FOOTNOTES:[16]Meteorological Tables will be found in the Appendix.[17]The following letter, received from Buenos Ayres after my own departure, gives an account of one of these visitations. It is dated"Buenos Ayres, 11th February, 1832"Yesterday we had another of those awful dust-storms which you have previously witnessed; it came on about a quarter past twelve o'clock. The rapidity of its approach, and awful opacity, alarmed the whole population; in an instant, as it were, there was a transition from the glaring ray of the meridian to the most intense darkness. Immense flocks, or rather one immense flight of birds, immediately preceded it, and, in fact, however incredible it may appear, commenced the obscurity by their numbers."The whole time of its duration was eleven minutes and a half, the total darkness eight minutes and a half, by watch, observed by Dr. S. and myself by candlelight; it was accompanied by loud claps of thunder, but not a ray of lightning was visible, although the thunder was by no means distant. After eleven minutes and a half the rain began to fall in very large black drops, which had the effect upon the white walls of making them appear, when the sun again showed itself, as if they had been stained or sprinkled with ink. I never witnessed a more majestic or awful phenomenon. The consternation was general; every one rushing into the nearest house, and all struggling to shut their doors on their neighbours. I have heard as yet of no accidents, although doubtless there must have been many; the wind, of course from S.S.W."[18]Horses are very liable to the same affection, and are continually lost from it.
[16]Meteorological Tables will be found in the Appendix.
[16]Meteorological Tables will be found in the Appendix.
[17]The following letter, received from Buenos Ayres after my own departure, gives an account of one of these visitations. It is dated"Buenos Ayres, 11th February, 1832"Yesterday we had another of those awful dust-storms which you have previously witnessed; it came on about a quarter past twelve o'clock. The rapidity of its approach, and awful opacity, alarmed the whole population; in an instant, as it were, there was a transition from the glaring ray of the meridian to the most intense darkness. Immense flocks, or rather one immense flight of birds, immediately preceded it, and, in fact, however incredible it may appear, commenced the obscurity by their numbers."The whole time of its duration was eleven minutes and a half, the total darkness eight minutes and a half, by watch, observed by Dr. S. and myself by candlelight; it was accompanied by loud claps of thunder, but not a ray of lightning was visible, although the thunder was by no means distant. After eleven minutes and a half the rain began to fall in very large black drops, which had the effect upon the white walls of making them appear, when the sun again showed itself, as if they had been stained or sprinkled with ink. I never witnessed a more majestic or awful phenomenon. The consternation was general; every one rushing into the nearest house, and all struggling to shut their doors on their neighbours. I have heard as yet of no accidents, although doubtless there must have been many; the wind, of course from S.S.W."
[17]The following letter, received from Buenos Ayres after my own departure, gives an account of one of these visitations. It is dated
"Buenos Ayres, 11th February, 1832
"Yesterday we had another of those awful dust-storms which you have previously witnessed; it came on about a quarter past twelve o'clock. The rapidity of its approach, and awful opacity, alarmed the whole population; in an instant, as it were, there was a transition from the glaring ray of the meridian to the most intense darkness. Immense flocks, or rather one immense flight of birds, immediately preceded it, and, in fact, however incredible it may appear, commenced the obscurity by their numbers.
"The whole time of its duration was eleven minutes and a half, the total darkness eight minutes and a half, by watch, observed by Dr. S. and myself by candlelight; it was accompanied by loud claps of thunder, but not a ray of lightning was visible, although the thunder was by no means distant. After eleven minutes and a half the rain began to fall in very large black drops, which had the effect upon the white walls of making them appear, when the sun again showed itself, as if they had been stained or sprinkled with ink. I never witnessed a more majestic or awful phenomenon. The consternation was general; every one rushing into the nearest house, and all struggling to shut their doors on their neighbours. I have heard as yet of no accidents, although doubtless there must have been many; the wind, of course from S.S.W."
[18]Horses are very liable to the same affection, and are continually lost from it.
[18]Horses are very liable to the same affection, and are continually lost from it.
Little known of Patagonia till the appearance of Falkner's work in 1774. It stimulates the Spanish Government to send out an expedition under Piedra in 1778, to form settlements upon the coast. He discovers the Bay of San Joseph's. Francisco Viedma forms a settlement on the River Negro. Antonio, his brother, explores the southern part of the coast, and forms another at San Julian's. His account of the Indians he found there. The New Settlements abandoned in 1783, with the exception of that on the River Negro. Villariño ascends that river, as far as the Cordillera opposite Valdivia. A dispute with the Araucanian Indians prevents his communication with the Spaniards of Chile, and obliges him to return. Piedra succeeds Viedma, attacks the Pampa Tribes, and is defeated. Don Ortiz de Rosas, father of the present Governor of Buenos Ayres, is taken prisoner by them, and succeeds in bringing about a general pacification. Subsequent neglect of the settlement on the Rio Negro. Its population in 1825, and coasting-trade with Buenos Ayres.
Little known of Patagonia till the appearance of Falkner's work in 1774. It stimulates the Spanish Government to send out an expedition under Piedra in 1778, to form settlements upon the coast. He discovers the Bay of San Joseph's. Francisco Viedma forms a settlement on the River Negro. Antonio, his brother, explores the southern part of the coast, and forms another at San Julian's. His account of the Indians he found there. The New Settlements abandoned in 1783, with the exception of that on the River Negro. Villariño ascends that river, as far as the Cordillera opposite Valdivia. A dispute with the Araucanian Indians prevents his communication with the Spaniards of Chile, and obliges him to return. Piedra succeeds Viedma, attacks the Pampa Tribes, and is defeated. Don Ortiz de Rosas, father of the present Governor of Buenos Ayres, is taken prisoner by them, and succeeds in bringing about a general pacification. Subsequent neglect of the settlement on the Rio Negro. Its population in 1825, and coasting-trade with Buenos Ayres.
Before they became independent of Spain, and whilst the people of Buenos Ayres possessed in the Banda Oriental more waste lands than they wanted, safe from any incursions of the Indians, and better adapted perhaps than any other in South America for the rearing of cattle, at that time their only object, they had no particular inducement to extendtheir possessions further than the River Salado; all beyond was left to the Indians, and little or nothing was known of their country, except what they chose to communicate, until Falkner published his account of Patagonia in a country town in England in 1774. The appearance of that book produced results which the author perhaps little anticipated, for it stimulated the Spanish Government to make a general survey of the coast of Patagonia, and to form settlements upon it, the history of which to this day has never yet been made public. It is of those measures, and the information derived from them, that I purpose to give some account in this chapter.
Father Falkner, the author above alluded to, was an Englishman, who, from a very early age, seems to have had a passion for travelling. Brought up to the medical profession, he went in the capacity of a surgeon on board a trading-vessel to Cadiz, where he embarked in one of the Assiento ships, bound on a slaving voyage, eventually to Buenos Ayres: there he was induced to enter the order of Jesuits, in which, as a missionary, he afterwards made himself conspicuous for the zeal with which he devoted himself to the conversion of the Indian inhabitants of the unexplored regions of that part of the world. Forty years he passed amongst them, and, but for the expulsion of his order from South America, he would probably have ended his days there. On his return to England, he wrote his book, to thisday the only authentic account we have of the manners and customs of the Indians of the pampas, whilst the map it contains, compiled partly from his own observations, and partly from Indian accounts, has furnished the principal, if not the sole data for all those which have since been published of the interior of their country.
One of his principal objects avowedly was to point out how vulnerable by any hostile naval power were the Spanish possessions in those parts; and hardly had the book appeared when the Spanish Government, taking alarm lest his suggestions should be listened to in England, sent secret orders to the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres to have the whole coast of Patagonia carefully surveyed, with a view "to the formation of such new settlements upon it as might secure the King of Spain's rights, and forestall the English in their supposed intention of appropriating to themselves the valuable fisheries on the southern part of the coast."
Competent officers were sent out from Spain for the purpose, and no expense was spared to execute the survey as completely as possible. The command was intrusted to Don Juan de la Piedra, who sailed from Monte Video on this service on the 15th December, 1778.
Running down the coast, on the 7th January he entered the great bay, then called Bahia Sin-fondo, or San Matthias' Bay, but now more generallyknown under the name of San Antonio, at the bottom of which, in latitude 42° 13´, he discovered the entrance of a noble harbour, which he named San Joseph's.
Piedra passed three months in examining the shores of this great gulf and the peninsula which bounds it, and so impressed was he with its capabilities that, without proceeding further, he left an officer and part of his men to build a fort there, and returned himself to the River Plate to give an account of his discovery.
According to his report, indeed, it appeared on many grounds to offer a most eligible site for a new settlement. The port itself was said to be deep and commodious, affording anchorage for ships of any size, whilst its situation seemed particularly convenient not only for facilitating the further exploration of the great rivers Negro and Colorado, which empty themselves a little to the northward of it, but for securing more or less the entrance of those rivers against any sudden surprise by the enemies of Spain, a point to which great importance was attached in the instructions of the surveying officers, in consequence of the statements made by Falkner as to the possibility of passing up them into the very heart of the Spanish possessions.
The vast number of whales and seals which were seen in its neighbourhood, moreover, held out the promise of its becoming a station whence to carry on those fisheries which the Spanish Government of theday were so anxious to establish[19]; whilst the extensive salt deposits in several parts of the peninsula promised an inexhaustible supply of an article of the first necessity in Buenos Ayres in curing the hides and beef.
The only drawback to the situation was the apparent scarcity of fresh water, which the discoverers had great difficulty in finding in the first instance, though subsequently a sufficiency was obtained at some distance from the coast: it was, however, at all times more or less brackish, and eventually caused much sickness and suffering to the settlers.
The Viceroy was dissatisfied with Piedra for returning, and superseded him, when it devolved upon Don Francisco and Antonio Viedma (the officers next in command of those sent out from Spain) to carry into execution the intentions of their Government. These brothers were long employed upon various parts of the coast of Patagonia, and collected much valuable information respecting thatterra incognita.
In April, 1779, Don Francisco sailed from San Joseph's, to form a settlement on the River Negro, in favour of which he was fortunate enough to propitiatethe Viceroy, who supplied him with men and stores, and all things necessary for the purpose.
Don Antonio was left in charge at San Joseph's; but, the scurvy breaking out amongst the people to a great extent, they became so dissatisfied that he was under the necessity in the course of the summer of returning with the greater part of them to Monte Video. He was not, however, permitted to be long idle; and in the January following (1780) was again despatched to carry out the original plan, and to survey the whole of the southern part of the coast of Patagonia.
In furtherance of these orders, he examined the several ports of St. Helena, San Gregorio, the northern shores of the great Bay of San George, Port Desire, and San Julian's: which occupied him till the end of May, when, the cold weather setting in, he hutted his people for the winter at Port Desire, and despatched one of his vessels to Buenos Ayres with an account of his proceedings.
Of all the places he had visited, San Julian's appeared to offer the best, if not the only suitable site for any permanent establishment. Everywhere else, the coast presented the aspect of sandy, steril dunes, intermixed with stones and gravel, fit only, to all appearance, for the occupation of the wild guanacoes and ostriches, which wandered over them in quest of the scanty coarse grass which constituted their only herbage. No wood was to be seen bigger than a small species of thorny shrub, fit only for thepurposes of fuel; and, as to water, it was every where scarce, and the little to be found was generally brackish and bad. The ports, too, were most of them difficult and dangerous of access, affording little or no security for vessels above the size of a brig.
San Julian's was so far an exception, that at high tide the largest ships might enter and lay safely at anchor within the bar off its mouth. A constant supply of water, too, was found three or four miles inland, proceeding from some springs in the hills, about which there was good pasturage, and enough of it to have induced a considerable tribe of Indians to fix upon it as their ordinary dwelling-place. There, also, Viedma proposed to plant a little colony; and, the Viceroy approving the plan, the people were removed from Port Desire in the month of November, and commenced building their habitations in the vicinity of the springs above mentioned, about a league from the coast. They received the materials, and a variety of necessary supplies, from Buenos Ayres, not the least useful of which were some carts and about twenty draught-horses, which enabled them afterwards to keep up a constant communication between the shore and their little settlement.
They found the Indians extremely well disposed, and ready to render them every assistance in their power, in return for the trifling presents they made them. Altogether there might be about 400 of them, and about half as many more were encampedupon the Santa Cruz River further south. These were apparently the only inhabitants of those regions. They said that in their journeys northward they fell in with no other toldos or encampments till they came to a river twenty-five days off; there were some more two days beyond again upon a second river, and thence it was twenty days further to the toldos of the Indians of Tuca-malal, on the river called by Villariño the Encarnacion, which falls into the great River Negro; altogether, according to their computation, something less than fifty days' travel from San Julian's[20]. To those parts they were in the habit of occasionally repairing in order to buy fresh horses from the tribes there resident, who they said had plenty of them, and exchanged them for the guanaco skins which they took from the more southern part of the country. They caught those animals with their bolas and lassoes, and often supplied the colonists with fresh meat when they had no means of their own of obtaining it.
This assistance was of the greater value to them, as the winter set in with a severity, against which they were very indifferently prepared. The months of June, July, and August were piercingly cold, much snow fell, and the people, unused to such a climate, became very sickly, and many of them died. Viedma himself was so ill as to be some time confined to his bed; nor was it till the return of springthat the survivors began to recover their strength, and were able to go on with the works. They got through the subsequent winter better, after their houses were completed, and they were able to collect some necessary comforts about them. The vegetables they planted throve well, and in the second February they gathered in their first harvest, which yielded a fair crop in proportion to the corn sown. The brushwood in the surrounding country was sufficient to supply them with fuel, but there was no timber fit for building, of which they were daily in want; and in quest of this Viedma was induced to make an excursion into the interior by the Indians, who asserted that an abundance was to be had near the source of the Santa Cruz river, which they said was a great lake at the foot of the Cordillera, whither they offered to guide him.
On this expedition he left San Julian's early in November (1782), with some of his own people, and a party of the Indians under their cacique. Proceeding westward, and inclining to the south, over hills and dales, at a distance of about twenty-five leagues they reached the Rio Chico, or little river, which the Indians said fell into the harbour of Santa Cruz. There was at that time no difficulty in fording it, the water not being much above their saddle-girths, and its width not above fifty yards, though, from the appearance of its steep and water-worn banks, it was evidently a much more considerable stream during the season of the floods. TheIndians said it was the drain of a lake far in the north-west, formed by the melting of the snows in the Cordillera.
So far, wherever they halted, they had found no lack of pasturage for their horses, or water, or brushwood for fuel; but after crossing the Chico the country became more rocky and barren: fourteen leagues beyond the Chico they came to a much more considerable river, called the Chalia by the Indians, who described it as issuing from another lake in the mountains, between the sources of the Rio Chico and those of the great river of Santa Cruz, which it joined, they said, further on. They found it too deep to cross where they first reached it, and were obliged in consequence to follow its course upwards for eight leagues, over a stony, rugged country, which lamed all their horses, and the desolate appearance of which was increased by the visitation of a flight of locusts which had devoured all the vegetation for three leagues. They crossed it, at last, at a place called Quesanexes by their Indian guides, from a remarkable rock standing out like a tower from the rocky, rugged cliffs which there bounded the bed of the river (some basaltic formation probably).
On looking at the sketch, in the seventh volume of the "Journal of the Geographical Society," of Captain FitzRoy's Survey of the river Santa Cruz, it appears probable that the Chalia is the stream which runs into it frombasalt glen, and which, though a veryinconsiderable one at the season he passed by it, was manifestly one of much more importance at other times.
Eight leagues after crossing the Chalia they came to the great lake under the Cordillera, which the Indians had talked of as the origin of the Santa Cruz River.
Viedma describes it as of great extent, situated in a sort of bay, or vast amphitheatre of the mountains, from the steep ravines of which ran down the many streams which filled it, chiefly derived from the melting of the snows in the north-west: he skirted it for twelve leagues to its extremity in that direction, and estimated its extreme length at about fourteen; its width, he says, might be from four to five leagues. Some dark patches amongst the snow on the distant heights indicated the clumps of trees of which the Indians had spoken; but the few which Viedma was able to examine were not what he had been led to expect; he speaks of them as resembling a wild cherry, with a fruit in appearance not unlike it, though of a more orange colour, and without a stone and very tasteless; the wood stunted, and so crooked as to be entirely unfit for anything but burning. May it not have been the crab-apple? We know there are plenty of apples further north in the same range.
Describing the appearance of the Cordillera from the head of the lake, he says, towards the north it looked like a vast table-land stretching from eastto west; but it had a different appearance in the south, breaking into steep and broken peaks, for the most part covered with snow. The Indians said that neither to the north nor south was the main chain passable by man or beast for a very long distance. They all concurred in stating that a large river issued from the south-east angle of the lake, which they believed to be the great river of Santa Cruz[21]; Viedma, unfortunately, was not able to examine it, as he wished, in consequence of the apparent swelling of the mountain-torrents, which alarmed the Indians lest they should so increase the rivers as to prevent their recrossing them on their return; nor were they very wrong, for, by the time they got back to the Chico, they found it a wide and rapid stream no longer fordable.
It was proposed that some of the Indians who could swim should tow Viedma across on a balsa, which they set to work to construct of hides and sticks, but when completed, it looked so frail and dangerous a ferry, that the Spaniards preferred running the risk of swimming their horses over. This they accomplished without accident, and reached San Julian's in safety again on the 3rd of December, after nearly a month's absence, during which they were much indebted to the Indians for theirfriendly aid, and knowledge of the country through which they passed.
The people of this tribe, who had never seen a Spaniard before, Viedma describes as of large stature, generally above six feet high, and very stout and fleshy; their faces broad, but of good expression, and their complexion rather sunburnt than naturally dark. Their skin cloaks, worn very long, and reaching when on foot to their heels, gave them an appearance of greater height than the reality. Their habits and customs, according to his account, seem to differ little from those of the Pampa tribes, of which I shall elsewhere have to speak. The men employed themselves in hunting guanacoes and other animals for their skins, and for meat to eat, whilst the women performed all the domestic offices and drudgery of the household, such as it was; but the good disposition uniformly shown by them gave Viedma a most favourable opinion of them, forming, as it did, a striking contrast with the character of the tribes further north.
Shortly after this excursion (in April, 1783) Don Antonio, considering his little colony as fairly planted, proceeded to Buenos Ayres for the recovery of his health. There the mortification awaited him of learning that all his labour had been thrown away, and that the Government of Spain had resolved to break up the Patagonian settlements. The fact was, that the great trouble and expense already incurred, from the necessity of supplying all their first wantsfrom Buenos Ayres; the grumbling and complaints of the settlers themselves, of the hardships they had to go through, and of the inclemency of a climate to which they were unaccustomed (which, joined to the bad quality of their salt provisions, had certainly produced scurvy amongst them to a frightful extent), had all tended to create so unfavourable an impression upon the Viceroy, that he had been led to express a strong opinion to his Government as to their worse than uselessness. The consequence was, that after three or four years, in which upwards of a million of hard dollars was spent upon them, orders were sent out to abandon them all, except the settlement upon the Rio Negro, after setting up at San Joseph's, Port Desire, and San Julian's, signals of possession, as the English had done at Port Egmont, for evidence in case of need, of his Catholic Majesty's rights[22].
Don Antonio Viedma, who took a lively interestin the settlement he had formed at San Julian's, in vain raised his voice against this determination, and endeavoured to show that the grievances of the settlers were but the natural difficulties to be expected in the infancy of all new colonies; that they knew the worst of them, and many of their remedies; that a further experience of the seasons had shown that the lands, so far from being unfit for cultivation, as amongst other things was alleged, were quite sufficiently productive to support them in after-years without further aid from Buenos Ayres; and as to the expenses, the heaviest were already incurred; whilst the fisheries alone promised sources of wealth and revenue to the mother country, as well as to the neighbouring viceroyalty. But these arguments met with little attention, and came too late to alter the determination of the higher powers.
The same jealous policy which led the Spanish Government to cause the coast of Patagonia to be surveyed, equally influenced them in withholding from publication the results, which remained carefully hid from all inspection in the archives of the Viceroyalty, though I cannot but think, had the reports even of Viedma himself been given to the world, they would have been the best possible security to his Catholic Majesty against the curiosity or encroachments of foreign nations. Not only did they all tend to show that the coast itself was full of dangers, but they also proved that the interior of the land was, throughout, a steril and desolate waste,scarce of water and vegetation: a region fit enough for the wild beasts which had possession of it, but very little adapted for the supply of any of the wants of man. I cannot conceive what temptations such possessions could possibly have offered to any European power whatever, nor can it, I think, create surprise that Spain herself abandoned them.
With respect to the fisheries, had there been any real spirit of enterprise in the people of Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, they might have monopolized them; but no such spirit existed, and they were suffered to fall into the hands of the more adventurous sailors of England, North America, and France. They equally neglected the importation of salt, though a more necessary article to them, perhaps, could hardly have been placed within their reach; and after Viedma's voyage it was well known that any quantity of it, of an excellent quality, could be obtained either at San Joseph's, Port Desire, or San Julian's. All that was necessary was to collect it at the proper season, in the months of January, February, and March, when it is hard and dry, and consequently in the fittest state for shipping.
Dean Funes, the historian of Buenos Ayres, writing on this subject, cannot suppress his indignation at the apathy of his countrymen, though he attempts, at the same time, to find an excuse for it in an observation of Humboldt's with a simplicity quite worth quoting. He says—"Who doubts that the Spaniards of South America might have carriedon these fisheries at infinitely less cost than the English and North Americans, when their own coasts of Patagonia and round Cape Horn are known to abound in whales, even in the harbours, by all accounts? But it was not the cost, neither was it the want of hands, which caused this important object to remain neglected. It was the natural indolence of the people and indifference of the Government. How, indeed, was it possible," he adds, "to find men to follow the hard profession of the sea, amongst a people who prefer a hunch of beef to all the comforts of life? 'The hope of gain,' Baron Humboldt observes, 'is too weak a stimulus in a climate where bounteous nature offers man a thousand ways of obtaining a comfortable subsistence without the necessity of leaving his native home to go to fight with the monsters of the deep.'"
The Dean was a wise old man, who knew the character of his countrymen thoroughly. Nor are his observations confined to the Spaniards of South America. Speaking of the ill-success of a company in Spain to which the king, in 1790, had conceded extraordinary privileges, as an encouragement to carry on these fisheries, he says—"Its continual losses, up to the period of its final failure, lead us to the conclusion, that projects depending upon intelligence, economy, and activity, are not made for a people notoriously behindhand in information, and habitually extravagant and lazy."
Whilst Don Antonio was occupied at San Julian's,his brother, Don Francisco, was with no less zeal laying the foundations of the settlement upon the Rio Negro, the only one, as it appeared, of these new establishments which was destined to be maintained.
It certainly possessed many advantages over the more southern parts of the coast which had been explored. It was not, like San Julian's, a thousand miles distant from the governing authorities. Succours in case of need could be sent to it by land as well as by sea from Buenos Ayres; and this consideration alone obviated the strongest objections made by the poorer classes to settling themselves permanently on other parts of the coast. The river itself was not only a safeguard against the Indians, but fertilized the adjoining lands, and insured to the colonists a never-failing supply of fresh water, the want of which had caused perhaps the greatest part of their sufferings at the other places.
There were also other motives which operated more powerfully than these in determining the Spanish Government to maintain a settlement upon the River Negro.
It was by proceeding up this river that Falkner supposed a hostile naval power might surprise the Spanish territories in the interior and in Chile—a notion founded upon the concurrent accounts given him by the Indians of the possibility of ascending it as far as the Cordillera, and even to Mendoza. Ifthese accounts were to be depended upon, and such a communication were really practicable between the shores of the Atlantic and the provinces of Chile, and Cuyo, it was impossible to foresee to what important consequences it might lead, and how valuable (independently of its advantages as a military position) might become a settlement which would necessarily be the key of that communication.
To determine a point of so much interest, in a geographical as well as political point of view, was therefore one of the first objects after the first settlers were fairly established; and an expedition was prepared to explore the river to its sources, and to examine its principal affluents. The command was intrusted to Don Basilio Villariño, a master-pilot in the Spanish navy, who had sailed with Piedra in 1778; and had since been the chief practical officer engaged in the survey originally undertaken by that commander. In the four years which had elapsed since the commencement of that service, he had himself examined and laid down the Bays of Anegada and of Todos Santos, the bar of the River Negro, and the ports of San Antonio, of San Joseph, and that to the south called Porto Nuevo. He had also surveyed the River Colorado for about seven leagues from its mouth. No man, then, in those parts could be better qualified for the task, and no expense or supply was spared, that he might be furnished with everything likely to ensure his success.
Four large launches (chalupas) were fitted out, to which masters, carpenters, caulkers, and ample crews were appointed, besides a number of peons with horses, who were to attend them along the banks of the river to assist in reconnoitring the country, and in towing the boats against the stream, when contrary winds might prevent their sailing.
On the 28th September, 1782, they started from the settlement of Carmen, and were absent till the 25th of May following; and, although on some points they did not perhaps realize all the expectations of those who sent them, yet they certainly obtained much new and valuable information, and for the first time determined correctly the course of the great river they ascended, and proved the possibility of navigating it to the very foot of the Andes.
The heavy Spanish launches unfortunately proved ill-calculated for the service, and could make but little way with the fairest wind against the force of the stream. They were obliged in consequence continually to have recourse to the towing-rope, a tedious and laborious operation, which occupied them a whole month before they reached the great island of Choleechel, about seventy leagues, according to their daily reckoning, from Carmen.
This island[23](the eastern extremity of which wasfound to be in latitude 39°) is not only one of the most remarkable features in the map of the River Negro, but is a point of great importance connected with the inroads of the Aucazes Indians into the Province of Buenos Ayres. It is here that, in their journeys from the Cordillera, they leave the course of the Negro and strike across to the River Colorado, whence their beaten track runs straight to the mountain ranges of the Ventana and Vulcan, where they pitch their tents, recruit their horses, and watch for a favourable opportunity to scour the Pampas, and carry off the cattle from the defenceless estancias on the frontiers of Buenos Ayres.
Being at all times greatly encumbered with their women, children, and cattle, and having no notion of anything like a raft or canoe to facilitate the passage of the rivers they have to cross, they are obliged to resort to those points where they are fordable, and afterwards to follow such routes as will lead them by places affording sufficient pasture for the daily maintenance of their horses and cattle. Now, in their descent from the Cordillera, their only pass across the great River Neuquen is just above its junction with the Negro, the course of which they are forced afterwards to follow as far as the Choleechel, from the impracticability of the country to the north of it, and the scarcity of fresh water for their animals.
The great importance, therefore, of any military post at this point, will be at once evident, andVillariño did not hesitate to give his strong opinion to his superiors, that a fort built here, with a small Spanish garrison, would be one of the most effectual checks upon these savages, and the best defence for the cattle owners of Buenos Ayres.
After fifty years of further experience, this suggestion (in 1833) has been acted upon by General Rosas, the present Governor, and the Choleechel, now called Isla de Rosas, has been occupied as a military station.
After reaching their tracks, it was not long before the Spaniards fell in with a party of the Indians themselves, travelling by the river's side towards the Cordillera. Villariño, anxious to conciliate them in order to obtain their aid as he proceeded, was at first lavish in his presents to them, particularly of spirits and tobacco, which appeared to be the objects most in request among them. The more, however, they got, the more they wanted; and upon the first hesitation to comply with their unreasonable demands, they became as insolent as they were importunate. They conceived suspicions, too, of the real designs of the Spaniards in exploring those parts, and shrewdly enough guessed that some more permanent occupation of their country was projected—an idea in which they were confirmed by the lies of a vagabond who deserted to them from the boats, and whose first object, of course, was to sow the seeds of dissension between them and his countrymen, in order to facilitate his own escape.
Although they dared not openly attack the Spaniards, they soon gave manifest proof of their determination to thwart the progress of the expedition by every means in their power. Riding on in advance of the boats they destroyed the pasturage along shore, and, hovering just out of the reach of danger to themselves, annoyed the party by all kinds of petty hostilities, and kept Villariño in continual alarm for the safety of his peons and cattle.
This conduct on the part of the natives, added to the certainty now acquired, that the service would be one of much longer duration than had been contemplated, made Villariño pause before he proceeded farther, and finally, determined him to halt where he was till he could communicate with Carmen, and receive from thence such further supplies as would render him independent for the rest of the voyage.
In passing the Choleechel, he had been much struck with a little peninsula, covered with rich pasturage, and easily made defensible against the Indians; and thither he now returned to await the further assistance he had applied for to his superior.
By running a sort of palisade across the narrow isthmus which separated their position from the main, and landing their swivels from the boats, the Spaniards soon formed a little fortification[24], perfectlysecure from any sudden attack on the part of the Indians, but of them they saw nothing more so long as they remained there.
Six weeks elapsed before Villariño received answers to his letters, conveying to him the orders of Don Francisco Viedma, to proceed with the expedition; but in the interval the river fell so considerably that Villariño became alarmed (and not, as it appeared, without good cause,) lest he should be driven into the season when the waters were at their lowest, which would greatly add to his difficulties as he advanced:—nor was this the worst:—though Don Francisco had sent him an ample supply of provisions and other necessaries for the prosecution of the enterprise, he had at the same time peremptorily ordered him to send back all the peons with their horses, under the idea that this would be the surest means of obviating any future disputes or collision with the Indians. Villariño, without time to remonstrate, had no option but to obey this order, though he saw at once that it deprived him of his main-stay, and would necessarily very much retard his future progress.
Under these circumstances, on the 20th of December, the boats once more got under sail to proceed up the river. Its winding course rendered the sails of little use, and it was hard work without the horses to make way against the force of the stream, the rapidity of which, as well as the difficulty of getting along, was much increased by innumerable smallislands, which stud the river above Choleechel; indeed the men were nearly worn out, as might have been expected, with the toil of working at the towing-rope almost continually.
In ten days they only advanced twenty-four leagues; they were not then sorry to fall in again with some of their fellow-creatures, albeit they were Indians, from whom they procured some horses, which relieved them from this part of their labour at least. They too were journeying westward, and much information was obtained from them respecting the upper parts of the river which greatly encouraged them to proceed, for there seemed little doubt from their accounts, that it was navigable to the foot of the Cordillera, from whence they might easily communicate with Valdivia.
These Indians were returning to their ordinary haunts on the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, over against that city, and they readily offered their assistance to the Spaniards to show them the way over, when they arrived at their lands, which they described as being near the Huechum-lavquen, or lake of the boundary spoken of by Falkner. They said it was not more than three days' journey from thence to Valdivia, with the people of which it appeared they were in the habits of intercourse, and among whom they found ready purchasers for all the cattle they could carry off from the Pampas. Thus it appeared that the people of Buenos Ayres might thank their countrymen on the shores of the Pacific for a greatpart of the depredations they were continually complaining of from the hostile incursions of these savages.
This party was a fair sample of the evil consequences of such a system. It consisted altogether of about 300 people under their caciques, who had left their country more than a year before for the sole purpose of collecting cattle for the Valdivians; and they were now on their way home with about 800 head, every animal of which bore a Buenos Ayrean mark, and had been stolen from some estancia in that province. They were less shy than the Indians whom the Spaniards had before fallen in with, and so long as they got plenty to eat and drink they journeyed on by the side of the boats in apparent good humour, giving such assistance as was in their power, and such information as they could with respect to the country they passed through. But this did not last long; and when after about a fortnight they found that Villariño could not afford to make the caciques and their wives drunk every day they changed their tone, and even went so far as to lay a plot for getting the boat's crew on shore on pretence of a feast, in order to rob and murder them. Frustrated in this by a timely discovery of their treachery, they suddenly galloped off, carrying with them, however, two of the men, whom it was supposed, by means of their women, they had contrived to inveigle from the boats.
Cunning and treachery, Villariño observes, seemthe special characteristics of these people; thieves by habit, plunder is the object of their lives, and to obtain it fair means or foul are alike justifiable in their eyes. Kindness is thrown away upon them, and fear alone seems to have any influence over them which can be calculated upon.
In thirty days from their leaving Fort Villariño, the boats arrived at the confluence of the River Neuquen, or Sanquel-leubú as it is sometimes called by the Indians, from the huge canes or reeds which overgrow its banks. This river was erroneously supposed by Villariño to be the Diamante, and he did not hesitate to lay it down as that river, and to express his belief that had he gone up it in twenty-five days he should have found himself in the province of Mendoza. Subsequent information has corrected this error, and shown it to be the riverNeuquen, which here joins the Negro, and which, rising a little above Antuco, is increased by many other streams from the Cordillera, which subsequently fall into it.
Villariño was blamed for not exploring this river, certainly by far the most considerable affluent of the Negro. He seems to have satisfied himself with merely ascending it in a little boat for about a couple of leagues, which brought him to the place where the Indians are in the habit of crossing it, and where he doubted whether there was sufficient water at the time to allow the launches to go up, though,from the vestiges of the floods along shore, it was evidently navigable at times for much larger craft. His best excuse for not doing more was his anxiety to reach the Cordillera before the state of the snow should prevent his communicating with Valdivia. To make the best of his way onward in that direction was now his main object; but the difficulties he had as yet experienced were nothing to those which awaited him in his further progress. The horses obtained from the Indians were completely worn out, and after passing the Neuquen, the whole labour of towing the boats along again devolved upon the men.
About a league above the junction of the two rivers, the latitude was found to be 38° 44´. The course of the Negro shortly afterwards was found to incline very much more to the south, apparently turned off by the prolongation of a chain of hills from the north, which equally determines the course of the Neuquen higher up, and as far as the eye can reach from the point of its junction with the Negro.
Through these hills the Negro has either found, or forced a passage, which on either side is bounded by steep, rocky escarpments, rising 500 or 600 feet above it; and here the stream ran with such violence, that it was with the greatest difficulty the launches were dragged on, one by one; a difficulty further increased by the shallowness of the water, which made it necessary in many places to deepen thechannel with spades and pick-axes, and to unload the boats and carry their cargoes considerable distances, before they could proceed[25].
All this caused incredible fatigue to the men, unaccustomed to such service, and supported only on the dry and salt provisions they had with them. Their legs became swelled with working for days together in the water, and they were covered with sores from the bites of the flies and mosquitos which hovered in clouds above its surface. The scurvy broke out, and some of them became seriously ill: fortunately they fell in with some apple-trees, the fruit of which was a great comfort to the sick; but the snow-capped peak of the Cerro Imperial, as well as the whole range of the Cordillera, was now in full view before them; and the hope of being soon in communication with Valdivia gave them fresh courage, and redoubled their exertions to reach their journey's end.
Two whole months were spent in making a distance of forty-one leagues from the Neuquen. This brought them, on the 25th of March, to the foot of the great range of the Cordillera, and to an island about a mile and a half long, where the main stream was found to be formed by two distinct rivers, there uniting from opposite directions; the one coming from the south, the other from the north.
As they knew by their latitude, which a little before reaching this point they had found to be 40° 2´ S., that they were already to the south of Valdivia, Villariño had no hesitation as to which of these rivers he should attempt to ascend. Before going on, however, he determined on giving the men a day or two's rest, of which he availed himself to make a short excursion in his little boat up the southern fork, which turned out to be a river of some magnitude.
At its mouth, he says, even at that time, when the waters were at their lowest, it was about 200 yards across, and about five feet in depth; its course from the S.S.W., running with much velocity through a deeply-cut channel over a bed of large rounded stones: the country, as far as could be seen, was a desolate mass of gravel. Some little way up, they found the burial-place of an Indian cacique, over which two stuffed horses were stuck upon stakes, according to their custom; further on, the shore was strewed with trunks of many large trees brought down by the floods; they were of various sorts, but principally pine and cedar, probably the same as is shipped in large quantities from the opposite side of the Cordillera, and from Chiloe, for other parts of Chile and Peru. From the Indians they subsequently learned that dense forests of these trees were to be met with higher up the river. How valuable they would be to the settlers on the Rio Negro, and how easily they might be floated down to them!
Villariño named this river the Rio de la Encarnacion. By the Indians, it is called Limé-leubú, or the river of leeches: indeed they call the main stream so, during its whole course to the junction of the Neuquen; after which, they give it the appellation of Curi-leubú, the River Negro. They described it as proceeding from the great lake of Nahuel-huapi,[26]where, in the year 1704, the Jesuits established a mission, which was afterwards destroyed by some hostile savages, and the Fathers murdered. The vestiges of their habitations and chapel still remain, and that part of the country is called by the Indians Tuca-malal, probably from some allusion to the ruins; the inhabitants call themselves Huilliches, or the southern people. Through them, to Villariño's surprise, the Pehuenches Indians, whom he shortly afterwards fell in with, had already received accounts of the establishment of the Spaniards at San Julians; the news had doubtless been carried to them by the friendly Indians, with whom Viedma had been in communication at that place, and whom he speaks of in his diary as having gone northward on an expedition which lasted four months, to buy horses from the Indians in that direction.
But if the Spaniards were surprised to hear these people speak of their countrymen at San Julians, 600 miles off, they were much more so, to be asked by them if the war between Spain and England was over. In this, however, it turned out that they had a more direct interest than might have been expected; certainarticles of European manufacture which they had been in the habit of purchasing from the Valdivians having become scarce and dear, from the interruption of the trade of that place with Spain in consequence of the war. Who would have supposed that the Indians of Araucania could have known or cared whether England and Spain were at war or not?
Having taken this cursory view of the Encarnacion, Villariño returned to continue his voyage up the northern branch of the Negro, which is called the Catapuliché by the Indians. It would perhaps be more correct to consider, as they do, the Encarnacion as the upper part of the Negro, and the Catapuliché as an affluent joining it from the opposite direction. Its shallowness prevented their making much way up it; after much labour and difficulty, in twenty days they had only advanced ten leagues, and then all hope of getting further was at an end. This was on the 17th of April, when they were in latitude 39° 40´, over against Valdivia.
The Catapuliché runs along the base of the Cordillera, distant five or six miles; it is joined by several streams from the mountains, which irrigate the intervening slopes and plains, and form good pasture-grounds for the Indians; and here they found their old acquaintances, who had run away from them lower down the river; and who, nothing abashed by what had passed, came at once to the boats to beg for spirits and tobacco.
Villariño, restraining his indignation at theireffrontery, renewed his intercourse with them in the hope of obtaining their assistance in reaching Valdivia; which, by their accounts, was not more than two or three days' journey distant across the mountains. Deputations arrived also from the Pehuenches, and Aucazes, Araucanian tribes in the neighbourhood, who showed a great readiness to be of any use;—they brought the Spaniards fruit and other necessaries, and everything promised a speedy realization of their wishes to be placed in communication in a few days with their countrymen on the shores of the Pacific. At the moment, however, when they were looking forward to the speedy accomplishment of this object, their hopes were blasted by an unlucky quarrel amongst the Indians themselves, in which one of their principal caciques, Guchumpilqui, was killed. His followers rose to avenge his death, and Chulilaquini, the chief who killed him, fled with his tribe to the Spaniards, earnestly soliciting their protection; to obtain which the more readily, he told a plausible story of a general league being formed amongst the Indians to attack them on the first favourable opportunity, and that it was in consequence of his refusal to join in this coalition, that the dispute had arisen which cost Guchumpilqui, the principal in the plot, his life. As this Guchumpilqui was the leader of the tribe they had met with on the Rio Negro, whose manœuvres had already impressed Villariño with the belief that he meditated some such treachery, he was quite prepared to credit Chulilaquini's tale; and thinking it at any rate advisable to secure the aid of some of the savages, he too readily promised him the protection he asked for. This brought the expedition to an end.
As soon as it was known that the Spaniards were disposed to take the part of Chulilaquini, they were regarded as declared enemies, and preparations were made to attack them. The Indians were bent on avenging the death of their chief, and it was soon evident that, as to communicating with the Valdivians under the circumstances, it was out of the question. After some fruitless efforts, at any rate, to get a letter conveyed across the mountains, Villariño was reluctantly obliged to make up his mind to return. Since entering the Catapuliché, much snow and rain had fallen, which had increased its depth as much as three or four feet: it had become in fact a navigable river, instead of a shallow stream. Their Indian allies helped them to lay in a stock of apples, of which there are great quantities in all those parts, and of piñones, the fruit of the pine-tree, which, taken out of the husk, is not unlike a Barbary date in taste as well as appearance; and with these supplies they once more got under weigh, the swollen stream carrying them down rapidly and safely over all the shoals and dangers which had cost them so much toil and difficulty to surmount as they went up; the land too, had put on a new appearance after the rain, and many places which appeared arid and steril wastes before, were now covered with green herbage.With little more than an occasional oar to keep them in the mid-stream, they went the whole way down to Carmen without the smallest obstruction, and arrived there in just three weeks from the time of leaving the Catapuliché, after an absence altogether of eight months. Thus it was proved to be perfectly practicable to pass by this river from the shores of the Atlantic to within fifty or sixty miles of Valdivia on the Pacific, the mountain-range alone intervening.
To what beneficial account this discovery of an inland water communication across the continent might in the last fifty years have been turned by an enterprising people, it is difficult to calculate. The Spaniards seemed rather desirous to conceal than to publish the fact of its existence. Till the expedition of General Rosas in 1833, against the Indians, no boat ever again went up the Negro higher than Choleechel; and but that I obtained possession of Villariño's Diary during my residence at Buenos Ayres, and published the substance of it in the "Journal of the Geographical Society," his Enterprise would probably have been consigned to perpetual oblivion.
Chulilaquini followed the boats, and settled his people within reach of his Spanish friends, in the neighbourhood of Carmen; but the Indians, in general, looked upon the new settlement with the greatest jealousy, and became extremely troublesome.
In this state of things, Don Juan de la Piedra,who it has already been stated was originally sent from Spain to take command of the establishments in Patagonia, and who had never ceased to remonstrate against the act of the Viceroy, which deprived him of that command, was reinstated by orders from the government at home; and proceeded in consequence to the Rio Negro, to resume his functions as principal Superintendent (1785); over-anxious, perhaps, after what had passed, to distinguish himself, instead of making any attempt to conciliate the Indians, he boastingly took the field, and advanced into their lands to attack them, with a force totally inadequate to the purpose: the consequence was, that he was surrounded and totally defeated. He himself perished miserably, and several officers fell into the hands of the savages: happily for them, some relations of the victors were at the same time in the power of the Viceroy, and the hope of recovering them by exchange, induced the savages for once to save the lives of their prisoners.
Amongst them was Don Leon Ortiz de Rosas, father of the present Governor of Buenos Ayres, then a Captain in the King's service, who turned his captivity to such good account, that he not only succeeded in an extraordinary degree in conciliating the respect and good will of the principal Caciques, but finally brought about a peace between them and the Viceroy, which lasted many years, and deservedly established the celebrity of the name of Rosas throughout the pampas.
The Spanish government for a short time took some interest in the establishment on the Negro:—upwards of 700 settlers were sent there from Gallicia, and large sums were spent upon it; but the expectations formed of its importance were not realized. The colonists remained satisfied to carry on a petty traffic with the Indians for skins, instead of launching out upon the more adventurous speculation of the fisheries upon the coast, and the authorities at Buenos Ayres, finding them more expensive than useful, became indifferent about them, and allowed them to sink into the insignificance of a remote and unprofitable colony.
Thus, in 1825, when the war between Buenos Ayres and Brazil broke out, there were hardly 800 inhabitants. The blockade of the river Plate made it then a resort for the privateers of the Republic, and once more brought it into notice. A small coasting trade is now carried on with it, and many seal-skins are collected there to be sent to Buenos Ayres, as well as those of the guanaco, hare, skunk, and other animals, brought in by the Indians from the deserts further south: it has of late years also furnished occasional supplies of salt for the Saladeros of Buenos Ayres.
Had the government of Buenos Ayres been able to exercise any efficient superintendence over the adjoining coast, the fishery of seals, and seal elephants, might have become of importance; but in the absence of all control, the unrestrained and indiscriminate slaughter of the young as well as of the old animals has driven them from their former haunts further south, where they are still found by the English and North American fishermen, who know theirrookeries, as they are called; and in the proper season, take them in great numbers.
The Governor of Carmen is an officer appointed from Buenos Ayres, to the Junta of which province the inhabitants name a representative.