For a long while the party sat talking of their experiences on this trip, and of the Company and its prospects.  The travelling over this comparatively unknown land had been a revelation to most; the dormant wealth lying in the camp must be enormous, but men, money, and brains are needed to exploit it.  Unfortunately, it is still difficult to get colonists for these more northern districts, but when the railway which is contemplated becomes an accomplished fact, as it assuredly must, people will be attracted further north, colonisation will be easier, the land will yield its hundredfold, and some one will, in time, have performed the great deed of “making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.”  It may seem to those accustomed to the narrower life of towns, a lonely, empty life to spend one’s years and energies improving these wild lands; but assuredly the man who labours here with the best that is in him, not only earns a great reward for himself in the gradual development and growth of that land, but has deserved well of mankind in general, and will, some day, receive his “Well done,” than which there is no higher praise, as surely as those whose lives have been spent in the more public fields of civilisation or in military prowess.

For some, obscure reason it is generally supposed that the man who spends his life in agricultural pursuits is bound to have his mental abilities dulled by the continuous round of duties connected with the land and the care of animals.  The origin of this idea is difficult to imagine, unless it be that agriculture is the oldest and most necessary pursuit of mankind; but surely the man who has to keep a perpetual watch on wind, weather and workers, animal and vegetable kingdom and natural phenomena, and be ready to anticipate any change, besides being thoroughly in touch with all the latest improvements, mechanical and material, in reference to his calling, and conversant with the ruling prices in the best markets, cannot be held to be a man whose perceptions are becoming blunted by his business.  It is certainly true that there are many who do “let things go,” but that class is not confined to agriculturists alone, and in agriculture, as in all other callings, those who “let things slide” very shortly find that most things have slid away from them irrevocably.  Certainly the Argentine is no place for the man disinclined for exertion.  She holds rewards, and great rewards; but only for the resolute who are prepared to lead a strenuous and self-denying life of labour, exposure and fatigue, and who come to her determined to win the best from her rich lands, and to take every opportunity as it comes in their way for improving their knowledge.