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 heavy burden upon the frontier towns which had to bear the brunt of royalist attacks from the plateau, and the live-stock trade, the old source of supply and demand, the old relation- ships, the system of markets and fairs, had been badly dis- organized, There were a few sugar estates, there was a local trade with neighboring valleys and basins; that was about all. By slow stages the former commerce was partly restored. The need of mules in Bolivia and Peru continued to be met by the herds upon the Argentine pampas. By the middle of the nineteenth century the copper mines of Chile were in a flour- ishing condition and made a demand upon Argentine live stock similar to that which the mines of Upper Peru had made in the two centuries before. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the nitrate fields of Chile began their period of large output, and the effect of these two great mineral developments on the Chilean side of the cordillera was felt in every town along the eastern front of the Andes in Argentina. Laborers migrated to the Chilean fields, trade sprang up on all the con- necting trails, Chilean currency began to circulate freely on the eastern side of the mountains, and the economic condition of the border towns steadily improved. With the steacly increase of population on the pampas of Argentina and in the coast towns there was a constantly increasing demand for all sorts of raw materials from every outlying place where commercial facilities were sufficient to attract the resources roundabout.

As the interior towns grew and travel between them and the coast ports increased through the extension of the railways, a taste for goods of foreign manufacture was acquired. Coca from Bolivia and maté from the Chaco were brought into northern Argentina in large quantities. A steady stream of wool, goat and kid skins, hides and leather went from the northwest provinces to Bucnos Aires, and with the devclop- ment of overseas trade in meat and meat products the attrac- tion of the refrigerating plants of the Plata region was felt even in these remoter districts, so that today an item of in- creasing importance is the export of cattle to the plants along the Parana and Plata.

The early colonial route to Bolivia and Peru via Jujuy and