great mining country—the goal of fortune-hunting Spaniards in those years—placed them more directly under the control of the viceregal authorities. Tucuman was a mere southern extension of the jurisdiction of the Audiencia at Charcas, and Cuyo was an integral part of Chile, but this did not prevent the early development of a strong sentiment in favour of local self-government and of hatred of the imported Spanish satraps.
By the year 1617 the settlements on the Lower Paraná had become of considerable importance. Buenos Aires was a town of three thousand people; the right bank of the river as far as Santa Fé was a grazing-ground for the herds of the creoles; towns and ranches were flourishing in Corrientes. In that year the Spanish crown abolished the office of adelantado and erected the lower settlements into a province separate from Paraguay. The new province included the territory that is now Uruguay, as well as the four actual Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Entre Rios and Corrientes. Entre Rios and Uruguay were, however, as yet entirely unsettled.
While the creoles were thus firmly establishing themselves along the Lower Paraná and in the Andean provinces, the Jesuits were converting the Indians in the east of Paraguay, and early in the seventeenth century these indefatigable missionaries had penetrated to the Upper Paraná, crossed it, and were gathering the Indians by thousands into peaceful villages.
ARGENTINA
CHAPTER I
THE ARGENTINE LAND
South from where the great mass of the Bolivian Andes shoves a shoulder to the east, as if seeking to join the Brazilian mountain system, and from where a low ridge stretches out to form the watershed between the Madeira and the eastward-flowing affluents of the Paraguay, extends an immense flat plain. Two thousand miles from north to south, and nearly five hundred miles in breadth, hardly a hillock rises above its surface from the foothills of the Andes westward to the sea. In the tropical North its surface is partly covered with trees, but south of the Chaco the only woodlands are narrow belts following the streams. Everywhere stretch the grassy plains, without an obstruction or interruption. The soil is a fine alluvium, full of the right chemical elements, and admirably adapted to agriculture, wherever the rainfall is sufficient. As a pasture-ground it is the finest on the planet. Within recent geological times this plain was the bottom of a great shallow gulf which received the detritus washed down from the Andes on the one side and the Brazilian mountains on the other. The gradual uplifting of those youngest mountains—the Andes—raised their flanks until the adjacent floor of the gulf appeared dry land, a land all ready and prepared for human occupancy. Nowhere does man encounter fewer obstacles to his freedom of movement or find it easier to procure his food supply than on the pampa—the characteristic topographical feature of the political division of South America known as Argentina.
Skirting the ridge on the east and draining the vast slopes of the Brazilian mountains of their tropical rainfall, is the great river Paraná. In latitude 27° it turns abruptly to the west, as if about to cross the pampa, but a hundred miles farther on it resumes its southward course. At this last turn the Paraná flows into a river which comes straight down from the north, draining the bed of the old inland sea that used to divide South America. This junction of the Paraná and the Paraguay forms the second largest river in the world—a river without obstructions to navigation, but which is so immense that it cannot be bridged. In latitude 32° it turns back to the south-east, soon receives the Uruguay—a swifter stream, that drains the southern part of the Atlantic highlands—and then opens out into the great shallow estuary known as the River Plate. Between the Uruguay and the Paraná is the Argentine Mesopotamia—a flat region where the low-lying plains, covered with luscious grasses, intersected with streams, and interspersed with timber, gradually rise up-stream into the highlands of the Missions.
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To the west the pampa is bounded by the foothills of the Andes and the parallel chains with which that great mountain system reinforces its flanks. At the Bolivian frontier, the great outward-jutting shoulder of the Andes looms up among a series of subordinate chains. South of them, for a thousand miles, is a belt of broken country averaging two hundred miles in width. The pampa creeps up to the very foot of the mountain ranges and where it is watered blossoms like a garden. A quarter of the population of the Republic lives in the irrigated valleys of these Andean provinces.
A comparatively narrow, arid, belt stretches diagonally across the South American continent from the Pacific, in Northern Chile, to the Atlantic in Northern Patagonia. Consequently, from north to south, and from the Atlantic back toward the north-east border of this arid belt, the rainfall of Argentina decreases. On the north-eastern frontier it is about 80 inches a year; at Rosario, 40; at Cordoba, 30; at Buenos Aires, 35. In the Andean provinces it decreases from over forty, near the Bolivian frontier, to five or six at San Juan in the latitude of Santa Fé and Cordoba. In the eastern part of the great pampa the rainfall is ample for cereal crops; in the western half the rains are periodical and the region is better adapted to grazing than to agriculture, and there the grass lands are intersected with tracts of desert which grow larger towards the south. In the Andes the eastern ranges, catching the rain-laden upper currents, send down ample water to irrigate the valleys and adjacent plains.
The mesopotamian region and the country directly south of the Plate estuary have, of course, an ample rainfall. South of the latitude of Buenos Aires the rainfall of the Andean region, which has grown steadily less from the northern boundary, begins again to increase. The eastern slopes of the mountains south for an indeterminate distance are well watered, while the Patagonian plains to their east are dry and desolate.
The climate varies from tropical, on the northern frontier, to arctic in Tierra del Fuego. The southern pampa and the Andean provinces are temperate or subtropical, and admirably adapted for habitation by men of European descent. Tucuman is the hottest of these provinces. There the average temperature of the coldest month is 53°; at Buenos Aires it is 50°; at Cordoba 47°. The average temperatures in these localities for the whole year are, respectively, 63°, 61°, and 63°.
When Columbus landed in the West Indies, this vast territory was occupied by two separate sets of aborigines. The Andean provinces were a part of the great Inca Empire. South as far as Mendoza, the Andean valleys were filled with a vigorous yet peaceful population who had brought the art of irrigation to a high degree of perfection. Plantations of corn, mandioc, and potatoes flourished on the terraced hillsides and in the fertile valleys. The lower and hotter plains furnished cotton. Constant communication, both commercial and governmental, was kept up with the centre of the Inca power in Cuzco, along roads that followed the easiest routes along the valleys and up over the passes to the Bolivian plateau, and thence to the central provinces of the Empire. Chile, on the other side of the Cordillera, was a sister province, and the passes over the great range were well known and constantly used.
