Chapter XI
The Chaco Country and the Cattle Trade with the Nitrate Desert
In Colonel Roosevelt’s “Through the Brazilian Wilderness” there is a most interesting description of the grasslands that border the middle and upper Paraguay and lie all about its headwater region and beyond. Once a practical cattleman, he was able to appraise the country as one of great future develop- ment. It consists of northward outliers or fringes of a broad belt of grassland a large unit of which forms the vast Matto Grosso of Brazil, while the other unit forms the Gran Chaco of southeastern Bolivia and adjoining parts of Argentina and Paraguay.
The Grasslands of the Chaco
These grasslands are quite different from the wide open pampas of Argentina, which are virtually treeless except for the imported poplar and eucalyptus, and different also from the llanos of Orinoco, partly because of the climatic conditions, partly because they are much more extensive, and partly also because they are much farther from the sea. So-called “gallery forests” along the banks of the streams are the rule; and in ad- dition there are patches and clumps of woodland, and in places the soil is occupied by broader but limited tracts of for- est. The distinctive physical qualities of this belt of grasslands have made their impression upon the life of the region; for example, owing to its remoteness, long expensive journeys by pack train or oxcart must be made to reach a river or a distant railway terminus. It is a true frontier region like our own West of an earlier day in some respects, unlike it in that the way of the pioneer leads northward toward ever more tropical condi- tions instead of lying along the same parallel of latitude. Labor is difficult to obtain. The plague of insects, the long distances between settlements, the uncertainties of a water supply combine to make difficult and sometimes hazardous the
trade or even the mere livelihood of the hundreds of pioneer
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