"The works at the present time are sufficiently advanced to provide berths for some 15 vessels. A channel of sufficient breadth all along the frontage has been dredged so that large vessels drawing 24 feet or more can now manoeuvre without stranding on sand or mud banks, as was formerly the case. The entire port can provide loading berths for about 40 vessels and for 20 to 25 vessels to discharge. The change that has been effected along the river frontage in the short space of four years is remarkable, and when the works are completed Rosario will possess one of the best ports in the country, with excellent storage accommodation attached. The contract price for constructing the port was fixed at 60,000,000 fr., but a much larger sum will have been expended before completion, exclusive of grain elevators and other works which the Company is undertaking estimated at 17,000,000 fr." (Consular Report, July, 1908). [145] "Now at last in our day progress is being made in the great neglected central zone watered by the Paraná, and here, as has been shown, the main line of advance will still be south and north. For if we accept the statement that mountains are the true frontiers of nations then the reverse also holds true, and the valleys that connect them are their best and natural highways. So when the railroads which already link Patagonia to Paraguay extend further along the great 'llanos' overshadowed by the Andes, right up to a navigable port on the Amazon, they will strengthen, better than any words or treaties, the ties of rational trade and intercourse between the republics whose hinterlands meet in the Paraná watershed" (W. S. Barclay, _Ibid_.). [146] "Coleccion de Obras," iii. 121. [147] The Rio Salado. [148] "The future of Santa Fé is rather in agriculture, the raising of hogs, and the production of butter and cheese, than in the old-fashioned system of stock-raising, which has already become an employment for which the land gives a scant return, and which, moreover, will become absolutely impossible at no distant date, when the price of land rises still further" (Latzina, "Géographie," p. 239). [149] MacCann, "Two Thousand Miles' Ride," ii. 32. CHAPTER XXII THE GRAN CHACO AND THE NORTHERN TOWNS