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 tains into Argentina diminished, and the effect was felt upon the four principal towns of the Tinogasta region, where Penck has noted signs of decay owing to the diminished use of the two ancient trade routes which converge here, the one coming from Copiapé and the other from Antofagasta de la Sierra.

What we have here is a reorganization of the commercial life of a group of mountain communities widely dispersed but having well established relations and customs that have come down to the present almost from the time of the Conquest. With the first development of trade in South America, routes were discovered whose trade has become imbedded in the commercial life of the people to such an extent that when that trade is relocated it produces a shock upon every community involved. That shock the moder railroad has supplied. It isa matter not merely of romantic interest but also of great geo- graphical importance to trace the old trade routes and to study the trade that passed over them. The more this is done the closer is seen to be the relation between the physical circum- stances of a region and the life in it as it has been lived for centuries,

But there has been at work a reorganizing agency still more powerful than the railway—the large commercial companies that were called into being by the railway and have become a new instrument for the development of mines and ranches. At Salta, for example, the merchants tap the cattle-raising districts of the Gran Chaco, sending their product in part southward by rail and largely westward over the mountains to the nitrate desert. In spite of the hardships of the mountain journey, the cattle arrive in such condition as to be acceptable to the workmen of the nitrate pampa; and there is no freight charge, thus offsetting the loss in weight which the herds incur in traversing so trying a region. Mining companics requiring labor, mules, forage, food, and materials of various kinds have shifted the interests of the people, giving them a new orientation with respect to the outer world, new duties, and a measure of self-indulgence through prosperity that they