The Esperanza colonists had at first grown maize, but the prosperity of the colonies was mainly due to wheat. Zeballos, who visited the colonies in 1882, describes them as a vast lake of wheat. Wheat predominates, not only in the department of Las Colonias, west of Santa Fe, where it survives in full strength, but further north, at Garay, whence it has since been displaced by flax and earth-nuts, and in the south, round Rosario, in the belt which is now given up to maize. It is for the wheat that the mills of Carcarana and the granaries of Rosario have been built. The land sown with wheat at Santa Fe rose in 1882 to 102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of cultivated land.[97] By 1889 the area of wheat was quadrupled. It spread like a drop of oil, reaching Rafaela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has crossed the Cordoba frontier, and spread round San Francisco and east of Mar Chiquita (departments of San Justo and Marcos Juarez). The agricultural regions in the centre of the Santa Fe province and those of the Central Argentine have met, and the wheat has invaded the whole of the San Martin department. It extends even south of the old colonies of the Central Argentine toward the south-west of Santa Fe, in the General Lopez department. [97] The population of the Santa Fe colonies in 1882 was 52,000, of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier, north of the town of Santa Fe. The 1908 Census shows a very different state of things. The density of the wheat-cultivation has continued to grow appreciably in the whole of the northern region, and also in the south-west of the province, at some distance from the Parana (General Lopez department). On the other hand, it has been reduced in the adjoining district of Rosario (departments of Iriondo, Belgrana, Caseros, and Constitucion), where maize-growing has developed. Maize has won part of the wheat belt.