The question of joining the road on to a river was not of very great importance until the time when the Parana began to be used for Argentine imports and exports, and to maintain the communication of the interior provinces with Europe. This question of connection with a river controls the history of the construction of the railway system. But the great importance of it can be seen from the first half of the nineteenth century. D'Orbigny had a presentiment of it. Speaking of the future of Santa Fe, he says: "When peace is restored, it is certain that the wares of Cordoba may, instead of going by land from that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa Fe, where shipping them to the Argentine capital will reduce to one-third the journey by land, which is always more costly than going by water." Martin de Moussy, foreseeing the making of a road across the Chaco from Tucuman to the Parana, in the latitude of Corrientes, calculates that Corrientes may later serve as port for part of the west and north of Argentina. At the date of the publication of his book, however, it was neither Santa Fe nor Corrientes, but the new town Rosario, that began to play the part of interior port, and led to the construction of a new system of roads. Traffic between Rosario and Cordoba at first followed the old road from Buenos Aires to Peru, which one struck after leaving Rosario and making a detour to the south-west, on the right bank of the Carcarana (at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary was presently replaced by a direct road to the west-northwest, following the line which the railways would adopt.[110] [110] Between 1852 and 1862, during the period when relations were suspended between the Argentine Confederation and Buenos Aires, there was a beginning of a general reorganization of the roads in harmony with the new political conditions. The road from Santa Fe and Parana to Concepcion (in Uruguay) across the Entre Rios tablelands, and from there to Montevideo, had owed its initial importance to the closing of the lower Parana under Rosas, and Woodbine Parish records that there was already a good deal of smuggling there. This road became an essential artery when Parana made itself the federal capital under Urquiza. He intended to connect Parana with the western provinces, and he created a mail service from Santa Fe to Cordoba. Ephemeral as the good fortune of Parana was, its influence on the organization of the roads of Argentina was too material to be ignored by the geographer.