_April 1914_: Rioja--Sierra de los Llanos--San Juan--Mendoza. _July 1914_: Entre Rios. These journeys, by rail or on well-known roads, were not supposed to be for the purpose of exploration or discovery. Their one object was to enable me to make a provisional classification of the chief types of country and forms of colonization, and to draw up a methodical programme for more thorough research. The work which I trusted to do in a more leisurely way was, however, suspended in 1914, and, in spite of my very strong desire to do so, I was unable to resume it on the spot in 1919. I have therefore been compelled to publish my first observations, completing them, as well as I could, by a bibliographical study of the country. I have made use of some fragments of a popular work which I began, at the request of the Argentine Commission, for the International Exhibition at San Francisco, of which several chapters were published in my absence by the University of Tucuman (Pierre Denis, _Modern Argentina: Chapters of Economic Geography_. Publications of the University during the Centenary of the Congress of Tucuman of 1816. Buenos Aires, 1916).[1] [1] I take the opportunity to thank M. J. B. Teran, who undertook to edit these chapters, and to express, with him, my satisfaction that events have falsified his rather pessimistic predictions as regards the author. My knowledge of the publications on Argentina has two conspicuous gaps. The first is deliberate. I declined to study at second hand the documents and chronicles which are our sources, to the end of the eighteenth century, for the history of the various provinces that were to form Argentina. Hence the historical data on colonization which will be found in the following chapters relate almost entirely to the nineteenth century. The second gap I was, to my great disappointment, unable to fill up. A large part of the local publications--official or other--maps, statistics, etc., never reached Europe, and Buenos Aires is the only place where one can make a thorough study of them. These publications were available to me until 1914. Since then I have been restricted to the resources of the Paris and London libraries, which are very scanty; and less has been sent from Argentina since the war. I have not the complete statistics up to date. I trust, however, that this picture of Argentina has much more than a retrospective character; that it is not out of date before it is published. I may add that no statistics would enable one to solve the problem which Argentina in 1920 presents to an observer. Has the European War merely retarded the economic evolution of the country, or has it given that evolution a new direction? Will or will not the relations which Argentina is now resuming with the rest of the world be of the same character as the pre-war relations?