La Plata

“ La Plata, the other port which lies about fifteen miles farther down the estuary of the Plate than the capital, has proved a dismal failure. Much money has been wasted in the attempt to make a port for the capital at this spot; but, in spite of its wide streets and imposing buildings, the city has a neglected, desolate aspect, few persons cross its grass-grown streets, and the whole place is a good instance of the Nemesis which overtakes extravagant hopes. ”

“ The railway station of La Plata is a very tasteful and commodious building, which gives the visitor an agreeable first impression on arrival, while the spacious streets, villainously paved though many of them remain, offer a welcome sense of freedom and airiness to one who has been cooped up for any length of time in the choking byways of Buenos Ayres. There is none of that eddying and surging traffic of the metropolis. The current of life flows with an old-world leisure ”

“ It had been reported in the papers of the day, at New York, previous to our sailing, that the Portuguese had declared war against the patriots of the La Plata, had seized on Monte Video, and were blockading the port of Buenos Ayres. On Sunday morning, eighty two days out, we passed Monte Video, in full sight, with a stiff breeze. The day was bright and beautiful, and the appearance of this [9] walled city as we were borne along upon the bosom of the majestic La Plata, was to us, who so long had seen nothing but the ocean and the sky, highly gratifying. ”

“ Yet, keeping one's eyes open to all the disadvantages, one cannot go through the country and see its fecundity, go into the killing houses at La Plata and Buenos Aires, watch the ocean liners, with the Union Jack dangling over their stern, being loaded with many sides of beef, visit the grain elevators at the ports of Bahia Blanca and Rosario pouring streams of wheat destined for European consumption into the holds of liners, without the imagination being stimulated when standing on the threshold of this new land's possibilities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To-day La Plata has a population of about fifty thousand, although over seventy are claimed for it, a comprehensive system of tramways, broad, well paved streets, two theatres, thirty public schools, a national college, and six large hotels. There are many monuments and fountains ornamenting the thoroughfares, and what is now wanting is a population commensurate with the grand scale on which the capital is designed. An immense cathedral is being built, but has only reached a little way above its foundation, as work upon it has for a while been suspended. ”

“ The Rio de la Plata spread out widely below the roaring multi-engined plane and the vast expanse of buildings which is Buenos Aires appeared far ahead in the gathering dusk. Little twinkling lights blinked into being upon the water and the earth far away. Then one of the two guards touched Bell on the shoulder.
"Señor," he said sharply above the motors' muffled roar, "we shall land. A car will draw up beside the plane. There will be no customs inspection. That has been arranged for. You can have no hope of escape. ”

“ The Spaniards who first visited the coast of Argentina, and sailed up the broad and imposing river that empties into the Atlantic Ocean, were so impressed with the outlook and prospects, that they named the country Argentina, which means silvery or silver-like, and bestowed upon the majestic stream the name Rio de La Plata, which means river of silver. When their prospectors failed to find the great deposits of gold and silver, which had been described to them by the natives, this province lost much of its importance, and soon dwindled into comparative insignificance. ”

“ The only break on the Argentine side is that of the Sierra de la Plata, not many more than twenty miles to the northeast. On the Chilean side a score of dark peaks rear their heads, a sinister array of precipitous impossibilities from which any climber would turn away in despair. ”

“ A general pass is more than a saving of money; it gives train officials an exalted notion of the holder’s importance, and it permits him to jump off anywhere on the spur of the moment. Yet for many miles south I saw nothing worthy of a stop. When one has already visited La Plata, capital of the Province of Buenos Aires, a short hour below the metropolis and noted for its university and its rows of venerable eucalyptus trees, there remains little to attract the eye in the flat expanse of that province as it unrolls hour after hour on any of the lines of the “Great Southern.” ”

“ Nevertheless, in September, and even as early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, the golden plover often still wearing his black nuptial dress; singly and in pairs, in small flocks, and in clouds they come--curlew, godwit, plover, tatler, tringa--piping the wild notes to which the Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, then to the wild Indian in his remote village; and soon, further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in the grey wilderness of Patagonia. ”

“ Yet even here there is a vast difference, especially in the upper courses of the river. Each at its mouth flows through a rich, fertile plain occupied by a progressive, prosperous people. But the Rio de la Plata takes its rise in one of the world's most backward plains, the home of uncivilized Indians, heartless rubber adventurers, and the most rapacious of officials. Not infrequently, the degenerate white men of these regions, yielding to the subtle and insidious influence of the tropics, inflict the most outrageous abuses upon the natives, and even kill them on slight provocation. ”

“ South of the San Juan range, and somewhat isolated, is the noble La Plata group of mountains. They are volcanic, like the rest, and, of course, of Alpine appearance, while their slopes, lying far south, produce so many varieties of foliage, that they often present real bits of beauty—a word having rare application in Colorado’s scenery. These mountains were prospected eight or ten years ago, and a placer bar of supposed extraordinary value was found near the head of the Rio La Plata by a company of California miners. ”

“ Formerly the Spaniards used to send schooners to the bay of St. Julian, to fetch salt.
I shall speak of the missions in Paraguay when I come to the second voyage, which some circumstances obliged us to make again into the river of la Plata; I shall then enter into the account of the expulsion of the Jesuits, of which we were witnesses.
The commerce of the province de la Plata is less profitable than any in Spanish America; this province produces neither gold nor silver, and its inhabitants are not numerous enough to be able to get at all the other riches which the soil produces and contains. ”

“ In 1620, the government of Asomption was reduced in Paraguay and Buenos Ayres became the chief city of the second government established in La Plata. In 1629, a royal decree united into a single viceroyalty the hitherto separate governments of Buenos Ayres, of Asomption, and the provinces of Charcas, Potosi, and Cochabamba. In 1640, the Portuguese carried their arms into the La Plata, but after many contests, stretching over many years, a treaty was made in 1785, by which the domain came into the possession of Spain definitively. ”

“ Thirty leagues south of La Plata, lies the province of Chichas y Tarija; it is a very fertile territory, and produces wheat, maize, oil, wine and fruits; it also contains excellent pastures, abounds in cattle, and has several gold and silver mines. The river Tipuanis, which flows on its eastern side, carries much gold in its sand, which the natives employ themselves in collecting. ”

“ Learning the tale of treasure to be found in the interior, Irala now bent his attention to discover it. At Buenos Ayres wealth could only be the reward of industry, and therefore the settlement founded by Mendoza was abandoned, and the whole Spanish colony flocked up the river to Asuncion. They mustered six hundred souls, and Asuncion thus became the earliest founded permanent city in the region of La Plata. ”

“ But the lack of all perceptible movement in La Plata leads one to imagine that if its broad avenues and noble Plazas are not grass-grown the fact is due much more to the action of street cleaners than to that of traffic. ”

“ Rivers and Lakes.—The hydrography of Argentina is of the simplest character. The three great rivers that form the La Plata system—the Paraguay, Paraná and Uruguay—have their sources in the highlands of Brazil and flow southward through a great continental depression, two of them forming eastern boundary lines, and one of them, the Paraná, flowing across the eastern part of the republic. ”

“ The capital of Buenos Aires province is La Plata, about fifty miles away. I went down one day by the luncheon train, which runs out of the Plaza Constitution just after midday and does the journey in an hour. It was a fine train, and the luncheon car was bigger, and the food better than we have on English lines. The car was crowded with a sallow-skinned, black-moustached, black-garbed lot of gentlemen, and I gathered they were all Government officials. Nobody in Government employ thinks of doing any work in the morning. The men go to the office late and leave early. ”

“ There is nothing to do but plant and gather. At the mouth of the river La Plata neither of these plants will grow. The planter must study his heights above the sea-level, or reckon his distances from the equator, as the sailors do, and plant those crops which are congenial to the climate he lives in; watching also carefully on which side of the hills he sows barley or plants sugar-cane; for if he gets them both on the same side, one will fail.
The country at the mouth of these great rivers — Paraguay and La Plata — is a grazing country; their trade is in hides, tallow, and glue. ”

“ The interior of the vast government of La Plata and the Savannah of the Amazons is nearly involved in as much obscurity as the central parts of Africa; inhabited by a tribe of fierce and untameable Indians, the European traveller cannot hope to make his way; and we must in all probability remain unacquainted with those countries, till the increasing stride of colonial population from the governments of Brazil on the one hand, and from those of Peru and La Plata on the other, clears the forest of its ancient tenants. ”

“ The Cathedral and divers Cloysters give also a great lustre to the City. The antient Inhabitants of this Countrey, especially about those parts where now this City stands, were the Charcas and Charanques, both valiant People, who by Command of the Ingas fetch’d invaluable Treasures out of the neighboring Mines of Porco, where a thousand Men were continually kept at work. In La Plata were reckon’d long since, besides Spaniards, above sixty thousand Peruvians which pay annual Tribute. ”

“ A few days' further steaming and they arrived at the harbor of Buenos Ayres, where the two great rivers, the Uruguay and the Parana, unite to form the wide sheet of water called the river La Plata. It was night when the Barbadoes dropped her anchor, and it was not until the morning that they obtained their first view of their future home. ”

“ Its capital of the same name is 210 miles north-west of La Plata, in 18° 50' south latitude, and 68° 20' west longitude.
The province of Caranjas commences 70 leagues west of La Plata, and extends above 50 leagues on the west bank of Lake Paria. The Andes pervading this district, the climate is very cold, and it produces no grain, but has abundant pastures for cattle, vicunas, &c. There are also many silver mines, two of which are very productive, and one of copper is worked. ”

“ And every Argentine town, when it sets out to beautify itself, must have an avenida and a plaza and an equestrian statue of San Martin; the matters of water supply and drainage come later.
But the federal capital absolutely refused to settle at La Plata. It was too near Buenos Aires, where society lived, and where there was a whirl of excitement. So, perforce, the capital had to be at Buenos Aires, and a Government House for the residence of the President of the Republic was built, and is known as the "Palace o Gold," because of the money consumed in its construction. ”

“ With the exception of the Irish, the great majority of Catholic emigrants avoid the United States, but the migration of European Catholics to South America is increasing year by year. Just as the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Irish flow toward the States, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians flock into La Plata, Chili, and Brazil. The European population of La Plata has already reached three hundred thousand, and is growing fast. ”

“ The great river la Plata rises at the city of that name, and out of the mountain Potosi, in Peru, and a great trade is carried on by that river, and it would be dangerous to let foreigners into the secret of that trade, which they might entirely cut off, especially when they should find how small a number of Spaniards are planted there to preserve it, seeing there are not six hundred Spaniards in all that vast country, which, by the course of that river, is more than one thousand six hundred miles in length. ”

“ The appearance of so large a force, fitted out in such a prompt manner, in the far-distant waters of the La Plata, and the admirable conduct of the officers and men employed in it, have had a happy effect in favor of our country throughout all that remote portion of the world. ”