The district round the Zapala ranch has become very busy since the construction of the railway, which has deeply affected the conditions of life there. It has made a sort of capital of Zapala. It is curious to contrast the renaissance which has followed upon the appearance of the railway in this district with the much less material changes which it has made at Maquinchao. The life which the railway concentrates at Zapala includes not only the wool trade, as at Maquinchao, but also the cattle trade. The herds which are to be exported gather round the ranch at the same time as the _tropas_ of wagons, and a good price is paid for the right of pasturage. While the Maquinchao line ends at the port of San Antonio, which is merely fitted up for the export of wool, the Zapala railway feeds the refrigerator at Bahia Blanca. It joins up with the network of railways of the Pampa. Sheep arrive at Zapala, not only from the surrounding district and from the Neuquen, but from a good part of the Rio Negro, and even the Chubut. The convoys of animals coming from the south find it best to keep near the Cordillera, where the pasturage is better. Only a few of them descend the Limay as far as Senillosa. From Zapala to Senillosa there is no suitable road in connection with the railway, and further east it is necessary to go as far as Choele Choel to find tracks which lead to it. The exporting of the sheep lasts five months, from November to March. Zapala station is also a point of convergence of herds of cattle. There are people at Zapala who still remember the time when the cattle brought from the Pampa to go to Chile passed through their valley. Although these exports of Pampean cattle to Chile ceased after 1885, the whole Andean region of the Neuquen still lived entirely on the Chilean market until very recently. The attraction of the Chilean market is one of the reasons for the survival of transhumation. It was to the advantage of the Argentine breeders to keep near the Cordillera and the passes through which the buyers came from Chile in the summer. The life of the small centres in the upper valleys which developed rapidly after the conquest (Chosmalal, Norquin, Codihue, Junin, and San Martin) was bound up with the Chilean cattle trade, and was reflected on the opposite side of the Andes in the prosperity of the corresponding markets in Chile.