Pastoral colonization, again, has not been entirely independent of the home market. Martin de Moussy says, it is true, that the area which sent the products of breeding to Europe in 1865 extended as far as the Sierra de Cordoba. But this statement needs correction. The hides from the whole of this zone were, in point of fact, sent down to the ports on the Rio de la Plata, but live animals were sent to Chile from the whole of the north-west of the Pampean region. It was for the purpose of selling cattle to Chile that ranches were multiplied about 1860 in the neighbourhood of Villa Mercedes and lower down, on the Rio Quinto. Jegou's description shows that even in 1883 the breeders of the San Luis province devoted themselves exclusively to supplying the Chilean market.[102] Buyers from Chile and the Andean provinces still visit Villa Mercedes, and until a recent date they came to Villa Maria, in the province of Cordoba. The Santa Fe ranches found their customers, until the opening of the Cordoba line (1870) amongst the _troperos_, who bought draught oxen for their waggons. The loss of these customers and the crisis that followed are one of the reasons why agricultural colonization met with so little resistance on the part of the breeders, and was able to take root so easily at Santa Fe. In the San Cristobal department the breeders who settled there after 1890 found their first market in the _obrajes_ of the neighbouring forest. The opening of the railway to Tucuman afterwards enabled them to send their cattle to the provinces of the north-west. The Buenos Aires buyers were late in this remote canton of the Pampean plain. They did not arrive until 1911. [102] A. Jegou, "Informe sobre la provincia de San Luis," _Ann. Soc. Cientifica Argentina_, xvi. 1883, pp. 140-152, 192-200, and 223-230. The importance of the Pampean region itself as a market of consumption grew in proportion to the increase of its population. The extent to which it absorbs the products of breeding and agriculture varies a good deal. For some of them it is paramount. Horse-breeding, for instance, which is still one of the great industries of the Pampa, has never contributed to the export trade. It is the same with regard to potatoes, which are concentrated in two strictly limited districts, round Rosario and north of the Sierra de Tandil. Only a small part of the dry fodder is exported. As regards cereals, a comparison of the statistics of production with the statistics of export shows that the home consumption is about one-third of the production. It is almost nil for flax, and nearly fifty per cent for wheat. The average of production and export for the years 1912, 1913, and 1914, in thousands of tons, is: