Long before the development of the sugar industry on a large scale, there was a typically urban life, added to the common fund of pastoral life, at Tucuman. The neighbouring cantons of the scrub--Trancas, Burruyacu, and Graneros--sent cattle and mules to Peru and Chile, like the other Argentine plains. But Tucuman drew still greater profit from its position as chief stage on the high road to Peru, at the point where the plain passes into the mountain. Primitive Tucuman was an excellent type of high-road village. The road determined its position at the point where the Sali had to be crossed. The first site of the town, near Monteros, was abandoned in the eighteenth century, when the high road to Peru settled in the sub-Andean region and ceased to run through the Calchaqui valley. The road sustained its chief industries, tanning and harness-making for the muleteers of the Andes, and waggon-making for the _troperos_ of the plain. The road and the people travelling along it afforded an outlet for its wheat and flour, and facilitated the export of its tobacco to the coast-provinces. The waggon-owners were really contractors, conveying stuff at their own cost. Moreover, part of Bolivia came to make its purchases at the shops (_tiendas_) of Tucuman, and the merchants of the town took in exchange Bolivian ore for export. Thus the road built up a nucleus of available capital at Tucuman. This capital was invested, at the close of the nineteenth century, in sugar; and it has increased a hundredfold. Most of the works still belong to old families of the town. The sugar-region is comparatively small. It covers an area which has exceptional climatic features, owing to the vicinity of Mount Aconcagua. While the higher chains of the Andes further north are separated from the Chaco plain by lower ranges, on which the east winds leave their stores of moisture less freely, Tucuman has on its west the great mass of Aconcagua. It rises, a giant landmark, at the beginning of the plains, from which there is nothing to separate it, and gathers the clouds round it. [Illustration: THE VALLE OF SANTA MARIA, NORTH-WEST OF MOUNT ACONCAGUA. _At the bottom of the valle one can see the sandy bed of the river as a white line in the foreground. Zone of torrential terraces, which follows the edge of the valle._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA. _At the western foot of Aconcagua, the snowy crest of which can be seen._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE VI. To face p. 70.]