The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

TOPOGEAPHY OF AEQENTINA. 441
arerage Englisli coal. Numerous beds have already been surveyed, and one layer
in the Eloim mine is no less than 13 feet thick.
All the indications seem to show that this coalfield stretches southwards under
the Jurassic strata as far as the Neuquen district. The same region contains
petroleum, alabasters, and limestones, valuable as building material. Moreover,
the ashes of the San Eafael coal have a large proportion of vanidium, the salts of
which are the best mordants for aniline dyes. But the best coal pits stand at a
great altitude, from 8,000 to 10,000 feet, and are covered with snow in winter.
Hence it would be difEcult to work them with profit before the Rio Diamante is
made navigable, and these elevated regions opened up by the railways now in
course of construction over the Cordilleras.
Towns of the Provinte of Sax Luis.
The province of San Luis, separated from that of Mendoza by the course of
the Desaguadero and of the Salado, comprises a portion of the central uplands
and stretches far into the southern deserts. It is one of the most thinly peopled
regions of Argentina, although abounding in mineral resources, and very fertile
in all its irrigable districts. It has also the advantage of lying between Cordoba
and Mendoza, and is consequently intersected by the main highway between the
Atlantic and the Pacific.
But of all the Argentine populations those of San Luis have suffered most
from the border warfare. For over 250 years, from the close of the sixteenth
century to the middle of the nineteenth century, the city of San Luis was the
advanced post of the Spaniards and Argentines against the Pampas Indians ; and
with such enemies the struggle was incessant, ilore than once the Indian horsemen
even advanced beyond San Luis, extending their incursions into the settled
districts, either as conquerors, or as allies of one or other of the Argentine factions.
Of aU the Hispano-American peoples none have taken a more active part in these
fratricidal conflicts, in which the youth of the country have been more than
decimated. Hence, even still the proportion of women is greatly in excess of the
men, despite the stream of immigration, in which the males always outnumber the
females.
City of Sax Lris
—
Villa Mercedes. .
Built in 1597 by Martin de Loyola, nephew of Ignatius Loyola, founder of
the Jesuit Order, San Luis was long known by the name of Pttufa de los Venudos,
from the bluff on which were erected the first houses ; hence the appellation of
Ptintanos, given to the inhabitants. The city stands at an altitude of 2,500 feet
on the slopes of the Punta, which commands an extensive prospect of the surround-
ing plains and mountains, limited westwards by the snowj- crests dominated by
Tupungato and the Cerro de Plata. A reservoir containing 420 million cubic