks, numbering a little over 100,000
sheep, cost the company 200,000 francs per year, while the sale of the
last clip yielded 500,000 francs, and the price was not high. In his
judgment, it would be a very poor business man who, after starting with
a good outfit and 1000 ewes on the Patagonia range, did not attain an
income of $20,000 gold a year at the end of ten years.
This being the most conservative estimate of the profits of
sheep-growing in Patagonia, the picture, as a whole, is certainly
enchanting. It will probably remind some readers of the days, something
like twenty years ago, when the profits of the cattle business in Texas,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, and other grass-and-water countries were setting
people wild. These readers saw great mansions built and furnished in a
style to make merchants smile and artists weep--built out of the profits
in cattle. They saw men go into the cattle business one day with no
capital but a broad-brimmed hat and the next, so to speak, saw them draw
certified checks for tens of thousands of dollars. Patagonia sheep are
now just where Texas cattle were when the owners began to reach out from
the green bottom lands of the Arkansas and the Platte, the San Augustine
plains of New Mexico, and the Rio Grande Valley of Colorado. It is not
in the nature of any business to pay 140 per cent. or more profit per
annum for any length of time. I do not doubt the figures of either the
manager of the French company or Gov. Mayer, but the conditions are now
of a kind that cannot last.
In connection with the profits of the sheep industry must be mentioned
the effect of rag money on the prosperity of the sheep owners. In both
Argentina and Chili the national money was at so great a discount when I
was there that a gold dollar would buy from $3.75 to $4 paper, according
to the fluctuations of the market. Because of this depressed condition
of the currency, both countries had about the cheapest labor to be found
anywhere. That is to say, when the currency was inflated and its
ability to purchase gold fell there was little, if any, increase in the
number of dollars paid to ranch hands per month. Now the sheep owner
sells and continues to sell his wool in Europe for gold. He exchanges as
much of this gold as he must for paper with which to pay his men; but
because the paper dollar has become worth only 27 or 28 cents in gold,
he can now pay off his men with less than one-third as much gold as was
formerly required. So far as food is concerned, the workmen are
unaffected, for they get nothing but meat and a ground root called
farina, with Paraguay tea to drink, but for their clothes they must pay
four times as much as formerly, because about all the cloth of the
region comes from Europe.
The homes and the home life of the sheep owners and sheep herders are
well worth describing in connection with what has been said of the great
profits the careful and industrious owners may make. I visited one of
the best ranches in the territory of Santa Cruz. It was located three
miles below Santa Cruz city, and was the property of two brothers of
English blood, born in the Falkland Islands. The Falklands being full of
sheep and no more land to be had there, these brothers took their
inheritance and went over to Patagonia. They selected their range when
choice could be made anywhere, and so got two valleys running into that
of the Santa Cruz. No matter how dry the season, therefore, they were
sure of grass for their flocks, and no matter how severe the blizzards
of winter, the sheep would find plenty of shelter under the hills and
steep banks and in the lee of the clumps of brush that grow on low
ground. The brush, too, was in sufficient quantity and of a size to
serve as fuel and for building corrals. It was as good a location as one
could ask for.
On the tongue of moderately high ground, where the two valleys united to
enter that of the Santa Cruz, they built their house. It was a mansion
for that country. The walls were of vertical boards battened with thin
strips, and the roof was of corrugated iron. This structure was divided
by wooden partitions into four comfortable rooms, of which two contained
two beds each, one was a general living room and kitchen combined, and
the fourth was a store-room. All but the last had good wooden floors.
There was a good wrought-iron cook-stove in the main room, and a table
and chairs that had come from a furniture factory. The beds, too, were
of factory make, and there were sheets as well as blankets on them.
There were a few photographs on the walls--portraits of relatives and
friends--and everywhere a profusion of grocery and tobacco-store
lithographs. All these things could be seen when the doors were closed,
because there were windows with glass in them, and the glass was kept
clean. There was a broom in the corner, and the floor showed that it was
used regularly. In short, here was a house that was neat and
comfortable.
I ate dinner with the brothers. We had mutton roasted over an out-door
fire--the best kind of roast--with fresh-baked bread, Yankee hard tack,
and coffee with granulated sugar and Yankee condensed milk in it.
Knowing something of ranch life as it is ordinarily found in Patagonia,
I said to one of the brothers:
"I do not believe there is a sheep man in Patagonia that lives more
comfortably than you."
"I fancy not," he said. "We have about everything that we want, and do
not mean to starve for the sake of saving sixpence extra."
Thereat an employee who had been a sailor, and had turned shepherd with
good success, rolled his eyes expressively toward a bright-colored
lithograph on the wall above the table. The lithograph was a picture of
a pretty girl leaning over a farm-yard gate in a way to show her
well-rounded form to advantage, while her skirts were so short that she
was at least in no danger of tripping on them when she walked. Jack's
gaze lingered on the fair form for a minute, and then he said:
"We have everything that the soul could long for, except society. You
can't get the kind of a wife you want to come to this country."
"I've heard," said I, "that the Tehuelche girls are pretty and
coquettish in their manners, and not at all averse to marrying stalwart
young white men."
"That's so," said Jack. "I know. I tried it. I gave an old buck six
horses for his daughter, and she was the prettiest one in the whole
tribe. We were married Tehuelche fashion. They killed and ate half the
horses I gave for her, and made a dance, and the medicine man shook his
rattles over us, and put charms around our necks to keep the devils off.
That was the swellest Patagonia wedding of the year, I'll lay five
pounds. So we set up housekeeping. Then the old buck, and the mother,
and the grandmother, and the sisters of the grandmother, and the
brothers and sisters of the buck and of the mother--Lord! the whole
tribe came to visit us. It took ten sheep or a horse a day to supply
them with grub. I stood it for a month, and then I got a divorce."
"That's an interesting incident. How did you manage the divorce
business?"
"Took my Winchester, and run the damned outfit to the other side of the
Cordilleras."
I saw half a dozen sheep men in Gallegos. They had come to the
settlement partly on business and partly for the pleasures of society.
With a dozen villagers they were seated at a large table in the
dining-room of one of the hotels. A huge kerosene lamp overhead afforded
fair light--enough at least to show that the crowd was unshaved,
unwashed, and squalid. Each man had a tumbler at his elbow. A fat, round
bottle that held about a gallon of claret was passed along at frequent
intervals to keep the tumblers full. All but one were drinking wine. The
exception was an Englishman, and he took whiskey. Half the crowd were
playing cards, and there were kernels of corn in little heaps as chips
before each player.
"This is a great game," said Mr. William Clark, formerly of Salem,
Mass., a ranchman, who acted as my guide. "You play it, eh? Of course
you do. Why, man, they've only corn for chips, but they are winning and
losing a hundred dollars and more every game."
"So? To judge from their dress they couldn't afford to lose fifty
cents."
"Of course they couldn't, but they're rich--most of them. Each red
kernel is a dollar chip, each white one twenty-five cents. This is a
great country."
"So it is. Is that old fellow with a ragged shirt at the head of the
table one of the rich ones?"
"You bet he is. Ragged, eh? Well, rather; but he's the proprietor of
this hotel, and owns ten thousand sheep besides."
"And the swarthy old pirate alongside with the big heap of reds--who's
he?"
"You call him a pirate? How did you find it out? That's just what he is.
He lent me a hundred not long ago, and charged me two per cent. a month.
He's the Government blacksmith. He only gets $30 a month, but he has
hundreds of dollars loaned out at two per cent. a month. Big pile of
reds, eh! You call him a pirate? That's just what he is."
On further inquiry I learned that three men playing at the table with
the landlord had incomes better than $2000 gold a year, while the rest
were employees on small wages paid in paper, the best-dressed man being
a servant on $20 a month. Four had been well educated and two could
barely read. Apparently they were all enjoying themselves, and I asked
Clark if they were. He looked at me in astonishment.
"Why, man, of course they are. What more could you want?" he said.
The sheep man does not want anything more.
Mention has been made of a man who sold out his holdings in Patagonia
for L26,000, and then went home to England to enjoy the proceeds of his
labor, only to find on arriving there that he was unable to enjoy
himself as he had expected to do. This family had lived in Patagonia
only a very few years, but the life in a mud hut, where there was not a
single restraint of civilization, had changed their habits and thoughts
so much that they were utterly out of place among their old friends. To
keep her house clean and herself was a burden for the wife, even when
she had servants to help her; to wash and shave, and wear a starched
collar, made life intolerable for the husband. The latent wild instinct
in both had asserted itself until it was beyond control, and they
returned with joy to the savage freedom of the desert.
And so it had happened to every sheep man living among his sheep that I
met or heard of, except the two brothers near Santa Cruz. That there
were other exceptions, I have no doubt, but they were mere exceptions.
The ranchmen of Patagonia are almost to a man educated and by their
youthful training refined. Some, as said, are university men, but, as a
class, they live lives, that, to people of culture and refinement, seem
utterly savage. They become so accustomed to this manner of life that
they will endure no other.
The desert is a strange region. It is forever bleak, barren, and
monotonous to the eye. With its piercing winds and blizzards on the one
hand, and its fierce heats and thirsty wastes on the other, it is
apparently the most inhospitable region in the world. But it takes hold
of the heartstrings of men, strips off their thin veneer of
civilization, teaches them joys of which they had heard only such faint
rumors as may come in dreams, and so holds them fast. "Such things were
and are in men; in all men; in us too."