The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen in the present completion of the system which has developed freely on the even surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the port of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario and Bahia Blanca. What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the railway map will be found on closer examination to be less perfect; while the Atlantic coast between La Plata and Bahia Blanca has no ports, the Parana has quite a number of suitable places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and Villa Constitucion are served by lines which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos Aires. This complexity of the system west of the Parana continues to the north of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa Fe cut across all the lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the southern frontier of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea, etc.) have, unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the Parana, all their traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanco the crops of the districts they cross. They are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not rival lines. When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized and covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy of colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos Mejia has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since the beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction of the Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines penetrating the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia and Formosa, and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add the line from Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a Government subvention.[113] These lines, serving districts with little population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time make any profit.[114] [113] The line from Bahia Blanca to the Rio Negro, of which the Neuquen line is a continuation, was constructed in 1896.