ARGENTINA, URUGUAY, AND PARAGUAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 77, 27 April 1909, Page 3

ARGENTINA, URUGUAY, AND PARAGUAY.

1 - (B.v John Barrett.) The region of the Kivcr Plate is bound to be, before the middle of the century, one of the great granaries, of the world. Twenty-live years ago all the Hour n,cd ( in Argentina was imported, while to-day I the annual production of that article is I over ,i,ioo.o(Kl ions. Lust year that counI try exported .CH3M.OOI) worth of Hour. in addition to 1'11i.540.000 of wheat., ami the grand total of exports of agricultural products amounted to .£32,800,000. Take the wheat production of the world. In loot) the Vnited States led with 735,0011,000 bushels; the Jiifisian Empire folioo-* with 450,000,000 bushels; then tome h'riince. British India. ]Jii:igary, Italy. Spain, and Ccrmanv. Argentina with 134,(1110,(100 bushels preceding Canada and llouiuauia. Hut the l!io de In Plain basni has hardly been entered, while every other country excepting Canada and liiissian Siberia can alreadv set a practical limit to the bread supply it. can oiler num. It is worth our while, therefore, to weigh careinlly the future of sue]! 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 i;i evensense of the word. The waters of the Eio de !a Plata have washed the shores of three SpanishAmerican republics —Argentina, Uruguay, anil 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 coin-, posed, like the .Mississippi, of two great 1 , branches. |

f The area comprised .within these three . republics is UUU.OOO square miles; . ],130.000 of this belongs to Argentina, ( lotf.OOO to Paraguay, and 72,000 to I'mI guay. All except the extreme northern , tip of Argentina and the region known as the Paraguayan Chaco is well within the temperate vone. The climate 01 this , northern section may lie called tropical, although modifying conditions of the atmosphere and soil make it far different from the "jungle" so traditionally associated with the neighborhood of the Equator. Otherwise, however, the climate may b.c compared favorably with that of the larger portion of the United States excluding the region of severe, cold, caharacteristic of Main c or Minnesota. Even in the extreme south of Argentina, what was formerly the unknown Patagonia, the rigors of a Northern American winter a r c . unfelt, and land on the border oi the Magellan Strait that not a generation ago was condemned as unfit because rude and savage Indians drew only a sea-.it living from it and led within its confines a nomadic existence of semi-starvation, has been developed into some of the richest pasture for cattle and sheep of all South America. The same story may he told here, as it has been demonstrated time after time ta our own country, that land condemned at the first superficial glance as unproductive for climatic or other reasons has finally become reckoned anion" the richest agricultural assets of a nation. In the Chaco, to th e west of Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, a like remark may he made. This is being slowly thrown open to settlement and cultivation, and.the howling wilderness in the story-hooks "of tb e 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.

Paraguay is already noted ior her tobacco, her fruit, and her cotton In I these great staples she is a land of milk and honey, the garden, the sanatorium of South America. The .--oil is scaree'v scratched, and what industry had developed before the devastating war oi the last generation has not vet regained its due place, because of the jack of lahor and, to some degree, the stimulus of diversihed outlet. But this will soon be overcome; besides the existing trullic on tic Paraguay river, communication through the heart of the country is almost established with a railway from Buenos Avrcs.

Uruguay limy be compared with lowa as regards soil, mountain and stream and general fertility, but imagine Town dose to tiie Atlantic seaboard on one [ side, and with a climate bracing in both summer and winter, yet never so cold or so hot that fear for crops may lie felt on account 01 frost or drought* and the picture is close enough for purposes of illustration. In Uruguay are 1217 miles of railway, with other lines in construction. The harbor of Monte Video, also the capital of the republic, has depth for the largest steamers, and when the port works now under way are completed it will be one of the linest harbors on the Atlantic Ocean.

The illimitable pin in.- of Argentina seem 10 have been designed by Nature fur tin' production uf all manner of grain, for an abundant agriculture that astoi Islies him accustomed to the hard-i-ariii'd crops of a long-tilled European farm, anil tor I lit- nurture of Jive stock of all varieties. Xot onlv that, hut in the energy of the inhahitaiits 'may hi found an augury of what is sure to come. The population ha, now iiicreaseil hcvoml 0,1)00.1)0(1, nnil i- growing at the rate of

1.30.000 ami more each year. Argentina lias about'2ll.ooo.ooo faille. 77.500.000 ..hcep. (i.000.000 horses anil mules, anil 1.100.ui10 goals. This inilustry U scattered over the central pampas, somewhat further westward and southward than the grain area.. To-day catt'c men are finding their grazing hind 100 valuable for pasturage, and are turning it into grain: they are crowded out. and must seek the wilder, less crowded lands of .Mexico. Craia k therefore. th 0 crop that will cstablUh Argentina in the markets of the world. A noted English scientist ha,< estimated "that by 1031 the world's supply of wheat will b e unequal to the increase of population." and therefore the country that can supply bread has its iuture assured. Roundly put, one-third the area of Argentina k woods! rivers, and mountains; one-third is at present called cattle touutryj but fully one-third, and, in my opinion, higher than that, can be computed ais arable, suited more and more as time 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 onlv 5,000,000. The possibilities of development tax the imagination!