In the valleys watered by the Jujuy and its tributaries, as in many other parts of the republic, the indigo grows wild, and the sugar-cane and tobacco are extensively cultivated, the two latter being produced in sufficient quantity not only for the consumption of the whole of the province of Salta, but for exportation to the rest of the upper provinces, and occasionally to Chile. Cotton, also, is grown there in considerable quantities, and of a quality which would be prized in the markets of Europe,--as indeed would be nearly all the valuable productions of this highly-favoured region. Although in this, as in every other part of the republic, the want of population may be considered as the great drawback to the full development of its natural resources, the Salteños, and especially those in the eastern districts of the province, obtain assistance to a considerable extent in the cultivation of their lands from the Indians of the Mataco nation, who live upon the shores of the Vermejo, below the junction of the Jujuy. These Indians, now an independent people, acknowledging no other authority than that of their own Caciques, were in former times reduced, in a certain degree, to civilised habits by the Jesuits, the fruits of whose influence are still perceptible in their occasional intercourse with their Christian neighbours, amongst whom they repair at the seasons of sowing and harvest to barter their service in labour in exchange for articles of clothing, and beads and baubles for their women. They are very industrious, and in the allotment of work will undertake double the daily task of the Creoles:--the payment they receive for a month's work is from ten to fifteen yards of very coarse cloth or baize, the cost of which at Salta may be about a quarter of a Spanish dollar, or about a shilling a yard:--with this and their food they are perfectly content, and, at a similar rate, any number of them might be induced to leave their own haunts periodically to work in the sugar and tobacco plantations of the Spaniards. I was told by an Englishman, long resident at Oran, that many hundreds of them are yearly engaged at the rate above stated to get in the crops in the vicinity of that place.