30 NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA 



Freedom of trade was secured between Buenos Aires 

 and the Spanish ports. The export of hides increased. 

 The influence of Buenos Aires spread over the interior 

 and, in spite of the Cordoba tariff, reached the 

 regions of the north-west. " The creation of the vice- 

 royalty," says Dean Funes, " and the new direc- 

 tion taken by commerce had the effect that Buenos 

 Aires became the centre of considerable and important 

 business."! 



This commercial development, which seemed destined 

 to bring closer together the two halves of Argentinian 

 territory, was interrupted in the first half of the nine- 

 teenth century. This did not, however, break the 

 connections between the provinces to the north-west 

 of the tableland and those on the Pacific slope, and 

 indeed, they became more varied and more binding. 

 Packs of mules, carrying the ore of San Juan and La 

 Rioja to the foundries of the Chilean side, added 

 life to the Cordillera. When Chile, transformed into 

 an agricultural country, could not meet its own 

 demand for cattle, the oases of the Argentine side were 

 sown with lucerne for fattening the cattle which were 

 to cross the mountains. The provinces of Mendoza, 

 San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Tucuman, and Salta 

 were held within the orbit of the Andes districts.^ 

 There are historical reasons for this set-back to the 

 influence of Buenos Aires. The wars of the revolu- 

 tionary period and the conflicts between the Buenos 

 Aires Government and the maritime powers checked 

 the commercial enterprise on the banks of the Plata. 

 This political isolation of the province of Buenos 

 Aires, under the Rosas Government, lasted until 1853. 

 Poncel gives us statistics of the imports of Catamarca 



• D. Gregorio Funes, Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos 

 Aires, y Tucuman (Buenos Aires, 3 vols., 1816). 



» The Woodbine Parish map (1839) puts Tinogasta eighty miles 

 out of its proper position, at the very foot of the Come Caballos range, 

 thus reducing by one half its distance from Copiapo, on the Chilean 

 slope. 



