across the Desert of Atacama to the port of Cobija. The routes were approximately the same length, 500 miles, requiring about twenty days for accomplishment. Both were arduous. Between Salta and the Pacific seaboard intervene the cold desert of the puna (Fig. 87) and the warm desert of the coast. Throughout the routes water, fodder, and fuel are only en- countered at intervals. The reports of the first Spanish cross- ing of this region, Almagro's famous journey to Copiapé, viv- idly detail the perils of the road. Yet, despite the hardships, the routes were shorter and communication less interrupted and cheaper via the Pacific than the Atlantic. Page,[1] of the United States Naval Expedition of 1859, investigated naviga- tion on the Rio Salado (Santiago Province) and estimated that if practicable it would reduce the round trip from Salta to Rosario (distant 350 leagues by road) from eight or ten months to two months and the expenses by half. At the time of his investigation freight charges along this route amounted to $2.00-$2.50 per arroba (25 Ibs.), while from Cobija on the western side of the broad and cold Andean uplift and the try- ing coastal desert they ranged from $1.50 to $2.00.
Salta has not yet been in touch with outside markets long enough to have more than begun the development of its agri- cultural and forestal resources. Its tributary streams of com- merce are still of the casual, primitive sort that lacks both organization and development. The haciendas of the Lerma valley on the west where the railroad ends, the possibilities of the Calchaqui valley and of the plains country naturally tributary to the town are in a state of mere beginning. These valleys are adapted to a wide range of temperate, subtropical, and tropical products. In addition to them are the smaller tributary areas, the stock-raising establishments in the many regions that are now developed to a slight extent only. We may take by way of illustration the upper Calchaqui valley at the border of the Puna de Atacama (Fig. 66, p. 208).
- ↑ T. J. Page: La Plata, the Argentine Confederation, and Paraguay, New York, 1850, p. 414.
