Clerks and shop assistants, and those who can only do office work, are not wanted at all. Farm labourers, dairymen, and stockmen of practical experience are welcomed, and there is a fair demand for mechanics. Engine-drivers can get work if they can speak Spanish, and Englishmen have been found useful as butchers at the freezing works--but that is not an occupation which will absorb an unlimited number. [Illustration: _Photograph by A. W. Boote, Buenos Aires._ GENERAL VIEW OF AN ESTANCIA.] A considerable number of overseers are required on _estancias_, but for these posts personal introduction and previous practical experience are necessary. Disappointment and chagrin await the young man who arrives in the country with nothing except a large amount of physical energy and high spirits, and wishes at once to obtain a big salary on a ranch. If these ignorant adventurers feel they must go to that part of "abroad" their best way is to go on a ranch as apprentice for some years at a nominal salary. They will find the work hard, but the life is not without its pleasures, and at the end of the time they will probably be better qualified to take up good positions. If such a one, in disgust at the hardness and the monotony of the work, should give up and should succeed in obtaining a place in a bank or railway office, he will find himself better off in money, but somewhat poorer in prospects than he would be at home. There is little chance of the immigrant securing a small holding and forming a home. Even on established farms good openings are not abundant. The colonists are often short of capital, and not long ago farming operations throughout an entire district were almost stopped because the colonists were unable to buy seed. The position was only saved by the railway company providing the seed on easy terms and without any security. Among the more prosperous farmers are the small Welsh colony founded at Chubut in 1865. There are 400 of them, who are mostly doing very well, and maintain in habits, language, and religion the customs of their own country. In the Andes, about 400 miles from Port Madryn, there is another colony of about 500 Welsh people. One hears there on a Sunday the sound of Welsh hymns from the chapel. When the immigrant, after his long train journey, arrives at some station on the plains he finds that the centre of life is the camp town. Whether he comes from Italy or Spain, Syria or Bulgaria, he will probably consider the camp towns are the ugliest he has ever seen, unless he arrives at sunset, when the glow and colour turn everything to beauty. The roads are about as bad as roads can be. There is no stone anywhere, and if holes are filled up it is with earth which brings mud to mud and dust to dust. When it is wet they are almost impassable through depth of mud, and when it is dry the dust is even worse--one can see the cloud of dust above a town sometimes a dozen miles away.