Desert Riches.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2211, 5 September 1910, Page 6

Desert Riches.

The pampas of Patagonia, famous for their sheep ranches, are great desolate deserts, sometimes level as far as the eye can reach, sometimes undulating in graceful monotony, and again a chaos of lava rock. A few swift, dangerous rivers have ploughed steep canons. In slighter depressions, where snow melts and water accumu lates, there are grassy meadows. Several hundred sheep were brought from the Falklands in 1877 to Punta Arenas and. sheep>raising was thus first introduced into tho regions of the Strait. From this nucleus and shipments which followed the stormy Territorio de.- Magellanes (of Chile) to-day carries perhaps 2,000,000 sheep. Punta Arenas is its centre anci base of supplies. To the north of the Strait, south of Rio Santa Cruz (Argentina), the littoral and contig uous river valleys support perhaps I 1,000,000 more. Thus this little lonely Strait settlement, the Mecca of i Southern Chile and Patagonia, is one of the great wool exporting ports of tbe world, shipping away on steamers three years ago over 16,000,000 pounds of wool with a commercial value of over £ 320,000. In addition to thi3 there was a sale of nearly 40,000 pelts, Thus sheep-raising in I these regions has been more lucrative than gold-digging and more profitable than copper. Although here in Southern Patagonia the few million sheep graze on some of the poorest land in Argentine territory, says Harper's Magazine, yet they go far toward piling up her enormous total of perhaps 70,000,000 head of sheep, making her first as an exporter of frozen meat and second only as a shipper of wool, justifying her maintaining in her beautiful capital ihe Central Produce Market of Buenos Ayres, the largest wool and hide market in the world.