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 growing nitrate industry in Chile which draws thither an important transmontane trace; the more rapid development of mining since the introduction of the railroad, and a host of minor and local causes.

Because it is the capital of the province in which these economic changes have been most marked, Salta has been transformed in the last twenty years. From a mountain vil- lage it has developed into a fair-sized city. The population of the city according to the census of 1895 was 16,672; the last census gives 28,436, of whom 4505 are aliens. The Departa- mento of the capital had 16,887 in 1869; 20,361 in 1895; 33,636 in 1914. Salta’s people were once untraveled, and its streets were filled with pack trains bearing supplies that were in large part bartered rather than sold. Even its merchandise only a few decades ago came largely from across the cordillera, where Chilean railroads gave easier access to important commercial routes. Now it has a street-car line, big business houses, at least four large banks, and a considerable number of really modern dwellings. He who has visited Europe is no longer pointed out as a distinguished person. The dresses of the women are nearly as modest as those to be seen on the streets of New York. One of the most elegant clubhouses in Argentina faces the well-kept plaza. The life of the people in a score of ways has taken on a degree of comfort and luxury hitherto almost unknown.

Salta lies on the floor of an intermont basin (just under 4000 feet above sea level) between two streams bordered by marshy tracts, or fagaretes, crossed by selected roadways. It is not at the end of the railway. This extends still farther west and south to the terminal station of Rosario de Lerma, a little town of slight commercial consequence with no modern merchan- dising facilities. It is at Salta that the business of the railway has its first marked development. There is first of all the ex- change of commodities as in any frontier town on the border of two unlike regions. Flour is brought from Buenos Aires, sugar