Entre Ríos

“ By far the greater part of these animals were then reared in the Banda Oriental and Entre Rios:—nor was it till subsequently to the commencement of the struggle for their independence, when those provinces became the seat of war, and were laid waste by the Portuguese and by Artigas, that the people of Buenos Ayres began to occupy the lands south of the River Salado, which have given so much increased importance to that province. ”

“ De Garay founds Santa Fé, and meets with Spaniards from Peru. His subsequent Deeds and Death. The Government of the Rio de la Plata separated from that of Paraguay, and Santa Fé annexed to Buenos Ayres. Its former prosperity, and great capabilities, especially for Steam Navigation. The Entre Rios—constituted a Province in 1814, its Extent, Government, and Population—chiefly a grazing Country. Corrientes—its valuable natural Productions—mistaken ideas of the people as to Foreign Trade. The Lake Ybera—Pigmies, Ants, Ant-Eaters, Locusts, and Beetles. ”

“ The estuary of the Uruguay is 130 miles long and five or six miles wide. The eastern shore is rocky and broken. The Argentine shore is low. It is formed in the south by the deposits of the delta of the Paraná, while further north, from Gualeguacha to Concepción, the hills of Entre Rios are hidden behind a screen of flat islands covered with palms, formed by the stuff brought by the streams of Entre Rios. The river-floods are lost in the great sheet of the estuary. The tide in the estuary or a flood in the Paraná is enough to turn the current. ”

“ Some of them were even taken beyond the Paraná, to the Santa Fé province. Woodbine Parish confirms this rapid restoration of Entre Rios, of which D'Orbigny was a witness. But this period of prosperity did not last long. The war with Uruguay, under Rosas, again ruined the Entre Rios ranches, and the drought of 1846 helped to scatter the remaining herds. Extensive breeding is only lightly rooted in the soil. The chief centres of production change their locality, as the political circumstances change, from one part of the Pampean plain to another. ”

“ The superficial character of Entre Rios being that of an extensive plain, watered by numerous rivers, and affording excellent and abundant pasture for cattle, not equal to that of the beautiful territory of the Oriental republic, but superior to that of the province of Buenos Ayres, General Urquiza is so sensible of the advantage of promoting the breeding of cattle that he will not permit the killing of cows ”

“ Its agricultural products are also important, including wheat, Indian corn, barley and fruits. Lime, gypsum and firewood are also profitable items in its export trade. The Paraná and Uruguay rivers provide exceptional facilities for the shipment of produce and the Entre Rios railways, consisting of a trunk line running E. and W. across the province from Paraná to Concepción del Uruguay and several tributary branches, afford ample transportation facilities to the ports. Another railway line follows the Uruguay from Concordia northward into Corrientes. ”

“ The Bajada is the capital of Entre Rios. In 1825 the town contained 6000 inhabitants, and the province 30,000; yet, few as the inhabitants are, no province has suffered more from bloody and desperate revolutions. They boast here of representatives, ministers, a standing army, and governors: so it is no wonder that they have their revolutions. At some future day this must be one of the richest countries of La Plata. The soil is varied and productive; and its almost insular form gives it two grand lines of communication by the rivers Parana and Uruguay. ”

“ The Argentine Provinces and National Territories are the following:
PROVINCES
1. Buenos Aires. 2. Santa Fé. 3. Entre Rios. 4. Corrientes. 5. Córdoba. 6. San Luis. 7. Santiago del Estero. 8. Mendoza. 9. San Juan. 10. La Rioja. 11. Catamarca. 12. Tucumán. 13. Salta. 14. Jujuy. TERRITORIES
1. Federal Capital. 2. Misiones. 3. Formosa. 4. Chaco. 5. Pampa Central. 6. Neuquen. 7. Rio Negro. 8. Chubut. 9. Santa Cruz. 10. Tierra del Fuego. 11. Los Andes.
It should be added that all Public Acts and Judicial Decisions of one Province have legal effect in all the others. ”

“ At the Rio Colorado some men who kept the humblest shops used to dine with General Rosas. A son of a major at Bahia Blanca gained his livelihood by making paper cigars, and he wished to accompany me, as guide or servant, to Buenos Ayres, but his father objected on the score of the danger alone. Many officers in the army can neither read nor write, yet all meet in society as equals. In Entre Rios, the Sala consisted of only six representatives. ”

“ A congress, hastily summoned, and composed of his own nominees, bestowed upon Lopez the title of marshal, with extraordinary war powers, and on April 13, 1865, he declared war, at the same time seizing two Argentine war-vessels in the bay of Corrientes, and on the next day occupied the town of Corrientes, instituted a provisional government of his Argentine partisans, and summarily announced the annexation to Paraguay of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rios. ”

“ Causes of friction still remained, but they did not develop into open quarrels, for Mitre was content to leave Urquiza in his province of Entre Rios, and the other administrators (caudillos) in their several governments, a large measure of autonomy, trusting that the position and growing commercial importance of Buenos Aires would inevitably tend to make the federal capital the real centre of power of the republic. In 1865 the Argentines were forced into war with Paraguay through the overbearing attitude of the president Francisco Solano Lopez. ”

“ The rainfall, which varies between 39 and 47 in. in Entre Rios, decreases to 27 in. in Córdoba and 2 in. in San Juan. The republic has a width of about 745 m. at this point, three-fourths of which is a comparatively level alluvial plain, and the remainder an arid plateau broken by mountain ranges. In the vicinity of Buenos Aires the climatic conditions vary very little from those of the pampa region; the mean annual temperature is about 63° (maximum 104°; minimum 32°) , and the annual rainfall is 34 in.; snow is rarely seen. ”

“ South of its confluence with the river Paraguay, the Paraná washes the western foot of a series of sandstone bluffs for 30 miles.Thence for 240 m. the bordering hills are about 80 ft. high, but at Goya the country is almost on a level with the river. Near the boundary-line between Corrientes and Entre Rios the banks are very low on South-easterly Course of Paraná. both sides of the river, and continue so for nearly 100 m.; but farther down, for 150 m., the left bank is margined, as far as Diamante, by a range of hills from 125 to 160 ft. high, at times boldly escarped. ”

“ His period of office was marked by the rapid advance of Buenos Aires in population and prosperity, and by an expansion of trade that was unfortunately accompanied by financial extravagance. The war with Paraguay left a legacy of disputes concerning boundaries which almost led to war between the two victorious allies, Argentina and Brazil, but by the exertions of Mitre, who was sent at the close of 1872 as special envoy to Rio, a settlement was arrived at and friendly relations restored. The month of April 1870 saw an insurrection in Entre Rios headed by the caudillo, Lopez Jordan. ”

“ The new governor was instructed that the conversion of the natives rather than their conquest should be his main purpose; they were to be treated indeed as vassals of the crown but not as slaves; and his Majesty the emperor Charles V. was pleased to declare that in the foundation of new colonies he had less regard for his own aggrandizement than for the spread of the holy Catholic faith. Pedro de los Rios was a man unfit to govern a community of wild and turbulent adventurers in a strange and half-settled territory. ”

“ Now began for the young pair a gloomy and trying time. Miguel was unable any longer to hide his necessities. One by one the few objects of value which they had in the house went to the pawn-shop, where they brought scarcely the fifth part of their value. Oftentimes the young man despaired and cursed his lot, and even spoke of going and firing a shot at the Count de Ríos and another at Mendoza.
Maximina, in these painful crises, consoled him, cheered him with new hope, and when this resource failed, she succeeded in softening him with her tears and driving away from him all his evil thoughts. ”

“ Fernandez showed up with a former Senator, a dignified old dandy named Rios, who sported a silver-headed cane, a waxed, dyed mustache, and a Cross and Sword emblem in his lapel. They shared the table in the Ambassador's small private dining room with Hall, Orville Smith and the Ambassador.
The publisher fawned over Hall like a long-lost brother. "You are safe," he exclaimed. "Thanks be to the Virgin Mother! What happened? Was it very bad?"
"I got drunk," Hall said. "That's all that happened."
"Ridiculous, Señor Hall! You are a man who can take his drink. ”

“ ÍÑIGO LÓPEZ DE MENDOZA, MARQUÉS DE SANTILLANA. Perhaps the most impressive literary figure of the fifteenth century. The nephew of López de Ayala, he belongs partly to the Middle Ages, but largely also to the Renaissance. Amador de los Ríos, who has given us the best edition of his works (Madrid, 1852) , as well as an excellent account of his life and genius, divides Santillana’s productions into five classes: obras de amores, obras doctrinales é históricas, sonetos fechos al itálico modo, obras devotas, obras de recreación. ”

“ The new-comer arriving from the north is at once struck with the distinction between Brazil and the Argentine. Rio, with its strain of dark descent living in the midst of a dream of sleepy beauty, is still perhaps partly mediæval and undoubtedly tropical; Buenos Aires, on its flat plain and dreary river, is awake, twentieth century, and wholly European; but it is to the south of Europe that the Argentine is akin and not to the north. A Latin race was the first to colonise the new land, and successive waves of the same are still reaching its shores. ”

“ La Pampa Central, a Territory which extends farther north, is already from its population entitled to be a Province. Lying south of Mendoza, San Luis, and Córdoba, it has Buenos Aires on the east, Rio Negro Territory south, with the Colorado River as the dividing line; and west, Neuquen and Mendoza. The Territory is undulating, with hills, valleys, prairie, and lakes; the soil is generally fertile, yielding fine crops; wheat, corn, barley, linseed, alfalfa, vines, fruits. Large herds of cattle roam over the pastures but are usually sent out for fattening. ”

“ That the Province has made enormous strides in population, wealth, intelligence and importance, during the last thirty years, admits of no doubt. Our forests have disappeared, an improved system of agriculture has followed, manufactories have sprung up, railways have connected every county, a daily press has become an established and indispensable institution, the telegraph has economized time by practically annihilating distance, while numerous inventions and discoveries have created new wants, and supplied as rapidly as they have made them. ”

“ At the beginning of this century the Province was almost a vast wilderness, with open spaces here and there, cleared by the settler’s axe. Even as late as 1812, at the time of the American war, we had only just begun to emerge, as it were, from the dark towering forests that were intersected by only the Indian{81} footpaths. It is almost astounding when one stops to consider that even within the memory of those now living our Province has been made. Our cities have been built, our canals dug, our forests subdued and Ontario made a garden, all well nigh within the compass of a man’s lifetime. ”

“ The Argentine Republic will some day become a formidable rival of the United States. It has vast natural resources similar to ours, and is developing them rapidly. It has a magnificent fluvial system like that of the Mississippi, fertile plains like those of Illinois and Iowa, boundless pampas stretching for twelve hundred miles to the mountains, and affording pasturage for millions of cattle, horses, and sheep, like the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico. ”

“ I do not know anything more remarkable in the recent history of this great continent than the story of this populous and extensive Province, whose shores are washed by the beautiful waters of Erie, Huron, and Ontario. Within the lifetime of a man, indeed only sixty years ago, nothing but an untouched growth of wood was visible throughout this wide region, where there are now myriads of happy homesteads— (cheers,) and, while this remarkable result has been accomplished in so short a time, we see no diminution in the progress and prosperity of the Province. ”

“ Our progress has been great in all the arts--in science, agriculture, commerce, navigation, mining, mechanics, law, medicine, etc.; and in general education the progress is likewise encouraging. Our thirteen States have become thirty-eight, including Colorado (which has taken the initiatory steps to become a State) , and eight Territories, including the Indian Territory and Alaska, and excluding Colorado, making a territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the south we have extended to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the west from the Mississippi to the Pacific. ”

“ It is not easy to treat of the topography and geography of Paraguay. Some portions, — for instance, the Paraguay river and the Parana to the parallel of Villa Rica, and even to the rapids of La Guayra — have for three centuries been travelled over and surveyed. ”

“ The Province of Buenos Aires, half as large again as the whole Republic of Uruguay, possesses some of the best land in Argentina, and in it farming has reached the highest developments as yet attained in either Republic. In it intensive farming has already made its first appearance in South America—as needs must when high land-values drive. ”