The salt sandy soil of much of this Province has been found as favourable to Alfalfa as such soil is elsewhere when there is water not far down or at least a damp subsoil. So that Santiago boasts of an already large and an increasing number of _Alfalfares_, as lucerne-bearing lands are called. The chief industries of the North of this Province are in connection with its forestal products, the cutting and rough trimming of Quebracho wood, firewood and charcoal burning. The people engaged in these occupations are mostly totally uneducated and are unacquainted with any of the higher developments of civilization. They are indeed in some respects similar to the stock-riding Gaucho of the past in other provinces, but without the intelligence he displayed within the limits of his punctilious observance of custom. Dancing, card-playing and drinking are the only amenities of life known to the wood-cutters of Santiago del Estero, unless fighting be added as a pendant to, and consequence of, the last-named pastime of alcoholic indulgence. Like all GAUCHOS, however, they are really only dangerous to one another in this regard, a stranger being treated by them with all the good-humoured courtesy at their command. The Santagueños of the forests have been singled out by one very observant and reliable writer on South American countries, Monsieur Paul Walle,[25] as having superstitious faith in “Curanderos” or quack doctors, people of their own class. They do indeed show a perfectly childlike faith in quack nostrums; but in this, leave must be taken to say, they are by no means alone among the rural populations of the River Plate. The present writer has known the queerest kinds of remedies believed in implicitly and practised even in that hub of progress, the Province of Buenos Aires. Active official efforts have for some time been devoted to the weeding out of CURANDEROS and CURANDERAS; but, as in the mediæval days of England, they are still sought out, more or less secretly, by neighbours who have infinitely more faith in their “cures” than they would have in the treatment of whole Colleges of Physicians. Possibly these quacks often do cure by suggestion. The writer has, for instance, heard strong oral evidence of the efficacy for toothache of expectorating into the mouth of a frog, caught at a certain hour of the night. There could be no doubt about it. Many people have been entirely relieved from pain by that simple expedient. The rather revolting rite performed, the frog must be set at liberty and carries away the pain with it! Much of this quackery is relatively harmless, but much of it is also highly dangerous, not only to the actual patient, but to the community in general; as preventing the former from seeking orthodox treatment which, while really curing him, would at the same time prevent the spread of infectious and contagious disease. To sum up, Santiago del Estero undoubtedly has a rich future before it, dependent chiefly on irrigation.