The surface of La Rioja has two general aspects; one part is broken and mountainous and the other an immense plain, needing, as has been said, only labour and irrigation to yield rich agricultural results. The one important river of the Province is the Bermejo. The mineral wealth of this Province lies almost if not entirely exclusively, in its mountainous districts.
JUJUY
Jujuy has its very special interest for the Anglo-Saxon race, since it affords, in the history of the Leach family, a striking example of the colonizing enterprise and patience of that race.
Look at the position of Jujuy on the map and imagine what colonizing must have been like in the middle of last century when the brothers Leach first settled in what has since become a Province, but then was a wild district inhabited by native Indians.
One of the brothers, especially, Mr. Walter Leach, seems to have exercised a peculiar and highly beneficial influence over these people, and managed to introduce ideas of industry and gradual civilization to tribes whose former lives had been mostly occupied with warfare one with another.
Now we may almost say that “Leach” is synonymous with “Jujuy” and vice versa, and enterprises initiated by this family now embrace all branches of industry of which the Province is yet capable, including large sugar plantations and machinery. Now, the National Central Northern Argentine Railway connects Jujuy with the outer world, but before its advent it was indeed a far-off land to be reached only after many weeks’ arduous journeying. Jujuy is the most distant and, after Tucumán, the smallest Province of the Republic.
It is bounded on the North and North-West by Bolivia, on the West by the National Territory of Los Andes and on the South and East by the Province of Salta.
Jujuy produces not inconsiderable quantities of wheat, maize, barley and alfalfa and, as has been said, sugar.
In the North it has a number of salt lakes, which are exploited commercially, as also are some deposits of borax.
The climate of Jujuy is very varied, according to altitude, but in general is much more temperate than the actual latitude of the Province would lead one to suppose. There is always a considerable rainfall during hot weather. Its chief river is the Rio Grande de Humahuaca, a tributary of the Bermejo, which coming from the North curves in a semicircle through the Central and South-Eastern parts of the Province.