On its broad plains there are estandas, or cattle
ranches, of fifty and one hundred thousand acres in extent, and on
these cattle, horses and sheep are herded in millions. Argentina has
over twenty-nine million cattle, seventy-seven million sheep, seven
and a half million horses, five and a half million mules, a quarter-
million of donkeys, and nearly three million swine and three million
goats. Four billion dollars of British capital are invested in the
country.
Argentina has sixteen thousand miles of railway. This has been
comparatively cheap to build. On the flat prairie lands the rails are
laid, and there is a length of one hundred and seventy-five miles
without a single curve.
Three hundred and fifty thousand square miles of this prairie is
specially adapted to the growing of grain. In 1908-9 the yield of
wheat was 4,920,000 tons. Argentina has exported over three million
tons of wheat, over three million tons of corn, and one million tons
of linseed, in one year, while "her flour mills can turn out 700,000
tons of flour a year." [Footnote: Hirst's Argentina, 1910.]
"It is a delight often met with there to look on a field of twenty
square miles, with the golden ears standing even and close together,
and not a weed nor a stump of a tree nor a stone as big as a man's
fist to be seen or found in the whole area."
"To plant and harvest this immense yield the tillers of the ground
bought nine million dollars of farm implements in 1908.
