The growth of the population is partly explained by immigration from Europe. Foreigners were, in 1914, 30 per cent. of the total population.[137] The proportion of foreigners to the total population is one of the indications by which we can best follow the advance of colonization. As soon as it relaxes in any region, the number of immigrants diminishes. (The children born of foreign colonists in Argentina are considered indigenous in Argentine statistics.) In 1869 the proportion of foreigners rose to 417 per 1,000 in the province of Buenos Aires (without the capital). This was the great period of pastoral colonization and the development of sheep-breeding. It was then only 156 per 1,000 at Santa Fe. In 1895 the proportion of foreigners sank to 309 per 1,000 at Buenos Aires, but rose to 419 at Santa Fe, where the date almost marks the end of the great period of agricultural colonization. In 1914 the proportion of foreigners at Buenos Aires rose to 340 per 1,000 (development of the maize region and the southern wheat area). It sank at Santa Fe (350 per 1,000), in spite of considerable immigration in the southern maize-growing departments. At the same time there was a great influx of foreign population in the province of Cordoba (200 per 1,000) and in the area of the Central Pampa (360 per 1,000).[138] [137] All Europeans, except a few tens of thousands of Bolivians in the Salta and Jujuy provinces, a few thousand Brazilians in Misiones, and a few thousand Chileans at Neuquen. [138] I have referred elsewhere to the magnitude of the stream of European immigration at Mendoza. In Patagonia (territory of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, the Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego, of which the total population is only 104,000) sheep-breeding has attracted a considerable number of immigrants (428 foreigners per 1000 in 1914).