ARGENTINA, URUGUAY AND PARAGUAY.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XL, Issue XL, 3 December 1909, Page 1

ARGENTINA, URUGUAY AND PARAGUAY.

(By John Barrett).

The region of the River Plate is bound to be> before the middle of the century, one of the great granaries of the world Twenty-five years ago all the flour used in Argentina: was imported, while; to-.day the annual production of that article is over 5,500,000 tons. Last year that country exported £939,000 worth of flour, in addition to £16,540,000 of wheat, and the grand total of. exports of agricultural products . amounted to £32,800,000 ' Take : the wheat ■ production of the world In 1906 the; United; States led with , 735,000,000 bushels; the Russian Empire follows wi'h 450,000,000 bushels ; then comes France, British India, Hungary,; Italy,. Spkin and Germany, Argentina -with 134,000,000* preceding Canada and Roumama. But the Rio de la Plata basin has hardly been entered while every other country, .excepting Canada and Ru: sian Siberia, can already set a practical limit to the bread supply it. can offer man. It is worth our while, therefore, to weigh carefully the future, of such a land of promise, and to study the opportunities for material and industrial, for social, domestic and intellectual welfare offered here, because,' after all, this is only the beginning, and it will take scarcely, a generation; to develop such a country,-into a world power in every sense of the word.

The waters of the Rio de la Plata have washed the shores of three Spanish-American republics, Argen-

Tina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. This river is itself but the outlet of two /.tributary streams, the "Uruguay to the east and the Parana to the west, and this latter is again composed, like the Mississippi, of two great branches. '

The area comprised within these three' republics is 1,366,000 square miles; 1,136,000 of this belongs to Argentina; 158.. 000 to Paraguay, and Uruguay All except the extreme northern "tip of Argentina and the region known as the Paraguayian Ctiac.o is • well within the temperate zone. The climate of this northern section may .be called tropical, although:; modifying conditions of the jitmosphere.-and soil make it far different.from the ''.jungle " po traditionally associated with the neighbourhood ,of ;the Equator. Otherwise, however, the .cli nate may be compared favourably with that of the larger portion of the United States, excluding the region of 3evere cold characteristic -of;. Maine or Minnesota, Even in the extreme south of Argentina, what was formerly the -unknown Patagonia, the rigors of a North American winter are unfelt, and land on the border of the Magellan Strait that not a. generation ago was cor.i demned as unfit because iude and sav-« i; age Indians drew only a scant living l from "it and led within its confines a nomadic existence of semi-starvation, I has been, developed into some of the richest pasture for cattle and sheep of i all South America. The same story I may be told here, as it has been [ demonstrated time after time in our own country," that'land condemned at the first superficial glance as unproductive for, climatic other reasons has finally r become reckoned among the richest agricultural assets of a nation. : - In. the Chaco, to the west of i Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay a Hire remark may be made. This is being slowly thrown open to settlement ! and to cultivation and the howling wilderness in the story-books " of the blood-curdling., adventurer in the wastes of South America " will soon be claimed, and with better sense, , as land, suitable for. the productive abode of man. v Paraguay is already noted for her • tobacco, her fruit and cotton. In these great staples she is a land of milk and honey, the garden, the sanatorium of South America. The soil is scarcely scratched, and what industry had developed before the devastating war of the last generation has not yet regained its due place, because of the lack of labour and, to some degree, the stimulus of diversified out let. But this will soon be overcome; besides the existing traffic on the Paraguay R y .i ve r, communication through the heart of, the country is almost with a railway from Buenos Aires/ , Uruguay may be: compared with lowa as regards soil, mountain and stream and general fertility, but imagine lowa close to the Atlantic seai board on one side, and with a climate, i bracing in both summer and winter, yet never so cold or so hot that iear | for crops may be felt on account of I frost or drought and the picture is j close enough for illustration. In .Uruj guay are 1217 miles of railway, with I other lines in construction. The harj bour of Montevideo, also the capital of [ the republic, has depth for the largest - steamers, and when the port works I now under way are completed it will i be one of the finest harbours on the Atlantic Ocean.

The illimitable plains of Argentina seem to have; been designed by Nature for the production of all manner of grain, for an abundant agriculture that astonishes him accustomed to the hard-earned crops of a long-tilled European farm, and for the nurture of live stock of all varieties. Not only that, but in the energy of the inhabitants may be found an augury ofwbat is sure to come. The population has now increased beyond 6,000,000, and growing at the rate of 150,000 and more each year.

Argentina lias .about 26,000,000,- . cattle, 77,-500,000 sheep, 6,000,00 U. horses and mules, and 2,500,000 goatf. „ This industry is scattered over ttie » central pampas somewhere • further westward and southward than the grain area. To-day cattle men are finding their gazing land too valuable for pasturage, and are turring it into grain; they are'crowded our, . and must seek the. wilder, less crowded lands of Mexico. Grair, is therefore, the crop that will establish Argentina in che markets cf the world. A notPd English scientist has estimated " that by' 1931 the world's supply of wheat ivill be unequal to the.increase of population," and therefore the. country that can supply bread has its future ascured. Roundly put, one-third of the " area • of Argentine, is woods, rivers and mountains; one-third is at present called cattle-country; but fuliy ori'ethird, and, in my opinion,' higher than that, can be computed as arable, suited more and more es t'rr.e goes on for the production of the .. essential foods of man. Here is a country capable of sustaining 100,000,000 inhabitants, peopled at the opening of the century with only 5,000,000. The possibilities of development tax the imagination!