There are at least a half billion acres of fertile arable land in Argentina, that can be turned to the cultivation of products for the sustenance of man. All of this land is easily accessible to the Atlantic. There are no natural barriers such as transverse ranges of mountains. The northern provinces can reach Rosario or Buenos Aires by the La Plata system of waterways, while the rest of the country can, by the simplest railway construction, be joined up with one of those ports, or with Bahia Blanca, or one of the new ports in Patagonia. At present these three ports are the only ones needed, or that will be until Patagonia has undergone greater development. Only the upper edge of the country is within the tropics. From there as far south as Buenos Aires the climate is almost that of the Gulf States, while that city has a climate very similar to Los Angeles. The heat in summer is sometimes oppressive, but not more so than in New York or Chicago. It is doubtful whether there are so many of those oppressive humid days in the southern as in the northern metropolis. It is never so cold in winter as to prevent out-of-door life. Even in Tierra del Fuego the winter climate is no more severe than that of Northern Michigan. The pampas of middle Argentina probably have less rain than our own middle west. Water is, however, not far below the surface, and wells are easy to construct for the windmills, which form so prominent a feature of the landscape on the _estancias_. In Misiones the landscape is Brazilian, and in parts of Patagonia it resembles Arizona, only they do not have such extreme drouths. Anything that can be successfully raised in the United States can be grown in Argentina, and generally much cheaper. The country, however, lacks our great mineral wealth. Iron is scarcer than gold, and coal is imported by the millions of tons each year. Great discoveries may be made in the future, but Argentina will never be a great competitor of the United States in mineral products.