Argentina Part 20

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF CHRIST.]

FOOTNOTES:

[140] "If a man could but bear an indolent life, there can be no spot upon earth where he might be more indolent and more independent than at Mendoza, for he might sleep all day, and eat ices in the evening, until his hour-gla.s.s was out. Provisions are cheap, and the people who bring them quiet and civil; the climate is exhausting, and the whole population indolent" (Head, "Rough Notes," pp. 70, 71).

[141] See Mrs. Mulhall's "Between the Amazon and Andes," pp. 127-31.

[142] "When one hears of a natural bridge, one pictures to oneself some deep and narrow ravine, across which a bold ma.s.s of rock has fallen; or a great arch hollowed out like the vault of a cavern.

Instead of this, the Inca's Bridge consists of a crust of stratified shingle, cemented together by the deposits of the neighbouring hot-springs. It appears as if the stream had scooped out a channel on one side, leaving an overhanging ledge, which was met by earth and stones falling down from the opposite cliff. Certainly an oblique junction, as would happen in such a case, was very distinct on one side. The Bridge of the Incas is by no means worthy of the great monarchs whose name it bears" (Darwin, "Voyage of the _Beagle_," chap.

xv.).

CHAPTER XXI

THE PARANA, ROSARIO, AND SANTA Fe

The Parana is one of the most magnificent rivers in the world. It was in the earliest times the most valuable route for the Spaniards into the interior, as is shown by the fact that while they were struggling for a foothold at Buenos Aires, and several times abandoned the settlement altogether, they were in possession of a flourishing colony in Asuncion. Up to recent times few immigrants thought of going to Entre Rios or Corrientes because of the difficulties of the journey, but now there is a train-ferry across the Parana, and there will soon be railway connection with the capital of Paraguay. The territory, highly favoured by nature, will in course of time be one of the richest parts of Argentina.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLON, ENTRE RIOS.]

It is impossible accurately to estimate the total course of the river, but its length is between 2,100 and 2,800 miles. In its upper part it receives many large tributaries--the Pardo, Paranahyba, Tiete, Paranapanema, Ivahy, and Iguazu. In the north the falls impede navigation, but it is practicable for vessels of 300 tons as far as the Island of Apipe, which is 150 miles above its junction with the river Parana. Lower down its only important tributary is the Rio Salado. At Rosario its breadth is 20 miles, and it would present the appearance of the sea but for a group of islands which stand in the mid-channel and limit the view. The railways of Argentina are greatly indebted to the Parana, which brought down enormous quant.i.ties of quebracho lumber to be used as railway sleepers, and the various lines now take 2,000,000 hard-wood sleepers from the Chaco yearly. At Posadas 8,000 or 10,000 hands are needed to handle the _yerba_ and lumber trade of the Alto Parana, and these are difficult to obtain, for the southern regions have not sufficient labourers to supply their own wants. Since 1902 more than 9,000 Russians and Poles have settled at Apostoles, near Posadas, and arrangements have been made to settle 3,000 Finns in the same neighbourhood. But at present the south attracts most of the European immigrants, and it is difficult to get the native, who inhabits the upper basins, to work, on account of his low standard of living and the exuberant fertility of the soil. Mr.

Barclay thinks that this fine country will for an indefinite period be exploited only by traders, and does not expect to see them properly colonised within the limits of the present century. He suggests Chinese or j.a.panese colonists; but these people are already greatly disliked in Chile, nor is it likely that they would be more welcome in Argentina. It would be infinitely better that the vast forests should continue to be inhabited by savage Indians than that one of the n.o.blest of European races should be tainted with yellow blood. It would be far preferable to imitate the excellent example of the Jesuits, and teach the Indians habits of industry, in which case they would multiply and rapidly become civilised.

[Ill.u.s.tration: QUAY ON THE RIVER URUGUAY.]

Possibly the hasty traveller of to-day loses something by the development of the railways, for he naturally takes the quick train in preference to the slow steamboat. Rosario is only 186 miles from Buenos Aires, and the journey occupies some seven hours on the Central Argentine Railway, which for comfort is all that can be desired. The officials (English) are most obliging; there is good sleeping and dining accommodation, and the managers are most anxious to show the traveller all that is to be seen; nor is this surprising, for everything is of the best. It could only be wished that the railway companies would start terminus hotels in the large towns in order that the pa.s.sengers might not abandon comfort when they quit the railway carriage; but probably the local caterers would object.

Rosario is the second city in the Republic, and is certainly one of the most remarkable. Founded in 1725 by Don Francisco G.o.doy as a settlement for the subjugated Calchaqui Indians, it was in 1854 but an insignificant town. It was then made a port of entry by General Urquiza, and has prospered exceedingly. In 1870 it had a population of 21,000, in 1883 of 45,000, while in 1900 it stood at 112,000.

At the present time it must contain considerably more than 180,000 inhabitants. In 1900 the imports were valued at 1,913,803 and the exports at 5,851,239, while in 1907 the figures were 6,397,579 and 7,301,398 respectively. It is the chief port for wheat, maize, and linseed,[143] but possibly, as the south is developed, it may be surpa.s.sed as a grain port by Bahia Blanca. On the other hand, as the north is colonised Rosario will receive the princ.i.p.al share of the increased trade. The great project now is to bring the n.o.ble waterways of the Plate into railway communication with the still more gigantic system of the Amazon. Then Rosario will undoubtedly rival the huge cities in the northern continent, which have thriven by the trade brought down the Mississippi and the Missouri. Great sums have been spent on the harbour of Rosario and a fine electric lift has been erected, but the navigation of the Parana and its affluents suffers from floods and erosion, and it has been questioned whether elaborate and expensive appliances are necessary.[144] However, Rosario remains a favourite port, and large vessels load and unload there.

In one respect Rosario produces a much more pleasant impression than Buenos Aires, for its streets are wide and it has large parks. The Calle Cordoba is an extremely handsome thoroughfare with good shops. There is a busy Bolsa, many fine public buildings, and much-frequented cafes.

Large hotels have sprung up, and, it may be hoped, will in course of time become comfortable. The people of Rosario have taken great pains in the laying out of their town and have provided for plenty of open s.p.a.ces and boulevards. The new park is very beautiful, and handsome private dwellings are being erected in the vicinity, but although there appears to be no scarcity of sites, rents are said to be ruinously high. Rosario has suffered more than any other town from munic.i.p.al imposts, and at the beginning of 1909 the traders went on strike, with beneficial results.

Complaints are also made that this great provincial town has its interests subordinated to the small provincial capital of Santa Fe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROSARIO, THE LAW COURTS.]

However, these affairs are mere inconveniences which cannot impair the town's prosperity. Here, as is customary in the Argentine, the English are greatly in evidence and occupy an important place in the business life. They have a pleasant Club and are very hospitable. Rosario has also an advantage over Buenos Aires in being naturally more open and picturesque. It is built on the bank of the Parana, some 300 feet high, and a fine view is obtained of the great waterway and the far-off, poplar-clad islands. The climate is said to be more relaxing than that of the capital, but the difference is not great. When Rosario has got rid of its new and unfinished appearance it will be an extremely pleasant place of residence.

Perhaps the most interesting sight in Rosario and one that best marks its progress on the stage to greatness is the workshop of the Central Argentine Railway. When it is considered that as yet only a beginning has been made with railway communications in South America, and yet here is a great industry engaged in repairing numberless engines and building vast numbers of carriages, imagination can hardly place a limit to the greatness of Rosario as a railway centre when Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia shall have through communication with Buenos Aires and Rosario. These countries, with the greater part of the Argentine Gran Chaco, represent to the Province of Buenos Aires what the West represented to the Eastern States of North America seventy years ago, but instead of being chiefly wheat and cattle countries (all of which Buenos Aires already has in abundance) they contain the priceless tropical products which from time immemorial have been the main objects of trade. And, again, the mines of Bolivia and Brazil, the best of which are unworked, probably unknown, will pour their wealth down the basin of the Parana.[145] It is said that Brazil has coal equal in quality to that of Yorkshire, and if this could be brought cheaply into Argentina one main impediment to her manufacturing efficiency would be removed.

The Central Argentine is an English company, and thus our traders have a great advantage in Argentina, as the English railways naturally buy engines and stores from home. The Rosario workshop turns out carriages and effects every kind of repair, but the locomotives are imported. An engine made at Hunslet in 1875 is still doing good work, whereas American engines go to the sc.r.a.p-heap in three years. Those of Kitson, of Leeds, are of everlasting wear, and much of the work of Byer, Peac.o.c.k, Manchester, and of George Stephenson, Darlington, is to be seen at Rosario. Some of the engines and machinery at the forge are American, but Butler and Co., of Halifax, are prominent. Of the carriages some come from Milwaukee, some from Birmingham, but now a very large proportion is made in the workshops. Most of the workmen appear to be Spaniards or Italians, but in better positions Irishmen are numerous; in fact, on St. Patrick's Day hotel accommodation can hardly be obtained at Rosario, and the Irish and Scotch language is spoken with perfect purity by men who have never been outside the boundaries of the Republic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CALLE CORDOBA, ROSARIO.]

In another place an account will be given of the Central Argentine Railway, and the other lines by which the town is well served, but it may here be mentioned that the English company, like its rival lines in the country, has been doing its utmost to develop the district with which it is concerned, and a considerable part of the port accommodation is due to its enterprise. It has constructed a wharf which can contain five large steamers in single line, and owns more than a mile and a half of river-front in a convenient position for shipping grain. Besides this the Company possesses the port of Villa Const.i.tucion, 32 miles from Rosario, and it is being rapidly developed. In 1907 this port was entered by British ships with a tonnage of 80,457, and German with a tonnage of 15,838. Much of the prosperity of Rosario--and its advance is very rapid--is due to its excellent railways. The town has every natural advantage and possesses an industrious and enterprising community which would be one of the most favoured in the world if its government were better.

Santa Fe, the capital of the Province, is a comparatively insignificant town with about thirty thousand inhabitants. It is an old place, dating from 1573, and thus is really more ancient than Buenos Aires. Padre Pedro Lozano[146] states: "Garay founded the city of Santa Fe upon a delightful plain and by the same river,[147] three leagues from the Parana. This port afforded admirable shelter to vessels of all kinds and the soil was extremely fertile, rendering with bounteous increase all the seeds entrusted to it. There was abundance of game and fish and there was a large population round about consisting of many nationalities and of widely different languages, but these tribes are now quite extinct, and a genuine Indian of the country is hardly ever to be seen in these days. The lat.i.tude of this city was originally 31, but owing to inconveniences for land trade which afterwards manifested themselves, and to the unfriendly att.i.tude of the heathen, the site was shifted in the year 1660 to a more convenient position on the river Salado, and three leagues distant from the great river Parana. The lat.i.tude of the new site was 31 58' and its longitude 47."

Santa Fe is the seat of a Bishop and possesses a Jesuit Church and College, which dates back to 1654. Sixty years ago a traveller described it as a pleasant town with fifteen thousand inhabitants, and the population seems to have increased very little until quite recent years, for it has never had any prominent industries[148] and must always be greatly inferior to Rosario, although the older city is the capital. Like Head at Mendoza, the observer was struck by the practice of promiscuous river-bathing. He thus describes the town[149]: "The city occupies a large s.p.a.ce of ground; for, like all the towns in this country, a considerable portion is planted as fruit gardens. The houses are either flat-roofed, or covered with tiles, and only one storey in height. A majority of them were built without any provision for gla.s.s windows; the light and air being admitted only through apertures fitted with an open framework of wood, having strong shutters inside; neither are there fireplaces in the houses. There are four large churches, one of which, built in 1834, is remarkable for its solidity and fine proportions. It consists of a nave and aisles, separated by square pillars supporting arches; light is admitted from the windows of a clerestory. It contains a beautiful baptismal font of silver, with four richly carved holy-water fonts. The high altar is in the Gothic style, and enriched with gilding."

As remarked before, Santa Fe is not a city of remarkable prosperity.

The building of small river craft is an industry of some importance, but the main occupation of its inhabitants is the export of quebracho wood. In 1907 the shipments were 174,126 tons. The river here gives considerable trouble and requires constant dredging, but a new port is rapidly approaching completion, when it will be possible for vessels with a draught of 20 feet to enter.

The great river country to the north is full of interest, but reference can only be made to one subject--the famous Falls of Iguazu.

These Falls were known and described by Padre Lozano, but political troubles and the general backwardness of the north after the expulsion of the Jesuits caused them to be forgotten. Now the Government is alive to the possibilities of using them as a great national "lion,"

and a commission some years ago was appointed to survey the route and make it more accessible. As yet not much has been done in that direction, but the journey to and from Buenos Aires can be made in less than a fortnight, and a rest-house has been provided. The traveller starts from Buenos Aires in a steamboat and proceeds up the Plate and Uruguay Rivers to Concordia. There he leaves the river and takes train to Corrientes, where he re-embarks in a steamer, and, pa.s.sing up the Rio Alta Parana to Posadas, makes his way far north to the confines of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, where the Falls are.

The Rio Iguazu joins the Parana at the place of disembarkation, and there is a long ride through the forest to the Falls. Twelve miles from the junction with the Parana there is a sudden bend, and the river makes its mighty leap of 210 feet. These are the Brazilian Falls, but lower down there are two other magnificent cascades, each of 100 feet, which fall into a narrow gorge. These are the Argentine Falls and are about 10,000 feet distant from the Brazilian. At the highest point the width of the river is 3,000 feet, but the gorge into which the magnificent columns of water finally discharge themselves is no more than 400 feet wide, and the volume of the discharge is greatly increased in the rainy season. The spectacle is no less magnificent than that of Niagara. As a mere discharge of water in a single sheet the North American fall is more impressive, but the beauty of the Argentine scene is enhanced by the luxuriant forests, and the long-drawn-out course of the foaming stream amid its sylvan scenery is unmatched.

Some day, no doubt, there will be a fashionable watering-place within the sound of the roaring waters, with great hotels and a casino, but now the Falls are, like all the rest of the vast region, an almost unknown place. The great rivers offer the finest waterway, and nothing is required but men and energy to make this borderland a country of fabulous wealth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE IGUAZU FALLS.]

FOOTNOTES:

[143] Rosario exported in 1907--

Wheat 2,850,000 tons Linseed 580,000 "

Maize 1,400,000 "

[144] "The new port at Rosario is admittedly no improvement on the old system of delivering wheat by shoots from the barrancas down to vessels moored to wooden stages in deep channel. In a word, the means of access from sh.o.r.e to river are most permanently effective when capable of adaptation to the shifting character of the stream" (W. S.

Barclay, _Geog. Journ._, Jan., 1909).

"The works at the present time are sufficiently advanced to provide berths for some 15 vessels. A channel of sufficient breadth all along the frontage has been dredged so that large vessels drawing 24 feet or more can now manoeuvre without stranding on sand or mud banks, as was formerly the case. The entire port can provide loading berths for about 40 vessels and for 20 to 25 vessels to discharge. The change that has been effected along the river frontage in the short s.p.a.ce of four years is remarkable, and when the works are completed Rosario will possess one of the best ports in the country, with excellent storage accommodation attached. The contract price for constructing the port was fixed at 60,000,000 fr., but a much larger sum will have been expended before completion, exclusive of grain elevators and other works which the Company is undertaking estimated at 17,000,000 fr." (Consular Report, July, 1908).

[145] "Now at last in our day progress is being made in the great neglected central zone watered by the Parana, and here, as has been shown, the main line of advance will still be south and north. For if we accept the statement that mountains are the true frontiers of nations then the reverse also holds true, and the valleys that connect them are their best and natural highways. So when the railroads which already link Patagonia to Paraguay extend further along the great 'llanos' overshadowed by the Andes, right up to a navigable port on the Amazon, they will strengthen, better than any words or treaties, the ties of rational trade and intercourse between the republics whose hinterlands meet in the Parana watershed" (W. S. Barclay, _Ibid_.).

[146] "Coleccion de Obras," iii. 121.

[147] The Rio Salado.

[148] "The future of Santa Fe is rather in agriculture, the raising of hogs, and the production of b.u.t.ter and cheese, than in the old-fashioned system of stock-raising, which has already become an employment for which the land gives a scant return, and which, moreover, will become absolutely impossible at no distant date, when the price of land rises still further" (Latzina, "Geographie," p.

239).

[149] MacCann, "Two Thousand Miles' Ride," ii. 32.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GRAN CHACO AND THE NORTHERN TOWNS

The Gran Chaco is the least-known part of Argentina which has the reputation of being a land of Pampas, although these gra.s.sy plains cover but one-fourth of the total area of the Republic. In the Chaco are to be found the great majority of the flora and fauna which occur in Argentina, for except in its semi-tropical forests there is no considerable variety of either vegetable or animal life. Concerning the origin of the name, the worthy Padre Lozano says[150]: "The Etymology of the name _Chaco_ indicates the great mult.i.tude of tribes which people this region. When the Indians go out hunting and drive together from different quarters the vicunas and guanacos, that vast mob of animals is called _Chacu_ in the Quichoa language which is the common tongue of Peru. Thus, because the land in question contained a number of different tribes, they received by a.n.a.logy the name _Chacu_, which the Spaniards have corrupted into _Chaco_."

Since the early wars of the Spaniards with the various tribes this magnificent territory has not figured much in the history of the country, but in natural interest it surpa.s.ses every other part of the Republic, and its potential wealth is enormous. The climate, though tropical, is not oppressive, and although the country is subject to periodical floods, these greatly increase the natural wealth of the soil, and almost every kind of vegetable product can be grown.