ARGENTINA'S BROAD ACRES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 116, 14 May 1909, Page 6

ARGENTINA'S BROAD ACRES.

(Daily Express.)'

Somewhere, high up in the eastern part of South America, two thousand miles from the sunlit waters of the South Atlantic, there is a tiny shaded pool, no bigger than a man s hand. From it there issues a little stream oi cold, grey water, which a pebble there could turn aside. . This is the Beginning of the-liiver Parana, the mighty flood that, lower | down, casts itself, in more than twice the bulk of Niagara, over the wondrous falls of Guayra, and flows on, widening and broadening, watering the pleasant valley of its course—a valley as wide as the distance from London to Carlisle. • On either side of the lower reaches of the river, in the provinces of Entre Rios and Santa Fe, sweet, grassy slopes lead towards the far-off distant hills, and here, in a well-chosen part of this great park, three hundred miles wide, gather in their countless herds the cattle, the oxen that help | to feed England with bovril. THE HISTORY OF STOCKFARMING. The Argentine is the country of i stock farms, and the history of it yet has to be written. So little is it known to English people that there are few who would credit stock-raising in this valley of the Parana with a history of close upon three hundred years. Yet such is the case. For, as far back as 1631 we hear of the famous Argentine cattle, when the Jesuit Father Montoya led the remnant of i his 9000 native Indian converts, which had escaped the Mameluke massacre, down, past the cataract of Guayra, into the fertile valley of the Parana. Here, we are told, his flock, supplementing their harvests with the raising of csittle, flourished exceedingly. And stock-farming has flourished ever since. The Estaneia, or cattle estate of the Argentine, is not a farm such as we ' know here in England—a small house with a few acres of ground around it, bounded by the high road on one side and by-the lane leading down to the village pond on the other. Nothing of the kind; these Argentine estancias are measured by tens and scores of thousands of acres!

It is not only in the Argentine that large tracts of country are given over to cattle-raising. Throughout the British colonies, Australia, Canada, etc., much and increasing attention is being given to this lucrative business. And, although Britain over the seas is one of the large sources of supply of beef to this country, of late years it has been unable to supply more than a portion of the beef required for bovril.

THE COLONIES AND STOCKRAISING. Australia has never quite recovered from the severe drought of some years ago, and, even though its stock of . cattle is now back to some eight millions, it is -not yet. 'the big factor in the world's supply of cattle that it will be in the future. - panada, another country which helps, to provide us with bovril, has large herds of cattle, but it also has a daily I increasing home demand—and the home demand naturally will have to be satisfied first. j South Africa, always an unfortunate country for cattle,. has been so completely depleted by rinderpest that the total stock of live stock in the country is too small to find a place in the official returns. The Argentine, with its 25,000,000 head of cattle, might probably be called the storehouse of the world for cattle; —well-bred cattle. It is hardly to be wondered, then, that besides the amount of iaw material imported from the British colonies, • bovril for some years past has

drawn a large portion of its supplies j from a group of freehold estancias, or ■ cattle, estates, in the provinces of i Entre Rios and Santa Fe, in the Argentine. Hitherto there has been no public knowledge of a connection between Bovril, Limited; and these I various estates; but now, the mutual understanding, the information which for some years has been known to the man behind the scenes in the business, has been made public property by the formation of the new company of the Argentine Estates of Bovril, Limited. VAST CATTLE ESTATES. The estates thus devoted to the purpose of raising cattle for bovril include, besides vast estancias and tens and scores of thousands of live stock, two factories, both fully equipped, one called Santa Elena, in the province of Entre Rios, the other San Javier, in Santa Fe. The mighty River Parana, described in our first paragraph, runs through the estate and past the two factories. Large river boats and even oceangoing steamers can come right up to the very door, thus affording excellent facilities for cheap, efficient and quick transport. * This group of estancias forms a tract of country so vast that figures fail to convey any meaning to the mind. It is only by comparing them with known standards that any mental conception of their magnitude can be obtained. For instance, some idea may be gained of their extent when it is grasped that the Argentine Estates of Bovril, Limited, would put a pathway as wide as a full-sized football field 'round the 25,000 miles of the Equator! Think, again, of what is meant by the acres of these estates. It means an estate a mile wide, and stretching from Land's End, in the extreme south of England, to John o' Groat's, in the extreme north of Scotland. And, these vast plains are dark with herds of cattle. Stand and gaze as far as the eye can reach. Then, when the eye is tired and the brain wearied of the fruitless effort of attempting' to grasp the idea presented by the

serried ranks of tens on tens of thousands of shaggy heads tossing in the wind and sun, then—realise that these are the cattle of the Argentine Estates of Bovril, Limited.