"2nd. That if there were no such risk, the expense would far exceed the returns." (Head, "Reports," pp. 51-2.) CHAPTER XIX BAHIA BLANCA AND PATAGONIA Bahia Blanca is one of the youngest of sea-ports. It only obtained railway communication in 1885, and it was not considered of sufficient importance for a separate article in the tenth edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica." It has now a population of about forty thousand. Buenos Aires and Rosario have long been the great wheat ports, but they have now a formidable rival in the new southern city. Much of the best wheat land is in the south of the Province of Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca is the natural outlet for it. There is hardly a limit to the amount of grain that will be sent to this port for shipment when the southern regions are systematically irrigated, and the railways, always alive to the importance of developing the country they serve, are preparing large schemes. Bahia Blanca is indeed one of the most important objectives of railway enterprise in South America. The Great Southern was the first in the field and for many years had a monopoly, but the most enterprising of all the lines, the Buenos Aires and Pacific, has lately been tempted by the splendid prospects of the south and has acquired the management of the Bahia Blanca and North-Western system. It has built moles and warehouses and in every way improved and enlarged the port. The journey from the capital to Bahia Blanca is not interesting, for the greater part is over a dead level and the country is unrelieved by hedgerows or any of the picturesque landscapes which we in the Old World associate with the countryside. The journey is also rendered disagreeable by the dust which is the invariable concomitant of Argentine railway travelling. In the latter half the monotony is relieved by a low range of green mountains, the Sierra Tandil, which are practically the only break in the plain between Brazil and the extreme south. The town itself is not attractive on first view, for it is white and bare. The shore is low and fringed with lagoons and the glaring white roads are not restful to the eye. This feature is due to _tosca_, a kind of limestone with which all the roads in the neighbourhood are made. But much has been done by art to improve the tameness of nature. [Illustration: TANDIL ROCKING-STONE.]