Catamarca

“ This Province is bounded on the North and North-East by the Province of Catamarca, on the West and South-West by Chile and the Province of San Juan, on the South by the Province of San Luis, and on the East by Catamarca, again, and the Province of Córdoba.
La Rioja is another outlying Province of which can be said, as of so many as yet comparatively unproductive parts of Argentina, that water, labour and transport alone are needed to make them rich far beyond any dreams of avarice which have yet occupied the minds of their few and easy-going inhabitants. ”

“ The climate is sultry, and the people, at certain seasons, are very subject to intermittent fevers. They produce corn and cattle enough for their own subsistence, and supply the adjoining provinces largely with their cotton, the quality of that of Catamarca being in higher repute than their own, for their domestic manufactures: considerable quantities of red pepper are also sent from thence to Buenos Ayres.
Catamarca, by the usual track, is about sixty leagues distant, south-west, from Tucuman. In a MS. by Dean Funes, in my possession, he places it in south latitude 28° 12 ́. ”

“ As yet it is sparsely populated, and the influence of progress is only just being forced upon it by a paternal National Government which not only has irrigation schemes in hand, but has already constructed a railway—the North Argentina—one of the new Government lines, to afford transport for the future wealth of this hitherto dormant Province. Irrigation, transport and fresh elements and methods of labour are the three requisites for Catamarca’s advancement. She has plenty of what is easily convertible into fertile soil; and, without doubt, rich mineral deposits. ”

“ Posadas, the capital, is a pleasant town, important as a railway and steamboat junction.
Catamarca, a Province again at the west, we find bordering on Chile, south of Los Andes and Salta, with Tucumán and Santiago east, and Córdoba and La Rioja south. The Province is largely mountainous, one peak in the eastern range, Aconquija, being over 15,000 feet. Some short torrential streams, formerly disappearing in salt marshes, are now utilized for irrigation. Cereals and other agricultural products, also cattle are raised. ”

“ The city of La Rioja, the Capital, is still in a state of arrested development, similarly with Catamarca, only even more so. It has not yet experienced sufficient prosperity to enable it to recover from the paralysing effects of the civil disturbances which raged in and around it for very many years after the overthrow of the Spanish rule. The people, the great majority of whom have a large admixture of native Indian blood, are, however, of a rather more lively and energetic disposition than their Catamarcan neighbours. ”

“ All the archeologists agree in one point, and it has been especially emphasized by Ambrosetti—the Catamarcan remains are throughout Incasic, in design, technique, and symbolism. Of this identity of inspiration there can be no question, and it has been shown in a hundred details. We must, therefore, decide whether this was an extension of Incasic culture beyond the jurisdiction of Incasic rule; was it that of a portion of the Incasic state; or, as von Ihering boldly suggests, do we find in the vales of Catamarca the very source and birthplace of the Incasic culture itself? ”

“ The great drawback to the extension of this cultivation will be the want of labour. The population of Catamarca is not more than 40,000; that of Tucuman may be estimated at 50,000. But even so, there are so many other articles of production of great value, and requiring little labour, as tobacco, sugar, &c., that it will be difficult to obtain sufficient hands for the plucking and cleaning, unless expressly imported. The requirements of the native population are few, and their ambition soon satisfied. It is, therefore, almost impossible to get them to labour for more than their actual wants. ”

“ The first eighty miles of the journey crosses about as pleasant a country as can be found anywhere, passing through the cities of Bella Vista, La Madrid, and San Pedro. At the latter place, the first town in the Province of Catamarca, desolation begins and continues until daylight the next morning when the traveler awakes at the large town of Dean Funes, the junction for San Juan, capital of the province of the same name. Low rocky [132] hills now rise in every direction; the soil, dry, parched, and somewhat stony is overrun with pampa grass. It is cool and a wind is invariably blowing. ”

“ Account of the native Iron from Atacama. Tucuman. Delightful Climate. Mines—little worked. Richness of the Vegetation. Declaration of Independence of the Provinces made there in 1816. Catamarca. Population, &c. Original Inhabitants—their long Wars with the Spaniards. Salta. Divisions, Population, Government, Climate, Rivers. The Vermejo, and its Affluents from Tarija and Jujuy. Valuable Productions of this Province. Labour of the Mataco Indians obtainable, and preferable to that of Europeans in such Latitudes. Importance of inland Steam Navigation urged. ”

“ It is the story of a great country and a great business enterprise that is fast spreading its activity farther and farther north, west, and south—to the north, toward the still savage Chaco country and the mountainous provinces of Jujuy, Salta, and Catamarca; to the west, toward the Andean uplands, and southward to the federal territories in the region that was once referred to on the maps as Patagonia. Gradually the cattle ranch is being pushed farther afield to give way to agriculture, while the ranchmen in their turn are penetrating the field of the timber industry. ”

“ All this forcibly impels to the conviction that the Catamarcan culture was essentially Incasic, but that it had already passed to degeneration and destruction before the arrival of the whites, and that the nations these found in the picturesque valleys of Tucumán were not the builders but the destroyers of the ancient glory of the region. ”

“ To the second group belong all the water-courses of the Provinces of Tucuman, Catamarca, Santiago de l’Estero, La Rioja, San Juan, Mendoza, San Luis, the greater part of those of Córdoba, and part of those of Buenos Ayres. To the third79 group belong also a portion of the rivers of Buenos Ayres, and all the rivers of Patagonia. As we have seen, the waterways of the Province of Buenos Ayres come under all three headings. ”

“ On the east and west shores to the north there are stretches of higher ground between the swamps, and frequent grass plains like the Llanos; the western side is bounded by the Sierra de Perija, forming the frontier of Colombia. Chief of the rivers traversing these plains are the Motatán and Chama, already mentioned as rising in the Andes, the Escalante, and the Catatumbo; the mouths of all are of a deltaic character, and all are navigable to a greater or lesser extent. The largest and most important is the Catatumbo, which, with its great tributary, the Zulia, rises in Colombia. ”

“ Those of Caitomarca came to the river side, whence they hurled many stones from their slings at the Inca’s camp, and began to utter cries and great shouts. For it is a strange custom with these people, when they fight with each other, how little they allow their mouths to rest. ”

“ We came at last through thousand dangers to the City of Carthago, which we found not to be so poor, as in richer places, as Guatemala and Nicaragua it was reported to be. For there we had occasion to inquire after some Merchants for exchange of gold and silver, and we found that some were very rich, who traded by land and sea with Panamá and by sea with Portobello, Cartagena, and Havana, and from thence with Spain. The City may consist of four hundred Families, and is governed by a Spanish Governour. ”

“ It is in the main a wretched and thinly populated region, so dry that wells and water-tanks are objects of interest, even of solicitude, and give names to various hamlets, as Agua Nueva and Tanque la Vaca. No more interesting object will be seen than the mountain of Catorce, with its famous mining town, about which are clustered traditions of bonanzas such as few silver regions can lay claim to. San Luis will interest a traveller coming from the North as a thoroughly representative metropolis, in streets and architecture, of Southern Mexico. ”

“ If the republic in many of its features cannot compare for sheer interest with its neighbours, it has yet a commanding claim to the attention of antiquarians, for it possesses the city of Cartagena, which was the most ancient and strongest of the Spanish power in South America. The renown of the city’s prototype in Spain, itself inheriting the name of the still more ancient and famous colony, Carthage, was transplanted to the New World, and for two centuries it enjoyed the esteem of the whole maritime world. Its sun-bleached walls still endure, stern relics of the power of Spain. ”

“ From this sultry country of forest and flood to the almost treeless, arid steppes of Patagonia is a change rather to another world than to another province of the same Republic, and hardly less difference exists between the rolling plains of the pampa country and the magnificent regions of towering peaks, stern uplands, and vast lakes that form the Andine portions of Argentina. ”

“ Catbalogan.At night we reached Catbalogan, the chief town of the island, with a population of six thousand, which is picturesquely situated in the middle of the western border, in a little bay surrounded by islands and necks of land, difficult to approach and, therefore, little guarded. Not a single vessel was anchored in the harbor.
The houses, many of which are of boards, are neater than those in Camarines; and the people, though idle, are more modest, more honorable, more obliging, and of cleaner habits, than the inhabitants of South Luzon. ”

“ The city of Cartago is situated on a smooth plain, between{92} two small streams, seven leagues from the great river of Santa Martha, and near another small stream, the water of which is drunk by the Spaniards.
This river is always crossed by a bridge of those canes which I have already mentioned. The city has very difficult approaches on both sides, and bad roads, for in the winter time the mud is deep. It rains all the year round, and the lightning is great, thunderbolts sometimes falling. This city is so well guarded, that the inhabitants cannot easily be robbed. ”

“ In February, 1517, a Spanish hidalgo, Hernandez de Cordova, set sail, with three vessels, towards the adjacent Bahamas in search of slaves. He was driven by a succession of severe storms on coasts which had hitherto been unknown to the Spanish adventurers, and finally landed on that part of the continent which forms the north-eastern end of the peninsula of Yucatan, and is known as Cape Catoché. Here he first discovered the evidence of a more liberal civilization than had been hitherto known among his adventurous countrymen in the New World. ”

“ So bad was the reputation of the Matina valley in this respect that people, as the Costa Rican writer, Don Ricardo F. Guardia, informs us in his Cuentos Ticos, “used to confess and make their wills when they went to Matina, to the famous Matina which inspires fear in men and madness in mules,8 as they used to say in those days when men were braver and mules better.”—
Cartago—how often this Carthaginian name recurs in this part of the world!—is a delightful place nearly a mile above sea level, with a population of about seven thousand souls. ”

“ Colombia to within a few miles of Brito. The entire country may properly be divided into two distinctive groups by a natural line running between the mouths of the Reventazon and Rio Grande de Pirris; groups which can be called “volcanic mountains” or “mountains of the northwest,” and “Talamanca mountains” or “mountains of the southeast.” It is clear that the Caribbean Sea once joined the Pacific Ocean through this valley of the river Reventazon in which the Costa Rica Railway now climbs to reach Cartago. ”

“ This city lay on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Panama, and could be reached only by a long and toilsome land journey, the route well defended by nature and doubtless by art, while not a man on board the fleet had ever trod the way thither. To supply themselves with a guide the island of St. Catharine, where the Spaniards confined their criminals, was attacked and taken, and three of the convicts were selected for guides, under promise of liberty and reward. ”

“ Although the city stands upon flat ground, it has a magnificent panorama of undulating hills spread before it. Innumerable islets, bays, and capes fill the great harbour, and as the steamer makes its way across the smooth waters it passes many of the loveliest bits of tropical scenery to be found anywhere. Cartagena formerly possessed untold wealth; rich and powerful merchants prospered within its protecting walls. Its fame was world-wide, and attracted the unwelcome attentions of the pirates, adventurers, and privateers of the sixteenth century. ”

“ The river view from Cametá is magnificent. The town is situated, as already mentioned, on a high bank, which forms quite a considerable elevation for this flat country, and the broad expanse of dark-green waters is studded with low, palm-clad islands, the prospect down river, however, being clear, or bounded only by a sea-like horizon of water and sky. The shores are washed by the breeze-tossed waters into little bays and creeks, fringed with sandy beaches. The Tocantins has been likened, by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who crossed its mouth in 1846, to the Ganges. ”

“ Santander del Norte, north of Santander, is also traversed by the East Cordillera. The mean temperatures vary greatly: 46° on several paramos, and 81° in the valleys of the Catatumbo and Zulia. Gold, silver, copper, lead, coal are mined. Rio de Oro, tributary to the Catatumbo, has rich auriferous deposits, and what is now of greater importance, it passes through a district rich in petroleum. The varied crops are the chief source of wealth: wheat and potatoes, coffee and cacao.
Cúcuta, the capital, altitude 1000 feet, with a temperature of 84°, is an important commercial city. ”