Tierra Firme

“ Thus far in North America we have followed the Spaniards in their pacification and settlement of Castilla del Oro, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Between these territories is situated the province of Veragua, subsequently called Nueva Cartago. Though rich in metals and near to Darien, such was the indomitable fierceness of the natives, and the ruggedness and sterility of the country, that this, the spot on Tierra Firme where the first attempt at settlement was made, was the last province of Central America that became subject to European domination. ”

“ Houses were burned, plantations destroyed, women seized, merchandise stolen, and settlers slain. Such was the attendant terror that masters dared not chastise their slaves, nor did merchants venture to travel the highways except in companies of twenty or more. [XXII‐2] In the year 1554 many hundreds of them were thus banded in Tierra Firme alone.
About this time the new viceroy of Peru, Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, marqués de Cañete, opportunely arriving at Nombre de Dios from Spain, en route for his capital, resolved on the subjugation of these outlaws. ”

“ II And in order that this stupendous wealth of the West Indies and of Tierra Firme, as South America was then called, should belong to no country but herself, Spain sent out Governors to rule with iron hand her Spanish-American Colonies. For the Spanish Crown had Colonies in South America, just as England had in North America. In South America were many important cities and towns. ”

“ The first sight of Tierra del Fuego is certainly disappointing. The word calls up visions of desolate snowy mountains inhabited by giants; what is seen are low cliffs, behind which are rolling downs, sunny and smiling, divided up into prosaic sheep farms. ”

“ In due time, arriving in Tierra del Fuego, the three natives were left there, with every provision made for their future subsistence. They had all the means and appliances to assist them in carrying out Captain Fitzroy’s humane scheme: carpentering tools, agricultural implements, and a supply of seeds, with which to make a beginning. ”

“ There are many more skeletons of dead miners than authentic records of wealth acquired in Tierra del Fuego, while those who have now and again struck it rich and gotten clean off with the dust usually have gone no further with it than Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan, for Punta Arenas is to this region what San Francisco was to California and Virginia City to the deserts of Nevada. ”

“ They do not, like the inhabitants of the North Pole, pass the most rigorous period of the winter underground, but pursue their labours in the open air, protecting themselves as best they can against the cold which prevails on these shores, notwithstanding the deceitful name of Tierra del Fuego. ”

“ At the opposite extremity of the Continent lies Tierra del Fuego, the natives of which are exposed to still greater privations, and have been pronounced by observant voyagers as among the most degraded of savage races. ”

“ They indicated habits of industry, of which we had seen but few traces; for in the Tierra Caliente, it was rather the bounty of Nature, than the exertions of the inhabitants, that we had found cause to admire: their indolence seemed to increase exactly in the same ratio, as the facility with which their wants were supplied. But on the Table-land, the necessaries of life are not to be obtained without some efforts: the fertility of the soil is great, but it requires the hand of the cultivator to call it forth ”

“ Its health was assured by its being fortunately placed in the genial climate of the Tierra Templada. A vast wall built across the huge rift of the cañon protected it from foes in the west, and the peaks, the impenetrable forests, formed a barrier against the outside world on all other sides. ”

“ Undisturbed by this mockery, he accepted the proposal, choosing as the field of his operations the unconquerable district called Tierra de Guerra, and made an arrangement that no Spaniards should be permitted to reside in that country for five years. ”

“ Yet we think that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of it. ”

“ My young brigand—I don’t know your name—the gold of Tierra del Fuego can, literally, be picked up or rather washed by hand. It is produced solely by the action of the sea on the sands along the coastal barranca. The sea has been washing down that sand for hundreds of years. ”

“ Tierra fría extends from twenty-four hundred to three thousand meters above sea level. Its vegetation, as would be expected, is entirely different from that of the hot plains and temperate valleys of the lowlands. One no longer sees the elegant forms of the plantain and the bamboo, nor the majestic palm and ceiba, nor the graceful and flexible bejucos and creepers of hotter climes. But, notwithstanding the absence of all these charming representatives of Flora, it cannot be said of the vegetation of tierra fría that it is either poor or devoid of importance. ”

“ What does he care for mulberry-trees, sugar, indigo, the navigation of rivers, European immigration, or anything beyond the narrow circle of ideas in which he has lived? What does he care for the progress of the interior when he himself is in the midst of wealth, possessing a custom-house which brings in two millions a year without any trouble on his part?
Salta, Jujui, Tucuman, Santa Fé, Corrientes, and Entre Rios, would now rival Buenos Ayres if the industrial movement so eagerly begun, could have continued. ”

“ Under their patient and discriminating culture, every inch of good soil was tasked to its greatest power of production; while the most unpromising spots were compelled to contribute something to the subsistence of the people. Everywhere the land teemed with evidence of agricultural wealth, from the smiling valleys along the coast to the terraced steeps of the sierra, which, rising into pyramids of verdure, glowed with all the splendors of tropical vegetation. ”

“ My object in coming to Buenos Ayres has been to obtain a grant of land in the Beagle Channel on which to create a farm, and employ native labor upon it, thus seeking to supply a want in reference to agricultural products which we have long felt, and at the same time insure the well-being of some of the natives. ”

“ We have, therefore, in Mexico the identical mode of the tenure of lands which Polo de Ondogardo had noted in Peru and reported to the King of Spain, as follows.... 'Although the crops and other produce of these lands were devoted to the tribute, the land itself belonged to the people themselves. Hence a thing will be apparent which has not hitherto been properly understood. When any one wants land, it is considered sufficient if it can be shown that it belonged to the Inca or to the sun. ”

“ His song is like him. The simple words hold an immensity like the deep nights of Spain. Love of conquest, of gold, of glory and of power—the turbulence of Spain is not within them. Yet the essence of will and power, making this intricate turmoil, lives in his poems like a resolution of many chords in silence.
Juan’s preceptress and ally in their task of purifying convents was Teresa de Ahumada, known to religion and to letters as Santa Teresa de Jesús. Teresa’s town, Avila, stands for her: stands for the woman of Spain. ”

“ Then comes Tierra del Fuego, which is much the largest of all the islands. To the southward of Tierra del Fuego lies a cluster of many small islands, which bear different names; though the group farthest south of all, and which it is usual to consider as the southern termination of our noble continent, but which is not on a continent at all, is known by the appropriate appellation of the Hermits. If solitude, and desolation, and want, and a contemplation of some of the sublimest features of this earth, can render a spot fit for a hermitage, these islands are very judiciously named. ”

“ About a day's journey from the capital, rises that mighty chain of mountains called the Sierra Madre, which, after connecting the volcanoes of Mexico with those of Puebla, takes an inland and northerly direction, hiding within its bowels, near Monte Real and Guanaxato, that boundless mineral wealth which excites so strongly the wonder of the naturalist. ”

“ From the country which is called Ecuador, and which in my other life had been Quito, [Pg 141] the kingdom of Atahuallpa, to the southern confines of Bolivia, which had once been part of the Land of the Four Regions, the dominions of my own father, all were ready to throw down their long-borne burdens and turn and rend their oppressors and those whose fathers had robbed them of the land that had once been theirs.
I well remember the very words in which Francis Hartness told me all this at much greater length than I have set it down here ”

“ Commerce, agriculture, mechanical pursuits, professions,—all were abandoned for the purpose of gathering the glittering treasures which lay buried in the ravines, gorges and rivers of the Sierra Nevada. The productive industry of the country was annihilated in a day. In some instances the moral perceptions were blunted, and men left their families unprovided, and soldiers deserted their posts. ”

“ In the development of its mines Peru necessarily must add to the population of the Sierra. Mining labor now is hardly sufficient, and the preference of the natives for agriculture and for service as freighters makes the problem one of increasing difficulty. ”

“ In Peru, and in southern Bolivia, the higher valleys—Jauja, Cuzco, the Pampas of Cochabamba and Sucre—have centres of dense population and agricultural wealth at a height of between 9,000 and 11,000 feet. ”

“ When the Spaniards first undertook the conquest of this Sierra, they met with stubborn resistance from the Tayronas and Chimilas, who lived among these hills. They were energetic tribes, cultivating fields of maize, yucca, beans and cotton, which latter they wove and dyed for clothing. ”

“ The interior of the pathless wilds of Guiana had been reported to abound in those exhaustless mines of the precious metals which filled the imaginations of the earliest explorers of the New World, and, to their ignorant cupidity, appeared the only important object of research and acquisition in regions where the eye of political wisdom would have discerned so many superior inducements to colonization or to conquest. ”

“ They are not migratory in their habits, and will often remain in one mining district for a lifetime. The miners and millers work about seven hours daily. They are usually peaceable, and receive better wages than the agricultural peons. The latter are, as a rule, lazy and indolent. In the tierra fria and tierra templada they work from daylight to sunset, with a siesta at noon, while in the tierra caliente the hours of labor are from 5 to 11 a. m., and from 3 to 6 p. m. Women do not generally work in the fields. ”

“ We have seen the part that has been played in the exploitation of the soil by groups of colonists who swarm from one area to another. Whether we think of the ranchers of the eastern part of Buenos Aires transplanting themselves to Córdoba or north of Santa Fé, the sheep-breeders moving westward, or the Santa Fé colonists settling in the lucerne area, they all take with them their own habits and methods of work, and they take time to adjust them to a new environment. ”

“ It was by employing liberally this powerful incitement to exertion, that the Old Spaniards found means to create a population in the most distant and desolate districts, without having recourse to the Mita or Tanda, which, in Peru and Chili, was in such general use; while it is not improbable, that the absence of that system of forced labour, which was adopted South of the Equator, has contributed not a little to encourage that love of mining, which prevails at the present day, amongst the natives of New Spain. ”

“ Under it every man from the age of eighteen to fifty was required to render bodily service, the natives of each mining colony of South America being divided into seven sections, each of which had to work six months in the mines. Every mine-owner could demand the number of Indians he needed. In Peru alone fourteen hundred mines were worked, and labor of this kind was in constant demand. ”

“ Hitherto our journeys have led us chiefly through the Estremenian plain, but after passing Plasencia the country changes. We enter the outliers of those great sierras that shut out Estremadura from León and Castile, from Portugal—and the world! Here one quickly perceives signs of greater prosperity, due in part to the heavier rainfall from the hills, to a slightly richer soil, but mainly to the superior energy of hill-folk. Wherever the soil warrants it, cultivation is pushed right up amidst the jungled slopes of the hills. ”

“ These are the new colonies, as they are still called, of the Sierra Morena, and the first of the villages we reach, is Santa Elena. Nothing can be more striking or agreeable than the contrast between the villages of the new settlements, and those we meet in other parts of the interior of Spain. Industry and activity were evidently at work every where around; the soil was forced to yield whatever crop was suited to it ”