[Illustration: A VINEYARD AT MENDOZA. _French vines on wire. An irrigation-trench along the path. In the foreground (left) a wine-cellar_(bodega). Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados, Buenos Aires. PLATE VIII. To face p. 92.] The elimination of foreign wines and sugar and the development of Mendoza and Tucuman were facilitated by a Protectionist tariff. The details of this are very curious, as they had to be adjusted to the natural conditions. The need of protection is chiefly due to the distance of the market from the productive centres. Mendoza is 650 miles from Buenos Aires, Tucuman more than 750 miles. Freightage on the railways is dear. It is thirty-five piastres a ton for wine between Mendoza and Buenos Aires, or nearly double the normal maritime freight for the European wines sent from Bordeaux or Genoa. The charge for sugar is about thirty piastres a ton between Tucuman and Buenos Aires. Thus the cost of transport is nearly one sixth the entire cost of production. In spite of this common burden, the need of protection is not at all the same in Mendoza and Tucuman. The climate of Mendoza is excellent for the vine. The dryness of the atmosphere keeps down cryptogamic diseases, and the risks of cultivation are slight. The crop is abundant, the frosts late, and not serious. Hail is frequent, it is true, at the mouths of the Cordillera valleys, but it is never general; it affects only a small part of the harvest. The curve of production is very regular. It rises every year very gradually, and in proportion to the increase of the cultivated area. As a result of all this, the wine market has a stability which the vine-growing countries of Europe, with their less reliable climate, do not enjoy. The protective tariff, therefore, remains fixed. The duty on foreign wines in the cask--eight centimes (gold) per litre--has not been altered since the introduction into Argentina of the wine-industry on a large scale.[42] [42] Mendoza is further protected by law against fraud. This legislation is partly national and partly provincial. The national law, which takes into account the interests of the merchants of Buenos Aires, permits the manufacture of artificial wines. The provincial law, in the special interests of the productive districts, is more stringent. It prohibits the manufacture of artificial wines. It also fixes the minimum percentage of alcohol, and prevents the dispatch from Mendoza to Buenos Aires of alcoholic wines to mix with must. Finally, it defends the _vinatero_ against the _bodeguero_ by fixing the quantity of grapes to be used in making a hectolitre of wine and so prevents fraud at the _bodega_.