The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

TOPOGRAPET OF AEGEXTINA. 457
To reach the Xeuquen district from Buenos Ayres the traveller has first to
take the railway as far as Mendoza under the mountains, and then the diligence
to San Rafael, beyond which point the journey has to be continued for some 300
miles on foot or on horseback, over hills and valleys, across torrents and almost
trackless forests. Or he may take an alternative route by starting from the
station of Hiical, a settlement in the wilderness communicating by rail with Bahia
Blanca. Beyond Hucal the track crosses the solitudes to the Rio Negro, which
may then be followed to the region of its head-streams.
A few military posts founded in the Upper Neuquen basin have served as so
many little centres of colonisation, and a number of stockbreeders have established
themselves in the neighbourhood. In the Rio Limay vallev also the zone of
pastures has already received some settlers, and here vast tracts of land have been
conceded to the officers of the military expedition, by which this region was first
occupied in 1865.
C/ws-2I(ih/, administrative capital of the territory, forms a little cluster of
houses at the confluence of the Leubu with the Xeuquen, where the main stream
begins to be navigable for smaU craft. Norquen, another liitle settlement about
18 miles to the south-west, stands on the banks of the Rio Agrio, which here
escapes from a breached crater. In the immediate vicinity are seen the Copahue
thermal and mineral springs bubbling up at an altitude of 10,000 feet, and at
temperatures varying from 10-1° to 207" Fahr.
Farther south Junin de los Andes, the Huinca MeUeu of the Indians, has been
founded at an elevation of 2,230 feet in the Rio Chemen Huin Valley within view
of the magnificent cypress and beech forests, which have already been attacked
by the woodman. The lumber is floated down in rafts to Carmen de Patagones.
Junin has the advantage of lying near a relatively low pass over the great
Cordillera leading directly down to Yaldivia, chief market of these Andean
settlements.
The whole region from San Rafael to the Nahuel-Huapi is the " Switzerland of
Argentina," a land of majestic moimtains, of bright Alpine vegetation, of limpid
running waters. Near the Lonquimay volcano, commanding one of the more
frequented passes between the Neuquen and Biobio Valleys, a geyser of blue
water is ejected to a height of about 50 feet from an extinct crater whose
encircling margin is now covered with ice.
Below this upland basin the few stations on the Limay, and lower down on
the Rio Negro proper to the neighbourhood of its estuary, are all of military
origin. This rainless zone has naturally failed to attract free settlers, although
Roca, below the Neuquen-Limay confluence, stands on an allu\-ial plain extremely
productive wherever capable of irrigation. But the canals run dry in summer,
and the fields are often ravaged by locusts. A small steamer ascends the river
from Carmen to Roca during the floods, from July to February.
Beyond the Rio Negro in the direction of the south follows the valley of the
Chubut, which has scarcely any white settlers except near the estuary. Since
1888, however, a few English, Chilian, and Argentine cattle-breeders have