Mechanical Transport in Southern Patagonia.
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Absence of Fodder Necessitates the Supersession of Bullock Trains.
Southern Patagonia is generally considered by its inhabitants to be only suitable for sheep raising. The absence of water for irrigation, the small rainfall during the summer, and the strong winds that blow almost continuously all the summer, do not allow the growing of any cereals. The " pampas " are mostly covered with " mato negra " or black bush ; the soil is sandy and gravelly, and it is very-poorly covered with tussock grass. At present the chief industry of the country is sheep raising. Cattle are only bred for transport work, and all of the farms which are stocked up no longer keep mares for horse-breeding purposes, but buy colts instead. Cattle and mares eat a large amount of grass and give a verypoor return financially compared with sheep. Again, if a really-bad winter sets in some farmers may lose every hoof of cattle on the farm.
The land carries roughly 1,000 to 1,500 sheep per league. When it is realized that many farms have 20,000 to 30,000 sheep, it will be seen that it takes a large area to carry this number of animals. The farms are consequently far apart and are situated anywhere lip to 200 miles from the coast.
The carting or transport begins in September or October and runs on until April or May, but the principal part of it commences in December during the shearing, when the wool is beginning to come down to the ports. The freights downwards are wool and sheep-skins only ; for the return journey there are stores, posts, fencing wire, sheep-dip, coal, timber and corrugated iron. The carting is almost entirely done with bullock wagons. They are large two-wheeled affairs drawn by four or six bullocks, and they carry, as a rule, about two tons and travel from 12 to 15 miles a day. A few farms near tne ports use horse carts, and for short distances they do well.
Sonic years ago, when the land was not all taken up and when the farms were not fully stocked, bullock carting was the most-efficient and the cheapest way ; the Farmers could afford the small capital outlay, and they had plenty of grazing for their cattle. The tracks to the ports went down the edges of the valleys by the rivers. Each night the animals were turned loose in the long grass of the" vegas." When travelling across the " pampas " there was, owing to the small amount of carting done then, plenty of grass near the lagoons, so that the animals kept in good condition while on trek. later, as the farmers got stocked up, they could not afford to allow strange bullocks to come into their " vegas " and eat out the best grass on their farms, as they had to save this for their own sheep when the snow came, SO that gradually the valleys were fenced off, and the bellocks had to find food on the "pampas."
The lagoons and water holes on the tracks are mostly a day's march apart ; the carters camp at these places, and the bullocks have to get their food near. Nowadays the grass gets eaten down for some distance round these
places before the middle of the season, and then the bullocks have to starve. It could not be expected that farmers, through whose camp the main tracks run, would allow strange animals to go wandering over their camp in search of food, for six months of the year, when they are stocked up and perhaps short of grass for their on animals. They are, therefore, gradually fencing off both sides of the track and making a street, leaving out the water holes alone. When this is carried out along the whole of the tracks, it will make bullock carting impossible. At present the carts have to carry grass or alfalfa for the down trips, and fodder is purchased in the ports for the return journeys. They now carry a smaller useful cargo, and the bullocks require a longer rest between the journeys. There is very-little hope of any railway construction, unless mines are opened up in the Cordilleras, or unless the Government builds one to connect the territory with Buenos Ayres. Moreover, a railway could not pay, for the freights downwards are wool and perhaps sheep. There is practically no passenger traffic, and all the produce of a twelvemonth could he brought down in less than six weeks.
It is becoming more difficult to do the carting with bullocks each year, and, as there is not much chance of a railway's being built, some kind of mechanical transport will have to be adopted.
The tracks are hard and good, but the present. ones are not the best that could be found. They were formed by the bullock carts, which had to go from water to water, and in such trips it did not matter if there were steep climbs up sandy ridges or over rocky places. These present tracks, therefore, have some stretches which are bad for mechanical-transport work, but it would not be difficult to make new tracks that would be perfectly suitable and easy for tractors.
Up to the present there has been one steam tractor tried, and this failed owing to the lack of water on the track over which it was wanted to run. Two kinds of oil tractors, and two motor lorries have also tried the experiment. All of the foregoing machines had given good results in the countries from which they had been bought, but, not being adapted to the unusual conditions required for any engine that has to run for transport purposes in Southern Patagonia, these particular models have not afforded successful financial results. They paid well at the commencement of operations, but soon they began to break up, and then the cost of repairs and the loss of time owing to the plant's being idle during the short working season, prevented them from permanently taking the place of the bullocks.
The work of running mechanical transport in Patagonia is not. bard when all goes well. It is a good life-camping out all the time on the track, sleeping under the wagons and making a small camp fire every night for the one good meal of the day, but when the breakdowns come, and there is no forge and very few tools, and you are miles away from any farm, then it is hard work. The conditions under which tractors and lorries have to run in that country are very different to those that prevail at home. There, in Patagonia, a train of one tractor and four wagons, loaded up with 14 or 15 tons of stores, etc., starts off for a farm which is perhaps 100 miles inland. Once those in charge have left the port, they have to depend upon themselves alone for the carrying out of all repairs, during breakdowns, etc., until they come back to the port. Naturally they cannot carry much in the way of tools, and to enable any forging to be done, a wood fire has to be made on the side of the track.
The most-useful tools of all are the jacks, for the mostfrequent troubles consist of getting the engines bogged and of the turning over of the wagons.
The first day's journey, for the engine shown in the illustration if herewith, is over a. fairly-good piece of " pampa," though with several steep but short drops and rises, and it should end on the banks of the river at the
ford if all has gone well. The next day, the engine takes the wagon down to the edge of the ford, which is about 200 ft. wide, uncouples and passes through alone, trailing a long steel cable behind it, and comes out on the opposite bank. Then, working on dry land, the tractor pulls the wagons through one by one. It is a long job, for each time the cable has to be towed back across the river for the next wagon ; this is done either by a horse or by one of the men wading.
At first, the method was tried of sending the tractor across the ford with two wagons attached direct, and it then had to come back for the other two, hut the bottom was not solid enough, and no grip could he obtained. With a strong current coming down stream, it is often very hard to tell whether the tractor is actually moving or not, and, if the strain be so much that she does not get a grip on the bed, the driving wheels keeping on revolving, and dig a hole in a few seconds, and down she goes. As a rule it is sufficient to jack up the tractor, to fill up the holes level, and to take off the cable or to disconnect the wagons; she will then easily run out. The first time one of these tractors was properly bogged,
they left her in the hole and got 18 bullocks on to a long steel cable to pull her out. The cable broke and the machine had to atop there till they brought out another tractor from the port; then, by jacking up the tractor—as they should have done at first—she was easily pulled out. These tractors have been bogged several times at one particular " peso." Once a. tractor and the wagons got stuck during the high tides, and the engine was completely covered by water; it was there for more than a week, and, of course, a good deal of the cargo got washed away. At another " paso "—the first and only time that a tractor crossed, she was passing through, disconnected from her trailers, when she went through the gravel into the clay below, with her axle covered. This happened in the winter when there was ice on the water and when there were only two men on the train. They had two jacks and got to work with them on the engine; they got her up level and filled in the holes with gravel. When she wa.s started up again, and the clutch was let in, she threw out the gravel and sank in as badly as before. This had all taken three days, for, the water being so cold, the men had to work up to their waists in the water in their ordinary clothes, and, of course, they could not stop in for long spells. The second time that she was lifted, posts were put under her to make a solid bed, but she threw them all out behind and promptly sank again. So there were three more days gone. On the third attempt, she was lifted up and a strong bed of posts, lashed together, was put under. This time she got a grip and came out without any trouble at all.
After passing a river there is always a cariadon " to go up to get on to the pampa again ; some of these are very stiff indeed. The centre, or flat of these " cafladons" is usually washed out by the rains or by the rush of water down from the pampas when the break-up comes at the end of the winter and the snow begins to thaw, so that the tractor has to climb up the valley, not on the bottom or flat, but has to run up, working along the sides of the hill, so that as well as climbing she is on an incline sideways. Sometimes the engine is not able to take up more than one wagon at a time. Of course, if the climb he short, the tractor goes up alone and, when on the fiat, pulls up the remainder of the wagons by having a long cable attached and then running forward; none of these engines had a winding drum.
Very few accidents happened during these climbing operations ; what there were always happened coming down hill. The engines had no brakes at all, whilst putting the wagon brakes on caused skidding down the slope sideways into the ditch in the centre, . and that always meant an overturned wagon. Then two men had to clear away the cargo, jack back the wagon and load up again, doing whatever repairs were required. as best they could.
One tractor was corning down a " cafiadox " during the winter, when. it was freezing, and when the ground was as hard as iron and very rough; the acetylene searchlight was broken, so that one man had to walk in front carrying a small hurricane lamp, and the driver had to follow the light, as be could not see the road. A specially-bad piece of track was reached eventually, and the lamp was swung round to tell the engine driver to leave the track. But it was too late, the engine came into the ruts, bumped and then smashed. The ball-and-socket bearing and the connection between the front axle and the body of the tractor snapped; it was made of cast iron only, and, the metal being brittle owing to the cold, and the ruts heing frozen like stone, she was not able to stand the shock. The front axle came apart from the engine, but luckily the steering chains held the axle from running away from the body. The driver stopped the engine at once, but by this time she had overrun the front wheels, which were now loose, and. they were jambed under the hind driving wheels. There was a big gash in the cooler, and the girders of the body were cut where the wheels had hit, as the engine overran. Luckily there was an engine of the same type, broken down, at a farm about 45 miles away, so that one man rode over and took off the front-axle connection and brought it back to replace the broken one, and, by making fires of posts on the track, the broken and bent parts were fixed up, and in ten days she was off again with the wagons and cargo. It is climbing the stiff gradients that damages the tractors most. A part may not actually break, but it gets strained or cracked, and then, perhaps, running on the level " pampa " with a light load, it breaks. This type of engine at different times, broke the two steel girders which formed the body of the tractor the main driving wheels when climbing stiff gradients.
These engines, it will be seen, were of no use for the country they had been wanted to run over, and their mishaps only proved once again that an engine to take the place permanently of the bullocks, will have to be built specifically to suit the requirements of the country.—B.A.