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 From labor gatherers, missionaries, and railway engincers of different nationalities whom [ interviewed, both here and elsewhere in Argentina, and who have had first-hand experi- ence in cattle driving, cattle purchase, and the gathering of laborers, | have obtained an average estimate of fifty or sixty thousand Indians as the population of the whole of the Chaco from the Corumbaé-Santa Cruz line southward to the Bermejo. Even if we multiply this by three we have a very limited population and one that will have to be conserved and strengthened in order to make possible the development of either the Chaco or its borderlands. It is of the utmost impor- tance that the governments concerned and also the contractors for the sugar estates and ranches should understand the labor problem clearly. Imported labor cannot be depended upon until settlement is more or less continuous and the conditions of life far easier than they are today. It is the native laborer rather than the immigrant that must do the rough work. To demoralize the native Indian's social life, to destroy his energy with brandy, to take his lands without offering him a certain amount of fostering care, is to bring about his end and to check development along the whole of this important frontier,

On the way back from Embarcacién I was particularly in- terested in the Bermejo River and at the crossing noticed rafts in process of construction for the taking of merchandise down river at times of high water to towns on the river bank. These are small settlements scattered here and there, and, according to the experienced merchants whom | saw, their supplies come almost wholly in this way. The men who take the rafts down- stream sell the lumber at the settlements and come back over- land. None of these towns exceed fifteen hundred inhabitants in size. At the mouth of the Bermejo, where it runs into the Paraguay, is Puerto Bermejo.

Small river steamers go up the Bermejo about 300 miles to trade with the settlements and towns. Twenty-ton steamers go up 250 miles, as far as Juntas, where the Teuco and the old