Besides these properly irrigated lands there are the _banados_: cultivated plots in the hollows, where the moisture left by the storms is concentrated and preserved. These are much more extensive, and they are very irregularly distributed. Inequalities of the alluvial ground that almost escape the eye are sufficient to direct the streaming of the water after rain, and it is quickly absorbed. Man assists nature as well as he can, and one sees everywhere tiny ridges of earth across the paths, for the purpose of diverting the water to the plots. These are the _tomas_. When you follow a _toma_ downward, you see it after a time pass under a hedge of dry thorn, and this encloses a field, a _cerco_. The crops have to be jealously guarded against the cattle which roam in the scrub. The _cercos_ are sometimes so numerous that they give the impression of a regular agricultural district. Most of them are planted with maize. The maize harvest rarely fails in the summer, for it is then, on account of the regular rains, that the maize grows and ripens. When the ears have been gathered, the cattle are let into the _cerco_, as maize-straw is excellent fodder. But wheat also grows well in the _banados_. Provided the year has had a few late showers, the wheat sown in autumn stands the winter drought more or less well, and ripens after the early rains, at the beginning of summer. The Llanos produce a hard wheat; it is not milled, but eaten, like rice, in the grain. There have been times when the Llanos have exported wheat. The census of 1888 gives the Department of General Belgrano, on the eastern slope of the Llanos, an area of 900 acres under maize and 1,900 under wheat. When the Chilecito railway was constructed, this wheat competed with that brought on mules from Jachal, in the mining district of the Famatina range. Like the gardens in the oases, the _cercos_ may be divided, and they are the personal property of those who cultivate them.