Pierre Denis

Roads on the plain—The salt road—The "trade route"—Transport by ox-waggons—Arrieros and Troperos—Railways and colonization—The trade in cereals—Home traffic and the reorganization of the system.

The chapter devoted to primitive breeding and the transport of cattle contains a sketch of the network of routes over the Andes. One cannot expect to find in the scheme of routes over the Argentine plains the stern and obvious influence of natural conditions. The surface of these plains is, as a whole, broadly open to traffic. Still, the map of the roads bears much evidence of geographical exigencies.

The hills which rise like islands out of the alluvial plain are not all incapable of being crossed, and the roads do not always skirt them. The road from Buenos Aires to Peru runs north of 30° 40' S. lat. on the very axis of the granite peneplain which forms the northern part of the Sierra de CÓrdoba. The Dean Funes ridge, which begins with an altitude of 2,500 feet between the Sierra Chica and these tablelands, has always been used for communication between CÓrdoba and the north-western provinces. There the railway has taken the place of the primitive track. Another important track crosses the Sierra de CÓrdoba in the north of the Pampa de Achala, and used to join CÓrdoba with Villa Dolores and the north of the San Luis province. The southern part of the Sierra de CÓrdoba and the Sierra de San Luis are, on the other hand, an insurmountable obstacle, which diverts southward the high road to Chile via Achiras, San JosÉ, del Morro, and San Luis.

The sierras of the Buenos Aires province are not so high and extensive. They are, moreover, broken into isolated hills with the plain passing between them. As early as 1822 Colonel Garcia pointed out the importance, in connection with the migrations of the Indian tribes, of the passage between the Sierra Amarilla and the Sierra de Curaco, that is to say, the Olavarria ridge. It is there that the first railway between Buenos Aires and BahÍa Blanca crosses the line of sierras. It then skirts the Sierra de la Ventana, to the north, by the PigÜe ridge, between the mass of Curumalan and the Puan hills. The dunes of the western Pampa also are an impediment to traffic, not so much because of their height as because of the looseness of the ground. The strip between General Acha and Toay was very trying for the stage-coaches. Travellers had to cross the dunes on foot during the winter season, when the horses were in a bad condition.105

Natural supplies of water increase in number as one gets away from the Andean zone toward the east. Still, the chief work, often the only work, to be done in making a road is the arrangement of permanent supplies of water. Martin de Moussy mentions the digging of wells on the new road from CÓrdoba to Rosario, which was opened about 1860. The aiguade was generally a represa, a reservoir, where the water accumulated behind a barrier of earth raised across the course of an intermittent stream. The upkeep of the represa is the chief duty of the post-master. The edge of the sierras and the opening point of the ravines which come down them is a good place for making represas, and the roads frequently keep to these (variant of the road from CÓrdoba to TucumÁn via Totoral, Dormida, Rio Seco and Sumampa, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de CÓrdoba, etc.) Long stages with no water supplies, the travesÍas, are not found on the made roads, as a rule, except west of the meridian, of CÓrdoba. However, the direct road from Santa FÉ to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los Porongos, which was used in the eighteenth century, seems to have been abandoned afterwards, as much on account of the difficulty of supplying water as because it was exposed to attack from the Indians.

Ox Wagon

AN OX WAGON.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

Click to view larger image.

---

Mail Coach

THE MAIL COACH.

The horses saddled with the cincha.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

Plate XVIII.

Click to view larger image.

The only difficulty which the caravans encountered on the roads over the plain was the crossing of the rivers. They were forded. Fords with a muddy bottom on the lower course of the rivers, such as that on the Saladillo near the confluence of the Rio Tercero, were more difficult for wagons than the fords with sandy bottoms in the upper course, near the fringe of the mountains, such as those of the Rio Tercero on the CÓrdoba road, or of the Rio Cuarto on the road to Chile. After rain, certain parts of the plain are flooded and impassable. That is the case in the district to the south of the lower Salado, at the very spot where PÈre Cardiel notices the lack of water in the dry season (1747). The direct road from Buenos Aires to the sierras was at that point exposed, alternately, to drought and flood. The line of the Southern railway, which crosses this low district, is still cut periodically on both sides of Las Flores by floods. The lack of an organized network of streams, the irregularity of the rains, the difficulty of ascertaining the inclination, and the flow of the waters over a plain which seems to the eye to be perfectly level, have led to more than one miscalculation on the part of the railways, which were constructed hurriedly, and before the general survey of the Pampa was finished. Some lines, on the Pampa or on the Chaco, have had to be partially reconstructed, and raised higher, after a series of rainy years.106

The colonization of that part of the plain which actually constitutes the province of Buenos Aires was late. It belongs to the era of the railways. There is only one historic road crossing this area, which remained until the last third of the nineteenth century in the hands of the Indian tribes. This is the salt road. We do not know exactly when it began to be used. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the competition of salt from Cadiz and Patagonia, imported by sea, the Pampa salt was the main part of the supply of Buenos Aires. The salt road was not abandoned until after 1810. We still have the diary of several journeys from Buenos Aires to the salt-pits. They were military expeditions. Hundreds of wagons, with a strong escort, collected at Lujan and Chivilcoy, and they reached Atreuco, west of the Guamini and CarbuË lakes, after a fifteen to twenty-five days' march.

The itinerary was fixed in detail. In 1796 D'Azara noticed the wells sunk by the salters, north of the Palentelen lagoon (Bragado), when they found the lagoon dry. From Palentelen south-westward the salt road followed the track used by the Indians of the south-west in their expeditions against the ranches of the Buenos Aires frontier. Near Lake Epecuen, north of CarbuË, it was joined by another track which came from Olavarria, the stages of which were marked by the streams that came from the Sierra de Curumalan. The CarbuË district, the cross-roads of the tracks, was one of the places where the tribes collected. "This place," says the diary of the 1778 expedition, "is the first point where the hostile Indians meet and rest when they leave the Sierra and on returning from their invasions. They not only rest there, but have their winter pasture there" (in the dry season).107 Zeballos has described the Indian track, the rustrillada, between Epecuen, Atreuco and Traru Lauquen, where the travesia on the road to Chile began.108 It was not less than 1,000 feet in width. At the foot of the dunes there were deep parallel grooves made by the feet of the raided cattle, which were taken away by the "ChileÑos."

The two main roads of the colonial period are the roads to Chile and Peru. On leaving Buenos Aires there was one road for a distance of about 320 miles. The "trade road" passed through Lujan, Areco and Sauce, and reached the CarcaraÑa, or Rio Tercero, at Esquina. It therefore kept at some distance from the ParanÁ (32 to 16 miles), on the tableland, crossing the valleys which were embedded in it and represented so many bad parts. It then ascended the Tercero on the right bank as far as the Paso Fereira, at the spot where Villa Maria is to-day. At Esquina de Medrano (Villa Maria) the road to Chile branched off to the south-east, reached San Luis by following the Rio Cuarto, going through Achiras and San JosÉ del Morro, and, after a travesia seventy-eight miles in length, came to the Rio Tunuyan at La Paz, and ascended the river to Mendoza.109

From Esquina de Medrano the Peru road made for CÓrdoba in the north-west. From the tablelands which continue the Sierra de CÓrdoba northward it descended toward the Rio Dulce, which it reached west of Atamisqui, and which it followed as far as Santiago del Estero, where it crossed to the north bank. It crossed the Sali in the latitude of TucumÁn, and, passing through Tracas and Metan, followed the depression which separates the Andes from the sub-Andean chains. From Salta it went north to Jujuy, and passed through the Quebrada de Humahuaca to reach the Puna.

The influence of rivers is not much seen in the scheme of the primitive roads. There were in the sixteenth century many routes from Peru to the Paraguay, across the Chaco, but not a permanent road in the strict sense. In the eighteenth century there was a direct road from Santa FÉ to TucumÁn, by the north of the Los Porongos lagoon and the course of the Rio Dulce. There was another from Santa FÉ to CÓrdoba. These roads were not exclusively used for conveying cattle. The river route which they joined at Santa FÉ provided them with a certain amount of traffic coming from the higher provinces. Paraguayan matÉ reached the Andean regions by this road, and in return the boatmen at Santa FÉ loaded up with the wines and dried fruit of the Andean provinces to take to AsunciÔn.

The question of joining the road on to a river was not of very great importance until the time when the ParanÁ began to be used for Argentine imports and exports, and to maintain the communication of the interior provinces with Europe. This question of connection with a river controls the history of the construction of the railway system. But the great importance of it can be seen from the first half of the nineteenth century. D'Orbigny had a presentiment of it. Speaking of the future of Santa FÉ, he says: "When peace is restored, it is certain that the wares of CÓrdoba may, instead of going by land from that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa FÉ, where shipping them to the Argentine capital will reduce to one-third the journey by land, which is always more costly than going by water." Martin de Moussy, foreseeing the making of a road across the Chaco from TucumÁn to the ParanÁ, in the latitude of Corrientes, calculates that Corrientes may later serve as port for part of the west and north of Argentina. At the date of the publication of his book, however, it was neither Santa FÉ nor Corrientes, but the new town Rosario, that began to play the part of interior port, and led to the construction of a new system of roads. Traffic between Rosario and CÓrdoba at first followed the old road from Buenos Aires to Peru, which one struck after leaving Rosario and making a detour to the south-west, on the right bank of the CarcaraÑa (at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary was presently replaced by a direct road to the west-northwest, following the line which the railways would adopt.110

In the greater part of Argentina transport was by means of wagons before railways were constructed. The limit between the area of wagon-transport and the area in which goods were conveyed on the backs of animals is quite stable. It is still of some significance, in spite of the development of the railways; wagons and mules are used at each station to collect and distribute goods. The area of farming and of selective breeding on the Pampa, the sheep-area in Patagonia, and the timber belt on the Chaco, still make use of wagons; and goods are carried on the backs of mules in the Andean area. The Peru road was, broadly speaking, fit for wagons as far as Salta, but it is rough between TucumÁn and Salta, and wagons that used it generally stopped at Salta. In this way wagons avoided the ford of the Sali, which was easier for mules. On the plain itself the water-sources were often so distant from each other, and the stages so long, that mules had to be used instead of wagons. Wagons could easily get to Mendoza by the road along which the Tunuyan runs at its driest section, but all the convoys from CÓrdoba to San Juan, or Rioja to Catamarca, were composed of mules. Hence CÓrdoba was, like TucumÁn, a station for changing on the road from Buenos Aires to the north-west. Lastly, while the scrub presented no insuperable obstacle to wagons, they could not enter the humid tropical forest, where the soil never dries. On the fringe of the Misiones forest, the wagons that came from San Tome unloaded at San Javier, and mules took the goods on to the yerbales.

The two areas of different kinds of transport were not sharply distinct. The muleteers (arrieros) sometimes avoided the domain of the wagoners, and competed with them as far as the banks of the ParanÁ. In 1860 (Hutchinson) the muleteers carried about a fifth, in weight, of the goods from the interior to Rosario, and they got more than a third of the transport from Rosario to the interior. They had, however, to offer to carry goods at two-thirds the price charged by the wagoners. It appears that this invasion by the muleteers is connected with a transport-crisis in the Andean area, which left a number of the San Juan muleteers without work. It did not last. By 1862 mule-back transport between Rosario and the interior was almost over.

The wagons of the Argentine plain have often been described by travellers. They were heavy vehicles, carrying 150, sometimes 180, arrobes (1,725 to 2,070 kgs.), covered with a leather hood stretched on hoops. A long spur decorated with ostrich feathers was balanced on a ring fixed in the roof, and was used to guide the front pair of oxen. An earthenware pot containing water enough for each stage hung between the rear uprights. As a rule, three pair of oxen were yoked to it, one pair being in the shafts. At Corrientes it was necessary to cross the marshes and esteros, and a special type of wagon had been evolved. It had a sort of horizontal division forming an upper story, and the driver sat in this. Everywhere, on the Pampa as well as at Corrientes, the wheels were enormous; sometimes, as Darwin says, ten feet in diameter. They were, therefore, able to get through the bad parts. Mud was, as a matter of fact, the worst enemy of the convoys. The soil of the Pampa is clayey and soft in the districts near the river. As the road was not limited in width, the wagons turned to the right or the left when the ruts became too deep, and the track in time covered a broad belt of ground. This, however, could not be done in the vicinity of towns, where the traffic was concentrated. Buenos Aires came to be surrounded by formidable quagmires that dried up only in the summer. The paving of the streets and environs was becoming a problem of national importance when the construction of the railway began.

Wagons did not travel singly. The tropero, or contractor for transport, organized caravans. In peaceful districts, where no military escort was required, the convoys could be split up; they consisted, as a rule, of from fifteen to fifty wagons. Besides the six oxen yoked to the wagon, there had to be others for relief as well as horses for the staff. Usually they allowed ten oxen to each wagon; in exceptional cases twenty.111 The convoy to the salt-lakes in 1778 had no less than 12,000 oxen to 600 wagons. There was a driver to each wagon, but there had also to be drivers for the starting animals, and carpenters to make repairs. The leader of the caravan, the capataz, was generally a master-carpenter. He looked after the interests of the tropero. There were about three men to each wagon. The carreros were an original type, nomadic, and very different in costume and character from the gauchos (breeders) of the plain. At the close of the eighteenth century Buenos Aires had more than a thousand wagons employed in the traffic to Mendoza and TucumÁn (Borrero).

The stages were rarely more than four or five leagues of five kilometres each (thirteen to sixteen miles). At this rate it took a convoy forty to fifty days to go from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, thirty days from Rosario to TucumÁn, three months (with the necessary rests) from Buenos Aires to Salta.112 When water ran short, the journey might be greatly prolonged, as the animals could do less work, or not work at all if the aiguades had dried up. The season was a matter for consideration. In the Buenos Aires district the winter made the ground sodden and traffic difficult. Farther north, winter is the dry season, so that pasture was scarce, and it was difficult to feed the tropas. The summer had difficulties of its own. In January and February the floods of the Rio Dulce often made it impossible to cross the ford at Santiago. The carriers preferred to start from the northern provinces about the end of the summer, in April or May. The best season for leaving Buenos Aires was the spring, from August to November. In this way each tropa could make the double journey once a year.

There had been attempts to speed up the transport before the railways were made. The galera (diligence), with its swarm of horses harnessed with the cincha (saddle to which the lasso was attached), did not carry goods. It did not replace the convoy of wagons, but the tropilla of spare horses which travellers on the plain drove before them. The galeriagalera went from Rosario to CÓrdoba in three days and to Mendoza in ten days, and from CÓrdoba to Salta in fourteen days. About 1860 a quicker goods service was organized, light wagons drawn by mules replacing the ox-wagons. They made the journey from Rosario to CÓrdoba in six days. Similarly, on the Pampa, the ox-wagons had been replaced before 1889 by quicker wagons, drawn by horses, to convey wool from the ranches to the railway stations.

The cost of transport by wagon was, naturally, high. It also varied a good deal, but we cannot possibly go into these variations here. It will be enough to give, by way of illustration, the details which Hutchinson gives for the year 1862. The freightage was fixed either for a complete load of 150 arrobes (1,725 kgs.) or so much per arrobe (11½ kgs.). Conveying a load from Rosario to CÓrdoba cost forty to fifty piastres (eight to ten pounds). The cost of carrying an arrobe from Rosario to Mendoza was five to six reales (about two shillings to two-and-six); from Rosario to Tucuman nine reales (three shillings and fourpence); from Rosario to Salta eighteen reales (seven shillings and sixpence). The tropas were, therefore, quickly ousted by the railways. In a few places they made a very unequal fight against the railways. The Memoria del departemento de Ingenieros de la Nacion of 1876, quoted by Rebuelto, mentions the competition of the tropas with the Andino railway, opened from Villa Maria to the Rio Cuarto in 1873 and to Villa Mercedes in 1875. The merchants of San Juan and Mendoza continued to use them. The railway had to sign a contract with the troperos by which wagons were to bring goods as far as Villa Mercedes, where they could be entrained. The total freight was fifty Bolivian centavos (about two shillings) per arrobe from Mendoza to Rosario, and sixty centavos from San Juan. Of this the share of the railway was fifteen centavos.

---

The first Argentine railway was opened in 1859, between Buenos Aires and Maron, a distance of about thirteen miles.

In 1870 the Argentine railways formed two independent systems. The first radiated fan-wise from Buenos Aires (Western line, open as far as Chivilcoy in 1870, and Southern line, open as far as Chascomus in 1865). Farther north a line (the Central Argentine) started from Rosario, and reached Bellville in 1866 and CÓrdoba in 1870.

THRESHING ON THE PAMPA.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

Click to view larger image.

The political isolation of Buenos Aires between 1852 and 1862, during the time when the first concessions were issued, made upon the railway system an impression that would not be effaced until twenty-five years afterwards. It was not until 1886 that Rosario was connected by rail with Buenos Aires. The line to Mendoza and Chile, begun in 1870 (F. C. Andino), joins the line from Rosario to CÓrdoba. It reached Mendoza at the foot of the Andes before going on to Buenos Aires; and it was in 1888 that the Pacific railway was completed between Buenos Aires and Villa Mercedes, and established direct communications between the capital and the province of Cuyo.

The line from Rosario to CÓrdoba is, therefore, the chief branch round which the Argentine system developed. It is remarkable that at the time of the original concession in 1855 a westward extension was contemplated, and that there was some idea of making it a stage in a trans-Andean. The first concessionaire, Wheelwright, had made the oldest railway in South America, from Caldera to Copiapo, in Chile in 1851. The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright to extend the CÓrdoba line westward and link it with the Copiapo line. When he opened the CÓrdoba station in 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be discouraged at the slowness with which the line had crossed the Pampa, still said that the goal was the Pacific, by way of Rioja, Copacabana and the San Francisco pass. This ambitious programme deserves to be recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former orientation of the trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward the Pacific, and as a proof of the importance, in the imagination of the men of that generation, of the old trans-Andean roads from north-western Argentina.

Even before the Rosario line had reached CÓrdoba, it had been continued northward as far as TucumÁn. The work was pushed vigorously, and TucumÁn was reached in 1875. The CÓrdoba-TucumÁn line was the first to be constructed entirely in the region of the scrub, and quebracho sleepers were then used for the first time. The earliest lines of the Buenos Aires province and the Argentine had, on the model of the Indian railways, a gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the Central CÓrdoba, from CÓrdoba to TucumÁn, had a narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods coming from TucumÁn had to be transferred at CÓrdoba. At the same time (1875) the line from Concordia to Monte Caseros was opened, and this made it possible to avoid the rapids of the Uruguay, which was to be a source of supply to the whole Mesopotamian system. Its gauge was fifty-seven inches. Differences of gauge are, and will continue to be, one of the characteristics of the Argentine system.

During the period from 1875 to 1890 were constructed the main lines which took the place of the old roads from province to province. The Andean railway reached San Luis in 1882 and Mendoza and San Juan in 1885. Branches of the Central CÓrdoba reached Santiago del Estero in 1884 and Catamarca in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a new direct broad-gauge line from Rosario to TucumÁn; and almost at the same time the narrow-gauge line of the Central Norte, from Santa FÉ to TucumÁn, was finished further north. The TucumÁn line was continued northward to the foot of the Andes as far as Salta. In the province of Buenos Aires the BahÍa Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900 the railways have pushed on to the frontiers and are linked in various directions with those of the adjoining countries. The Cumbre tunnel on the Mendoza trans-Andean was completed in 1910, and traffic with Chile by rail is now permanent. The Salta line was continued in 1908 to the Bolivian tableland. In Mesopotamia, in fine, the north-eastern line reached Posadas in 1911 and effected a junction with the Paraguay line.

These details, however, give a very imperfect idea of the history of the development of the Argentine railway system. It has not merely been superimposed upon the old roads, but has, on the other hand, helped to open up and develop new lands, which could not have been colonized without it. As early as 1883 Valiento Noailles, examining the general plan of the system, noticed the profound difference between the railways of Argentine and those of Europe. "In Europe," he said, "the railways are constructed to serve existing centres of production and consumption.... Our Argentine railways are to facilitate colonization." Corresponding to each occupation of a new area of the Pampean plain by the farmer or the breeder is the construction in that area of a new network of lines which are fed by its traffic and in turn help it to increase its production. The more productive the region is, the closer are the meshes of this network. They are wider in the pastoral than in the agricultural areas. The period of the development of the southern lines in the province of Buenos Aires corresponds with the expansion of breeding when the Pampa had been pacified. The railway reached Azul in 1876. The Ayacucho branch was opened in 1880, and continued as far as Tres Arroyos in 1887. The completion of the BahÍa Blanca line, via Azul and Olavarria, in 1884, is itself merely one of the dates in this colonizing period. The great period of agricultural colonization at Santa FÉ and the construction of the system of lines that serve it begin a little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (extension of the Central Argentine system, the railways of the province of Santa FÉ, and the narrow-gauge railway from Rosario to CÓrdoba).

The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen in the present completion of the system which has developed freely on the even surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the port of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario and BahÍa Blanca. What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the railway map will be found on closer examination to be less perfect; while the Atlantic coast between La Plata and BahÍa Blanca has no ports, the ParanÁ has quite a number of suitable places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and Villa ConstituciÓn are served by lines which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos Aires. This complexity of the system west of the ParanÁ continues to the north of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa FÉ cut across all the lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the southern frontier of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea, etc.) have, unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the ParanÁ, all their traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to Buenos Aires and BahÍa Blanco the crops of the districts they cross. They are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not rival lines.

When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized and covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy of colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos Mejia has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since the beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction of the Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines penetrating the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia and Formosa, and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add the line from Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a Government subvention.113 These lines, serving districts with little population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time make any profit.114

Hence railway construction must be regarded in modern Argentina as one of the aspects of the problem of developing the soil. The railway companies have been compelled to intervene directly in the work of colonization. In 1863 the Central Argentine received from the Government a strip of land three miles wide on each side of the line it was making, between Rosario and CÓrdoba, on condition that it colonized the land. The company had its own immigration agents and its colonizing staff, and it opened its first colonies west of Rosario between 1870 and 1872. This kind of concession is exceptional in Argentina. On the other hand, the irrigation law of 1909 obliges the railway companies to undertake, on behalf of the Government, the work that is necessary to develop irrigation in the areas they serve, such work being immediately reflected in an increase of population and traffic. In compliance with this law the Southern railway is constructing a canal which will water the whole valley of the Rio Negro below the confluence of the Neuquen. The Central Argentine and the Pacific also have undertaken to construct dams on the Rio Tercero and Rio Quinto, in the provinces of CÓrdoba and San Luis.

As it is the essential function of a railway to convey the produce of the area it serves to the exporting port, the problem of the relations between the administration of railways and the administration of ports is of primary importance. The chief ports served by different companies, such as Rosario and Buenos Aires, may maintain their independence, but a secondary port will be at the mercy of the single line which conveys goods to it. In such circumstances the ports have become, in many cases, mere dependencies of the railways. The port of ColastinÉ belongs to the railways of the Santa FÉ province. The port of BahÍa Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports constructed by the different railway companies, and run by them. Each of them ships the goods which it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which belongs to the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, immediately after the opening of the line from Buenos Aires to BahÍa Blanca. Puerto Galvan belongs to the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port of the line from Rosario to BahÍa Blanca. At Buenos Aires the Southern Railway Company has acquired control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock Company. At La Plata it manages the docks.

The spread of agricultural colonization was at first hampered by the cost of freightage which cereals could bear over an area with a radius of about 200 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by Girola in the InvestigaciÓn Agricola of 1904. The period 1895-1905 saw the birth of a series of plans for making canals in the Pampean region for the purpose of transporting grain in the area which the railway did not seem able to serve economically. Not one of them was carried out, but the railways quickly enlarged their sphere of influence in the interior. There is, however, a reminiscence of this pause in colonization in what Argentinians call "the parabolic tariffs." The Argentine railways practically, apart from cases of competition with rival lines, use proportional tariffs up to a distance of 218 miles, and degressive tariffs beyond that limit. In this way the railways have helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs have certainly played a part in the spread of colonization during the years antecedent to 1912. They have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land to the better land in the east.115

The rise in the value of land and the advance of colonization led, at each of those crises of development which characterize the recent history of Argentina, to a multiplication of railway concessions granted by the national Government and the various provincial authorities. These have to be bought up by the leading companies, as each of them wanted to keep exclusive control of the region in which it had established itself. This concentration could not be accomplished in a perfectly methodical way, and the various systems now overlap, which is not to the interest of the companies. Thus Villa Maria, on the Central Argentine line from Rosario to CÓrdoba, is also served by a line belonging to the Santa FÉ railways and by a line of the Pacific Company which puts it in communication with Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the Central Argentine penetrates to the very heart of the area of the Pacific at Junin.

However, competition between the various companies has had the effect of dividing the Pampean plain into three great spheres of influence. The first, in the north, is that of the Central Argentine and the Buenos Aires y Rosario line. In 1908 the Argentine Government officially sanctioned the fusion of the two companies, though it had really been accomplished a few years before. The second sphere, in the south, is that of the Pacific, the attraction of which was the line from Buenos Aires to Villa Mercedes, and which in 1907 bought the line from Villa Mercedes to Mendoza and the Trans-Andean, a natural continuation of its system. Moreover, in 1904 the Pacific absorbed the line from BahÍa Blanca to the north-west, which has been linked up once more with its original system at Villa Mercedes. It thus has two outlets, to Buenos Aires and BahÍa Blanca, and completely encloses the third sphere with its branches. The third sphere, which comprises the centre and south of the Pampean plain, is the domain of the Southern and Western Companies. In 1912 these two companies asked the Argentine Government to authorize them to amalgamate. Although they withdrew their proposal in 1914, in face of the conditions imposed upon them, they are still closely associated. Part of the traffic of the western lines of the Western passes over Southern lines at CarbuË, and is shipped at the port Ingeniero White. At Buenos Aires also, and at La Plata, part of the Western Company's traffic in cereals and cattle uses the premises of the Southern Company. The Western and the Southern, jointly, bought in 1908, before it was finished, the narrow-gauge Midland of Buenos Aires line at CarbuË, which was to cross their sphere of influence. It was opened in 1911.

The importance of the transport of cereals in the life of the leading Argentine systems will be seen from the following figures. In percentages of the total of goods carried, both from the interior to the ports and vice versa, the tonnage of exported cereals was:—

The figures are rather less for the Southern, which covers an area that has remained chiefly pastoral and, by means of its Rio Negro line, serves for part of the transport of cattle from Patagonia (cattle-transport on the Southern, average for the years 1913, 1914 and 1916: 17.2 per cent. of the total tonnage, 19 per cent. of total receipts; 1.4 per cent. of tonnage and 6.5 per cent. of receipts). They are higher for the Western, the only system that lies entirely in the Pampean region and has no continuations beyond it, as the Pacific has to Mendoza and the Central to TucumÁn.

The share of each company in the total traffic varies from year to year according to the harvest. Of the four to ten million tons of cereals carried every year, the greater part—about a third—falls to the Central Argentine, and one-sixth to the Southern. The Central Argentine carries the greater part of the maize and flax, the maize alone representing 26 per cent. of the total tonnage carried by the line, and the flax 5.6 per cent. Of the other lines the Western alone carries any appreciable quantity of maize, which comes from the Junin district (19 per cent. of its tonnage, but only 12 per cent. of its receipts, because of the slight distances the stuff is carried). The transport of wheat is about equally divided amongst the four leading lines, but the proportion of it to total traffic is highest in the case of the Western (34.4 per cent. of total traffic). The Southern is the chief carrier of oats (9.8 per cent. of the total tonnage). The tonnage carried annually is particularly irregular in the case of the Central, on account of the irregularity of the maize crops, and the Pacific, because its lines north-west of Buenos Aires serve a wheat-area that is exposed to drought (wheat carried by the Pacific in 1913, 15.9 per cent. of the total tonnage; in 1914, 27.2 per cent.).

The clearing of the cereals gives the Argentine railways a delicate problem in the organization of traffic. The crops of flax, wheat and oats must be cleared in the four to six months following the harvest (December-January). The maize harvest, which is later, is also much slower; it lasts the whole of the autumn. Hence the removal of the maize is spread over a long period, and sometimes the work of one year runs into that of the next. This gives the Central an advantage over the other lines. The wool also must, on account of its great value, be transferred to the ports speedily after the shearing; but this is only a matter of about a hundred thousand tons.116

Export, however, is by no means the one source of traffic on the Argentine railways. Transport of goods for home consumption is chiefly a question of a large part of the wheat crop. Building materials also—bricks, lime and stone—are an important item on the various lines which link Buenos Aires with the Sierra de CÓrdoba and the Sierra de Tandil. In 1913 the Southern line carried 1,134,000 tons of minerals, including 997,000 tons of stone and 101,000 tons of lime from the Sierra de Tandil and 34,000 tons of salt from the salt-mines of Lavalle, between BahÍa Blanca and the Colorado. In the same year, the Pacific, Central Argentine, Central CÓrdoba and State railway carried 880,000 tons of minerals (half being lime) from the Sierra de CÓrdoba.117 All the timber carried on the lines of northern Argentina, except the quebracho from the banks of the ParanÁ, is for home use: sleepers, fence-posts, firewood and charcoal are the chief items on most of the lines in the scrub. The war has checked railway construction and reduced the use of sleepers, but it has also deprived Argentina of combustible minerals and increased the transport of firewood. Even on railways like the Pacific and Central Argentine, which have very few of their lines on the scrub, the tonnage of wood carried is 6 per cent. of the whole (average for 1913, 1914 and 1916), and the proportion rises to 30 per cent. of the total tonnage on the Central CÓrdoba. For several companies the sugars of TucumÁn and the wines of Mendoza are an important element of their receipts, not so much on account of the tonnage as the high cost of freightage and the great distance to the centres of consumption in the Pampean region. The carriage of wine and casks brings the Pacific 38.3 per cent. of its receipts (1913-14-16). The transport of sugar on the Central Argentine in a normal year amounts to 5 per cent. of its receipts. On the Central CÓrdoba the tonnage of sugar-cane and sugar carried amounted in 1914, a year of exceptional harvest, to 42 per cent. of the total tonnage, and was still 20 per cent. in 1916, a year of very poor crop. The supplying of meat to the market of Buenos Aires and the Pampean area, with its dense population, means a good deal of long-distance traffic in cattle; the refrigerators taking the better cattle of the adjoining region for the foreign market, and the slaughter houses of Buenos Aires being forced to content themselves with inferior beasts reared in the provinces and the adjoining districts.

The importance of these currents of internal traffic has made itself felt in the organization of the Argentine system. It has made it necessary for each system to have not only an outlet to an exporting town, but a direct connection with the chief centre of home consumption, Buenos Aires. The narrow-gauge system, which until the end of the nineteenth century had been restricted to the northern half of Argentine territory, north of the latitude of Rosario, developed in the province of Buenos Aires after 1900, and ventured to compete in the carriage of cereals with the broad-gauge system (Company of the Province of Buenos Aires and Provincial railway of La Plata). This system connected with the narrow-gauge lines of the north. The Central CÓrdoba, which had reached Rosario in 1912 and so had escaped the need to transfer its export-traffic at CÓrdoba to the broad-gauge, began immediately afterwards to effect a direct communication with Buenos Aires (Central CÓrdoba, extension to Buenos Aires, opened in 1913). The line from Rosario to Buenos Aires of the Province of Buenos Aires Company also serves to carry trains of the Province of Santa FÉ Company, which is closely associated with it. The medium-gauge lines of Mesopotamia also have effected a communication with Buenos Aires by means of a ferry-boat that plies on the ParanÁ between Ibicuy and Zarate, and by using a section of the Buenos Aires Central.

The concentration of narrow-gauge and medium-gauge lines seemed to be issuing in a complete fusion of their interests in 1913. The Argentine Railway Company got control of the lines of Entre Rios, Corrientes and the Paraguay. It promoted the development and extension of the Central CÓrdoba, and it also had large interests in the French companies of the Buenos Aires and Santa FÉ provinces. All the narrow-gauge lines would have concentrated in its hands if it had been able to get the State railway. The broad-gauge line from Rosario to Puerto Belgrano had, as its interest conflicted with those of the great broad-gauge English systems, joined the narrow-gauge group engineered by the Argentine railway. But the amalgamation attempted by the Argentine railways did not succeed, and, after its failure, the companies it had temporarily brought together resumed their independence.

The river-route of the ParanÁ has sometimes been an auxiliary, at other times a rival, of the railways.

Until the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was opened in 1886, the navigation of the ParanÁ was the only link between the system of northern Argentina and that of the Buenos Aires province. Before the line was completed, the company had established a service of boats on the ParanÁ, and in this way it kept up a traffic in goods consigned to stations on the Central Argentine, to be transferred at Rosario. These combinations of railway and river service disappeared when the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was finished.

In regard to export traffic the railways have not attempted to compete with the river anywhere where it is open to maritime navigation; they have merely been concerned to connect with it. On the other hand, the railway and the river are rivals for the home traffic and the traffic of the upper districts which sea-going boats do not reach. Before the time of the railways the river had taken all the goods traffic, but had tolerated on its left bank a post-road between Santa FÉ, Corrientes and AsunciÓn. The railway still has the advantage over the river in regard to speed (in carrying passengers between Rosario and Buenos Aires, and live cattle from the Chaco and the Paraguay for Buenos Aires or the salting works of the lower Uruguay). Even in regard to certain kinds of heavy goods—quebracho timber—the river has not secured a monopoly, and there is a good deal of transport by rail.