LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. ClcUS 'pc; -w^^ \yM ^'^ ,.s,S^-^^ &'' ■tW^"'W^ .^^ "^m^ i EIGHT MONTHS OX THE GRAN CHACO OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 2 vols., Crown 8i'o, Illustrations and il/aj3s, 24s THE CRUISE OF THE FALCON. A VOYAGE TO SOUTH AMERICA AND UP THE RIVER PLATE IN A 30-TON YACHT. Bv E. F. KNIGHT, Barristee-at-Law. Loudon: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet Street, E.C. EIGHT MONTHS ON TIIK GRAN CEACO OF THE ARGENTINE JIEPUBLIO GIOVANNI PELLESCHI. HonUoit : SAM P.SOX l.nW, AIAlJSTi^X, SKATJLE, .^- inVIXGToN, CliOWN BUlLDINiJS. l-W, FLEET t^TREET. 1886. [.4/1 rightsi reserved.] -2|/ LONDON : IKIIflED ET GILBEBT AND RIVINGTON, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. TO MY MOTIIKK, Eui'EMi.v Pellesciii DEI Tacufit. TO THE READER. The present work is neither literary nor scientific. It is a i»laiii account of what I saw, or believed I saw, in the Chaco, and nf some of the feelings I experienced. I would not seek to eni- lic'Uish my tale, even had I the power, for fear of diminishing iho faith of the reading public, which already seems to W small, in the narratives of travellers. It is not for the purpose of excusing the many defects of the book that I add that every page has been written in snatch*-^, if I may so express myself, in the rare intervals of leisure aflbrded me by the exercise of my profession, and almost always in country places, where, all the world over, there are few conveniences for writing. Hence a polished style was my least consideration. I therefore rely on the reader's indulgence, anil I shall feel rewarded, if he tliinks me an attentive observer and a faithful narrator. On the one hand he must bear in miiul the vastness and novelty of the scene. I use the word novelty, because travellers and writers of travels, of whom there have been many of late years, in this part of South America, have hitherto con- lined themselves almost exclusively to the southern territories of the Argentine Kepublic. That is to say, they have ooncerneil tlieniselves with that part of the Pampas which, until re- cently, was in the hands of the Indians, and with those portions of Patagonia still remaining in their possession. On the other bund, very few have dealt — and those not in any detail — with the Gran Chaco, which is the northern portion of the same Ji'epublic, and is of immense extent; the greater part Wing stiil VIU TO THE READER. ill the possession of wild and independent Indian tribes. This I traversed in the discharge of my duties as an official of the Civil Engineers' Service in the Argentine Kepublic. Although in the course of the book I shall place, the fact in a clear light, it is well, nevertheless, to state in this place that the Argentine Eepublic must not be judged from the state of the Chaco. It must be remembered that this country, thirteen times the size of Italy, and with one-thirteenth of its popidation, exhibits the most opposite extremes, from the wealthy cities of the littoral, such as Buenos Ayres, in which a more splendid life can be enjoyed than in most Italian capitals, to the estancias and ranchos on the Indian frontiers, and the toJderias of the Indians, But I will treat of this in another work, if readers and the Fates are propitious to me. GIOVAX^^I PELLESCHI. Buenos Ayres, March, 1S80. CONTENTS. ^Jait i. FROM CORRIENTES TO THE FRONTIER. ClIArTEU I. PAGH PaI!ANA — CoKRIE.NTKS I cnArTKR ir. lliMAiT.v — TnK Vkrmejo (OR Vermiliox RivKit)— Tiie Toras . (! CHAPTER HI. FiKsT Imi'ressioxs — TfiE Landscape— TiiK Tkimitive Indians . 11 CHAPTER IV. Philological Discussion ox the Name of the Toiias . . . IG CHAPTER V. The Catastrophe ok the "Rio de las Piedkas"— The Moltm OF THE Teuco— Wind and Kain lU CHAPTKU VI. Encounter with the Toba Indians 23 CHAPTER VII. Physical Ciiaractekistks of tue Mattaccos and other Indians 30 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. At Cangaglik— a Hunting-Party— A Tolderia . . . . "^35 The Chenas A Desperate Attempt CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. 43 48 CHAPTER XI. Succour — EiGHTy-nvE Leagues on Horseback . , . .52 CHAPTER XII. A Frontier Fort-Argentine Soldiers— IndiaxNs and Civili- zation 59 CHAPTER XIII. Marriage Customs , , g4 CHAPTER XIV. Fermented Drinks— Natural Products for Domestic Use. . 70 CHAPTER XV. War 77 CHAPTER XVI. Religion §^ CHAPTER XVII. Religion. (Continued.) 91 CHAPTER XVIII. The Indians and their Dead ....... 93 CHAPTER XIX. Medicine 105 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XX. FAGK Social Condition— Philological Remarks luu CHAPTER XXI. Social Condition. (Continued.) 115 CHAPTER XX F I. Social Condition. {Conlinucd.) 121 CHAPTER XXIII. Social Condition. {Contuiaed.) 130 iJatt if:. FROM THE FRONTIER TO ORAN. CHAPTER I. The Frontieu— Arkival 137 CHAPTER II. UlVADAVIA 110 CHAPTER III. The Elections 115 CHAPTER IV. PoBLAcioNES— Missions— Civic Government 153 CHAPTER V. Dkiartuke from Rivadavia— Features of the Countuv . . lod CHAPTER VI. Un olk Way to Okan— The Rains and Agkiclltlre— A Leper, ir.3 XU CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAGE Diseases or AnIiMals — Forage— Distribution of Herbaceous Flora in Pasture-Lands 169 CHAPTER VIII. A Night at tee Mouth of the Chapapa 178 CHAPTER IX. The Passage of the Vermejo (or Vermilion) River— The Delta — Euosions and Flora 183 CHAPTER X. At Fort Sarmiento— Hospitality — Two Bibliographical Opi- nions 19i CHAPTER XI. The Chuqcho — Reptiles, Birds, Quadrupeds .... 205 CHAPTER XII. Change of Landscape —Progress of the Republic — Irrigation 218 CHAPTER XIII. Okan .225 CHAPTER XIV. Mendoza 228 CHAPTER XV. The BASI^f of La Plata— The Pampas and Forest Regions— Their Relation to Climate and Agkiculturk in the Arghinti.nes 231 CHAPTER XVI. The For[.st Flora of the Plain— Its Distribution — Conclusions concerning the Soil, the Climate, a.nd Agriculture . . 23? CONTEXTS. xiii CHAPTER XVll. PlGI Forest Floba of the Mountain-— Its Distribution — Contrast BETWEEN THIS AND THE PRKCEDING FLOEA — CONCLUSIONS EE- hPECTiNG Altitudes, Climaie, and Soil 243 CHAPTER XVIII. Forest Floua of thk Mountain — Nomenclature of the Aliso Zone— FuTiHK Uestiny of certain Flowers .... 249 CHAPTER XIX. The Pucara Country .... CHAPTER XX. TUCVMAN ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE MATTACCO INDIANS OF THE GRAN CHACO. CHAPTER I. Juan M. Guttierrfz's Advice — Dedication to nis Memory— JIy first Lessons in Mattacco and the Speech of the Toha Cacique make me despair of Success — How I tried to PLUCK AT the Fruit — Faustino is my .Mattacco Master — Experiment with Natalio Roldan — The Opinion op the Missionary Fathkrs is confirmed — How I discovered one OF the Fundamental Characteristics of the Language- Functions OF THE Prepositive Partules nu, a, In — Greater Facility following dn this — Advice to Students of \ Philology 2tio CHAPTER II. Names given hy the ^Iattaccos to Importrd Animals — How 1 FOU.ND OUT TllEItt ErVMOLOGY — IMPORTANCE OF THIS — CONTENTS. PAGE AlTGMEVTATIVES AND DIMINUTIVES CHANGES IDENTICAL WITH THOSE IN ITALIAN — ThEIE COLLOCATION NEGATIVES — Theik Examples — Abureviations— Analogy with Italian. 271 CHAPTEE III. The Use of Postiositions instead of Prepositions was perhaps GENERAL IN THE ArYAN LANGUAGES AND THE INDIGENOUS Languages of South Amkiuca — Logical Priority of some — Why the Chiqchua is a Typical Language — Conjunc- tions — Analogy between Mattacco Words and our own . 278 CHAPTER IV. Adverbs — Rational Form of Adverbs of Time — Sun and Earth, Day and Night— The Heavens — Adverbs of Place — Appeal TO THE Reader — Adjectives — Comparatives and Superla- tives — Forms for contrary Significations — Foreigner and Stranger — Etymology of Ciguele 282 CHAPTER V. The Indians of the Chaco can count only up to Four—The Opinion of M. QuATUEFAfiEs — The Valiant Dekds of a Cacique related by himself — Slaughter near Fort Aguirre— Incompatibility between Civilization and Bar- barism— Mattacco Method of Counting — Analogies . . 2SS CHAPTER VI. Declensions — Substantives — Personal Pronouns — Apostro- PHic Particles placrd before Names in Mattacco, Gua- RANi, AND Akka—Gendeks— Common and Abstract Nouns — Observations 292 CHAPTER VII. Curious Examples of the Formation of New Words— Etymology of luccuds, Touacco -Hair, Wool, Leaves— The Trek and ITS Fruit — Names of Kindred— Analogies— Remarks— De- MONSTRATIVE PrONOUNS INTELLECTUAL HaKMONIES — No, Nothing, Nobody- Composite Names for Offices -Verbs - Their difficulties— Examples 297 CONTKXTS. XV' CHAPTER VI I r. PACK Conjugations— Various Forms ok Past Tenses— Replkctive Vekhs —Retention of the Hoots— Postpositions and Vekhs — Verbai, Possessive Form— The Veku to 6(?^Ta»le of an Indicative Moou — Pasoive Veriw 302 CHAPTER IX. The r of the :Mattaccos and other Indians— Lahials and the I, ua, ue, ni,&c. — A.RTicuLArioN of the Mattaccus and the Chinese — Curious Analogies — Predominating Sounds in the Two Languages— Mattacco Alvhaukt— Onomutopic Words — Resemblance between Mattacco and Aryan Words— I take mv Leave 300 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO OF THE ARGENTINE EEPUBLIC. FROM CORRIENTES TO THE FRONTIER. CHAPTER I. PARANA — CORRTENTES. Among the numerous causes that induce men to abandon tlieir native country and tlieir homes for a foreign land, perhaps the strongest is a longing for novelty and the wish to say. " I have seen." The fancies of youth and the restlessness of eager minds are fed by reading accounts of the adventures of travel- lers, which are all the more fascinating when fhey occur at great distances. It may be imagined, therefore, that to me, who claim, like Terence's Chremes, that nothing in humanity is alien to me, the chance of being transferred from opulent Buenos Ayres to the midst of a wild community and a virgin country, and of (•l)serving on the spot the contrast between civilization and barbarism, l)etween art and nature, was most delightful. We are, then, on our way up the Vermejo river, that runs through the heart of the Gran Chaco, a territory four-fifths of which at least are still in the hands of the independent Indians, and continuing our way by the river Parana after travelling 1500 kilometers north of Buenos Ayres, we reach a spot where this river makes a sharp turn to tlie east. Near the angle of this the city of Cnrrieiitt-s is situati'd, and is tln-re joined by the Paraguay, flowing straight from the E(|uator, B 2 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO The Parana. AHhoiich for many persons tlie Parana possesses no great attfacU n'tomeS is' iost interesting. I will say nothing of the charm of what seeans to be an artificial canal from the T-L to the Parana its hanks shaded with thickly planted Sw tha^genU fan the sides of the ship or of the houses 1 Hola« hnilt on T3iles, for fear of inundation; or of the llT:^o^e,Zj\ labyrinth of narrow canals, and of flourishinc. plantations of peach-trees, orange-trees, and setU fhrcover the ground, perfuming the air and delighting the eyes with their graceful white and red flowers. _ I will say nothing of the feeling experienced by the un- accuslomed traveller at the sight of the boundless pampas wWchS almost an unbroken plain stretch westward bounded by a hic^h barranca (perpendicular bank) on the right of the .fver, nor of the submerged islands on the east now cover^ with rushes, anon with young shrubs; nor of the interest excited by a curve in the shore, or an undulation m the land- stape or the whiteness of some house breaking the monotony ofX; horizon. I will say nothing of the intercourse between ?llow-pa ngers as yet inacquainted with each other, carried on al first with formal reserve, and afterwards with ease and confiden Nor will I describe the setting of the sun over ZZi country, or his rising, or yet the brightness of the moon reflected & the rippling waters as the sharp prow swiftly Svides them. These Se poetical feelings appreciated m my own coun ry>ut considered foolish in others, where the only orupation worthy of human faculties seems to be that ot acnuirinidly cover- ing the ground from which the neighbouring waters have receded. Suddenly at a turn of the river we come upon a tiger who, for size, beauty and courage, is little inferior to his African brethren. He watches the unusual apparition and slowly retraces his steps, or dashes boldly into the river, defying the shots of his enemies, rendered harmless by his speed. In another place is a monstrous yacare, sunning himself on the shore, and careless of the bullets from our carbines that glance harmlessly off his scaly armour, unless successfully aimed by a good shot at the orbit of the eye, after which, if he seeks to drag himself under the water, he is drowned. On a pleasant strand, we caught sight of a doe, which, surprised at the novel sight, fled swiftly across the country, while a stag who stayed to admire the reflection of his antlers in the clear water, fell a victim to his contempt of danger and furnished a sumptuous feast to the explorers. A pleasant morsel was added in the shape of the shining- skinned otter. His four front teeth are adapted by their length to secure his prey, when struggling in the sand, where with numerous companions he excavates his subterranean lair. He is merry and lithe in the water, and shows his enjoyment by bounding and splashing about. From some distance off we can distinguish under a palm-tree a iapir, a heavy and slow pachydermatous beast, not much unlike a horse, to which he is compared in the Indian dialect, as the hippopotamus was formerly compared by the Greeks. On spying us out he raised his snout, forming a short proboscis, into the air, and shrilly summoning his insepnrable mate, toge- ther they plunge into the river, for the accustomed bath, that OF THE ARGtNTIXE REPUHLIC. 1 3 is necessary to tliem several tinu s a day, in order to cool their natural heat. The wild boar and ■vvikl pig, though they may appear somewhat similar to the tapir, are very unlike him in habits. They rush in large troops through the thickest part of the woods, a terrifying apparition to the traveller or to tlie native who finds himself in their way. We are now in the beautiful season of flowers, our souls refreshed and our senses gladdened with the sight and fragrance of thousands of orange flowers, that are blossoming even liefore the bursting of the leaves. Here also is the yellow-spik(!d arome ; the jessamine clothing the j^alo-sanfo and the (jyai/arau with its white mantle ; the mnenti of the ahjarrolio, and the various flowers of a thousand difterent kinds of cactus, some of which surpass both in colour and shape the white and the red camellia. Others are pale yellow, others again have their caly.x; curved, containing the corolla which envelopes a popoltm) (jetierco, in which the seeds are fertilized that afterwards till the succulent figs. Nor is the rJiar/uar or wild pine-apple absent ; it frequently extends over wide spaces of ground, and is protected by plants of old growth. From the centre of the parent trunk of all this wealth of foliage that flings itself about curving and climbing, with leaves of every shape, long, narrow, large, or dentelated, each point furnished with a spike, there rises a sliort and thick stem, crowneil by a white cone, which is generally encircled with horizontally disposed spears of a waxen red. These drop oti' when fecundation is accomplished. The fruit is eaten by the natives, and th^ lt\af furnishes their only but admirable • textile material. It supplies them with string, with which they manufacture nets, bags, hammocks, or hanging baskets, and lastly shirts. Your greatest desire, however, is to see the Indians, and at first you are divided between the hope of discovering dark spots in the distance which tlie man on watch will tell you are they, and the fear of finding yourself unexpectedly the aim of a dozen aiTows shot from the nearest wood — and if it were only arrows ! This feeling is succeeded by a delusive confidence, when suddenly a shout of "The Indians!" makes your heart beat with various emotions. Tlie first seen by us were partly clothed, and some of them wore hats, which they raised formally on our approach. They followed us for a while, askiiiL' for tobacco ami other things. 14 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO and continually appearing and disappearing at the openings o! short cuts on the farther side of the bends in the river. Thej offered us skins and feathers, and when Ave stopped in somi safe place, they even ventured on the boat, as if wanting to take possession of it. But there were only a few of them. Amongst them was a young and very pretty girl who brought a deerskin for sale. Her face was rather artistically tattooed in blue. There was also an Indian, with his hair drawn up behind like a horse-tail, and with the true savage look in his eyes and face. He was naked, and seemed covetous, gesticulating with energy. On throwing them tobacco, they rolled down the bank and swam to fetch it. Two days later we met with another party of Indians who were fishing with a sort of palisade two or three yards long jutting out from the bank into the river ; boughs were care- fully arranged against it so that the fish, meeting with re- sistance, are unable to escape. The locality of these is admir- ably selected. These enclosures point to the presence, or at least to the proximity, of Indians, and do not increase our sense of personal security. They continued to follow us, but we did not stop our course, as already we were beginning to be suspicious of them. Some of them articulated a few words of Spanish and Guarani, and being questioned in those two languages as to the whereabouts of their companions, they shouted out, " Peleanno, peleanno .... mucho .... alia," and pointed in the direction they had taken. These Indians, besides being absolutely ignorant, are unable even to pronounce certain combinations of letters, such as n with d, and therefore, almost always make use of the gerunds of verbs, saying peleanno for jjeleando (fighting). The question arises amongst us, what is their real meaning'? Do they intend us to understand that higher up there are many more of them ready to attack us, or that they are fighting among themselves 1 But we are all agreed that there must be a large number of them, that they are armed, and that we may expect some ugly trick to be played on us, because for almost another 100 leagues we shall be in the midst of the Tobas, the declared enemies of Christians, an indomitable, courageous, numerous, and, worst of all, a well-armed people. The word " Christian " must be understood as meaning conquerors, for the Indians concern themselves neither with Christ nor Mahomet, but only OV THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 5 with those who try to drive them from their land. Nor did they adojit the name in order to distinguish us from tlieir other enemies ; but it is in fact we who use it to describe our- selves by a name of more general application and of a wider meaning, which whetlier, for good or for evil, is no longer of these times. We have freijuently mentioned the Tobas, but whence is the derivation of tlie word t I have questioned the !Mattaccos, the Chiulipos, the Chiriguanos, the Mocovitos, and the Tobas them- selves, who never use the name. How, then, did they acquire it ? I often put this (juestion to myself. 1 believe I may say that I have elucidated the mystery, and that I am the first to have discovered it. Tubal in Guarani means oppnsite, and is composed of Toha, a noun, and i, a post- position (there are no prepositions in Guarani). The Guaranis live, and liave always lived, on the left banks of the Paraguay and tlie Parana rivers, and the Tobas dwell on the right Ijank, or just opposite them. They were therefore described by the Guaranis to the Spaniards as being Toba or opposite. And the name remained among the Siianish conquerors of the Guaranis as a geographical designation derived from a proper name. 1 consider this a satisfactory solution.^ 2 In confirmation of the above, I was told by Colonel Napoleon Uribrine, an Argentine oflBcer who is slightly acquainted with the Guariini language as spoken by the Chiriguans, that, at the time of JI. Crcvftux's fatal expedition, in which almost every soul perished on the banks of the Viloomayo, a river running parallel to the Vormejo, he was informed that all the Indians of the Gran Chaco are called TobaKhy the Chiriguans. Now, as the Chiriguans, whether Christians or still living in a savage state, belong to the northern and western frontiers towards Boli\na, my contention is stronsrthened by their testimony. The fact that so short a time elapsed apparently between the depar- ture of M. Crevaux from Bolivia and his deplorable fate, leads me to the conclusion that his murderers were not true Tobas, but some other Indiada called Tobas by the Chiriguan Indian converts who accompanied the expedition. The real Tobas inhabit the banks of the ParanA and Paraguay, from the frontiers of the Argentines and Santa Fe to the Tropic of Capricorn, which measured in a straight line from N. to W. comprises an area of from 100 to 200 kilometers. 1 6 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER IV. PHILOLOGICAL DISCUSSION ON THE NAME OF THE TOBAS. The preceding etymology of the name Toba, as given by nie, produced a dissentient letter from the Secretary of the Governor of the Chaco. The authority of the writer/ and of La Tribuna, the newspaper, in which his letter appeared, induced me to forward a reply to that journal, in which I alluded to several peculiarities of the Guarani language, some acquaint- ance with which may not be uninteresting to the reader. I will give, therefore, a summary of my reply, of which a translation also appeared in the Patria, a large-sized Italian newspaper published in Buenos Ayres. For tlie sake of brevity I will omit the arguments of my honourable opponent and that part of my reply relating to certain ethnical considerations without interest to the European reader. La Patria says : — " Signor PeJleschi derives the name Toha from the word Tohoi, which means opposite, or m front of, and ?, in a postposition, there being no prepositions either in Guarani or in Chicciua. "The Secretary of the Chaco writes in correction that Tobai means fronte piecolar, or a small forehead, and that opposite would be rendered by cherohai (cerohdi). Signor Pelleschi replies as follows : " ' I do not deny that Tohai means a small forehead or face ; or its equivalent would rather be the Italian diminutive ^ This was Colonel Fontana, who, two years after the author's journey, crossed the Gran Chaco from the mouth of the river Vermejo to the Christian frontier, following by land the banks of the river. He was wounded by the Indians, and lost an arm, and several of his party were killed in an attack made by the Indians on or near the same spot where they attacked the expedition to whicb the author was attached. See Chapter X., Part I. The same Colonel Fontana was despatched by the Argentine Government and the Argentine Geographical Institute in search of the remains of the unfortunate M. Crevaux. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 17 frontina, from Toha forehead, and the diminishing particle i, which may be pronounced eitlier nasally or non-nasallv ; but I contend tliat ToJxti means in frnnf, f rom Toba front or forehead, with the postposition /, which when pronounced nasally, signifies in. " ' In order to prove this statement, I will make use of the very same example put forward by my opponents. They say that in front or opposite is rendered by clierohai. I contend that cherohai is a word composed of tliree words, viz. of die, meaning my when joined to a noun, but signifying / when used alone ; rohn, which is identical with Toha, the t being changed into r, a very usual change in the Guarani language ; i represents in; and it means, strictly speaking, in front of vie, in the same way that tuba in the Correntine or Guarani language, becomes tube in Ciriguano (both meaning father), and change respectively into cherubd and chei'uhe and even into chi-rii in order to express mij father. Changes of this nature are frequent in Guarani, and, together with the complicated conjugation of the verbs, offer almost insuperable difficulties to the foreign student of the language. For example, in front of him would be gohai, and rjuba means his father. iSI'ow who would imagine that gohai contains Toha and a relation and a postposition besides 1 Yet such is the case, and these variations, together with certain subtractions, obey laws in the language, but laws so full of exceptions that they escape our observation and our memory. " ' A noun is rarely used without its relation, because in fact the thing spoken of is seldom without relation either to the speaker, or the person addressed or some third person. The same rule obtains in Mattacco, the language of the independent Indians dwelling in the heart of the Gran Chaco. In my opinion tliis dialect belongs to the Guarani family, and is consequently very difficult to learn. " 'This is not the case with Chiccina and Arancano, which therefore, and also by reason of the simple conjugation of the verbs, appears to me com])aratively e;isy. (Chiccina is still spoken in Peru, Bolivia, and in some parts of the Pampas and Argentine Paraguay ; Guarani in tlie Argentine province of Corrientes, in parts of Brazil, and in Paraguay.) " ' It must be remarked that the Tolia Indians never speak of themselves under that name. The Mattacoos call them Uatic- loi, the plural form probably of Uanc-luc, an ostrich ; an c l8 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO appropriate designation for a tall, lithe race, while the Mattaccos are relatively short and stout. The Mocovitos, whose language includes many Toba words, call them Ntoaiit ; the Vilelas and Chiulipos call them Huanictme and also Notocolt. Now these Indians live on the other borders of the Tobas' territories. Moreover, it is well known that the names of peoples are gene- rally given them by their neighbours. For example : the Cafri and the Seres (Chinese) actually do not possess in their language the letter r, which nevertheless forms part of the name by which they are distinguished, and the Mohawks have no w. Nor- manni, meaning Northmen, and Austria, a southern country, are simply names given by neighbours from the relative position of the tribes. Thus Toba will have been so called by the Guaranis who dwelt opposite, and the word had the good fortune (for even words have their destinies) to be received and established by the Spaniards.' " OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 9 CHAl'TKR V. THE CATASTROPHE ON THE " RIO DE LAS PIEDRAS." THE MoUTH OF TUE TEUCO. — WIND AND RAIN. Forty leagues from the moutli, at a bend of the river, where on one side is a perpendicular bank, and on the other a charm- ing grass)' country, we saw two crosses, and a little farther on, a third ; pious mementoes of two unhappy incidents ! About three years ago a small steamer, the Rio de las Piedras, Captain Wilken, witli a crow of fourteen men, was attacked and plundered by the Indians, who killed the captain and half the crew, the remainder finding safety in flight while their enemies were engaged in pillaging. Relying in the beginning on the friendliness shown by the Indians and on the eiiect to be produced by treating them with kindness and liberality, he imprudently attempted to break through tlieir lines, although they were assembled in largo numbers and consequently em- boldened for the attack. He and seven of his companions were despatched with clubs, while defending themselves on the deck, tlie Indians seizing on the merchandise, arms, and ammunition, ^loreover, an ensign of the Argentine army, who some weeks later was sent to punish the murderers, met with an unlionoured death in the waters, being either sucked down by a whirlpool, or snatched by a i/acare, while bathing after the heat of the day. We left these mementoes of the dead with sad hearts ; the circumstances under which we found ourselves contributed to deepen the impression, and bidding a solemn adieu to the spot which afforded us so impressive a warning, we continued on our way. "We had now been travelling seven days, and had made ninety leagues without having caught sight of the Indians, although signs of their jjroximity were not wanting. On one occasion we saw an Indian in the distance. lie watched us from a path in the wood and then disappeared. Our isolation seemed C 2 20 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO alarming, and made us somewhat anxious. On reaching, how- ever, a point where the two arms of the river that branch off 200 leagues higher up are reunited, we came upon some Indians fishing, who appeared to be taken by surprise ; we saw them gather together and cross the river in their canoe, leaving behind them part of their booty, on which the caranci and other birds of prey descended greedily. Meanwhile a flock of red flamin- goes, piscivorous birds, rose near them, skimming the water with their spoon-bills, and describing a semicircle with their long necks as they advanced. Our little steamer has come to a difficult bit in the river, and we are obliged to tack ; this retards our progress. We fear that the Indians will think we are frightened ; they continually appear, vanish and reappear ; they glance at us and then dis- appear once more. We advance, and just at a turning they show themselves among the trees and bushes, eitlier lying at full length or sitting on their heels, some hidden and some half hidden. At first a few, and then on finding themselves dis- covered many more, take to flight, or rise to their feet, in uncertainty. We shout to them : '■^Amicco, amiccu" and persuade seven or eight to draw near, some of whom know a few words of Guarani. We throw them tobacco, and explain that we want to navi- gate the arm of the river„ and we understand them to say in reply that a few leagues farther up there is a waterfall and then a lake. I wish to go thither, but the river runs with a strong current in an extremely tortuous course, and resists our weak steam power. Meanwhile the Indians becoming suspicious, retire backwards a few steps, occasionally stopping, then fly out of sight, and from the bank we can see them further up, assembled beside a tolderla ^ at a bend of the stream. And I had armed myself for fear of them ! Being unable to stem the current, and there being on the other hand no object in so doing, we turned back and entered the other arm of the river. We cast anchor shortly and enjoyed a peaceful bath in place of the expected combat. On the following day we came to another arm of the river a few leagues further up, and tried to explore it, but after about thirty kilometers we could proceed no farther in the steamer. Six of us, therefore, well armed, got into the canoe, and started ' Tolderia, an assemblaare of toldos,- or huts of the Indians. I OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 21 u[) the little stream. The silence about us was profound, un- broken even by the fluttering of a bird ; only a white rjulo more than a yard high, and, as it were, impaled on a pair of legs like stilts, with a long beak thicker than its head, was to be seen standing motionless, watching the water for its prey. The brackish waters ; the banks with moisture oozing between each stratum, thus indicating the proximity of lakes and probably some Indian dwellings ; the muddy bed of the river ; the land covered witli thick grasses and reeds, with a few tall withered trees, — all these things completed a picture of desolation. At a sudden turn we came upon a tiger ^ gazing at his reflection in the water. He turned away, and was lost to sight in the woods. Now and then we saw the smouldering ashes of a fire, some remnants of victuals, a few stakes and branches that had served as a hut, footprints on the ground, or some posts, mark to show the middle of the channel, which becomes more and more shallow, until at last we are forced to turn back. We land first, liowever, and get ankle deep in mud, then we climb a tree, and see forests in the distance, and the smoke of a tolderia. But already we had not even a foot of water .... and a fcAv hours later we were back on board the steamer, and all of us glad to meet again in safety. Uut alas ! the anu of the river that we intended to navigate contained only a third of its waters at that moment, and a little later would contain only a fifth. And if hitherto our navigation has been impeded, what will it not be in the 200 leagues that remain ? AVe are provisioned for two months, while the rainy season will not begin for seven! and we are in the heart of the Chaco and in the midst of the Tobas ! It must be borne in mind that here in the Chaco, and generally throughout all the northern portion of the Republic, and I may say in all tliat part of this southern continent com- prised between 40^ and 30^ lat., the rainfiUl lasts from December to April, viz. during the summer; occasionally it begins in Noveml)er, and may last until May, but this is excei>tional and depends on the direction of the winds. The damp, cold winds blowing from the N. or X.E. or from the Equator fill the atmosphere with vapour, while those that bring the rains are dry and cold from the S. and S.E., or else come direct from » The animal called a tiger in Soath America is really the jaguar. — Tkanslator's Notr. 2 2 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO the Antarctic Pole, passing over the cold and arid tracts of Patagonia on their way, or they rise at the Pole itself, driving in heights above our atmosphere for forty or fifty degrees, and then rushing down towards the earth's surface until they reach the Equator as superficial currents of air. This is my opinion, and it accords with the theory of the general circulation of the atmosphere. I reject the theory that would assign a purely local cause to these winds, although based on the fact that south of the Eepublic the rainy season occurs in summer. Nor can I think those writers correct who affirm that the south winds are laden with rain, because, even were they so in the beginning, they pass through an atmosphere continually in- creasing in heat towards the north, and thus acquire a hygro- metrical strength so great as at last to render them dry. Whereas in these parts, for three or six days before the rains begin, a hot and cutting wind, impeding the respiration, blows on us from the Equator. The temperature rises to 42° or 45° Keaumur, and produces abundant perspiration even when we remain per- fectly still. It becomes impossible to rest, whether in bed, or seated or walking, until, generally speaking towards the middle of the day, the north wind begins to veer first to the east, then towards the south, and, blowing chill and strong, drives before it clouds of dust, darkening the very sky. Then comes the storm, the, temperature sinks to 25° or less, and by condensing the vapours in the air brings on the rain. "Whirlpools occur at times. On one occasion, on a December night, there was a shower of fish, the larger ones, although they were mostly of a size, weighing four ounces. The biggest and smallest had probably been deposited in various localities during the passage of the wind. These fish were from the neighbouring lakes. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. CHAPTER VI. AX EXCOUNTEU WITH THE TOBA INDIAN'S. "NVe have continued to progress slowly, making only a few kiloiuotiTS daily, with frequent pauses while we extricated the screw of our steamer from the sandbanks that barred our way. At the end of a fortnight wo perceived something white and motionless on the edge of the shore and near it a swarm of black objects. " Indians " was the cry, and " Tobas," as we approached nearer. The Tobas are recognized Ijy a bandage or turban made of any sort of material and worn round the head, and also by their fine forms. These men are beautifully proportioned. They are nearly all of tall stature and of a build that would make a man and a half among us, and bear themselves with a lofty air thai, is not displeasing. Their faces are not ugly, but of a kind that if placed over a figure in modern dress would extinguish any feeling of sentiment or love. They are at times insolent and rude. The white spot we had seen on the bank was the ladino or interpreter. Pie was dressed in linen trousers, and wore a military cap and brass buttons to match ; the black moving points were the Indians. After exclianging some courtesies, four of us landed, and went among them in order to buy skins and curiosities. xVmong their number was a fine youth, with a pair of eyes of unmistakable strength and fire. He held a tiger-skin, with the claws intact. We wished to buy it, but he would not agi-ee, and in the end the boy, imitating the spring of a tiger, thrust the claws in the face of one of our men. "We smiled out of policy, but his companions buret into boiste- rous and malicious laughter, with intent to make us retreat. The thought of Hight occurred to me, because, even when not chief in command, I have always held that in war the most necessary thing is to secure a safe retreat. The joke was becoming serious, and although the steamer was close at hand, 24 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO it seemed well for us to retire. There were no women present, and but few children. To digress for a moment ; the wearer of the military cap was a remnant of the great Paraguayan war, and on his buttons might be seen the distinctive marks of four nations and of Heaven knows how many regiments of different armies. And, again, with regard to the bandage or swathe worn by the Tobas, a glance backwards will show it to be historical. According to the historians of Perti — where every one knows the Spanish found a flourishing and civilized empire, and which, if I were disposed to institute comparisons, I should place in a corresponding rank with the period of our agrarian laws, and with primitive historic society and paternal government — the Incas, or reigning imperial family, introduced the use of the swathed head-covering; the colour, the material, and the size indicating the importance or privileges of the wearer, whether as an individual or as one of a class. These historians also tell us that the Inca capa, the only Inca or Emperor, wore a headdress of massive gold an inch thick. Now this custom must have pre-existed among some at least of the primitive peoples of the Empire, since we find it here in the Chaco, and we attribute to the Incas merely the law as to its use ; their system being to regulate every person and every- thing by laws. The Indians whom we have left had sold us some fowls. The next day they returned in greater numbers with more fowls, and my reader can imagine how gladly we bought them. The weather had turned cold and wet, and the Indians who yesterday were naked, were to-day, for the most part, clad in skins. They were a picturesque sight scattered in groups on the shore, and not without a certain order, amid all the apparent carelessness. They seated themselves, in eastern fashion, on the bank, with their lances sticking upright in the ground at their feet, and bow and arrows at their side ; with thick-headed clubs and a rope or band round their waist, with their netted shoulder-bags full of fish, rat-rabbits or rabbit-rats,^ wild fruit, curiosities, in short of everything they gather together. And it was curious to see them light their fire, broil their meat, eat it hungrily, and then entering the river, with head and body curved, reach out their hand and use it for drinking with wonderful 1 Rabbits are never eaten m Italy. — Translator's Note. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 25 aptituilc In so doing they recalled to my mind the pictures of (jhrist and John the Baptist standing,' in the waters of the Jordan, the hitter clothed in skins and bearing a staff. In order to light a tire, they proceed as follows : they take two pieces of stick, one of cilca, or of some resinous and porous shrub of the same kind, the other of hard wood. They sharpen the latter to a point, and rapidly twirl it between their hands on the other piece. The cavity thus produced fills with a line subtle dust, the colour of ground coffee, which, becoming heated by the rapid friction, kindles as easily as a cigar or as .saw-dust ; they then pile over it plenty of dry and easily inflam- mable materials, and blow upon it until the flame bursts out, when they can have as much tire as they want. All this time there were no women to be seen. The glimpse we had had of the beautiful Indian girl had made us most an.xious to see some others ; nor need our reader be in any way shocked at the wish, which was purely Platonic in all of u.s, while in some it proceeded from an intelligent curiosity. During two or three days we were present at an interesting spectacle. The Tobas continued to arrive in increasing numbers, and finally the Cacique, or principal chief, came to visit them in the iolderia, which was situated about a kilometer from the river-side and close to us. He was accompanied by many other chiefs, and by numerous IndiaiJa (Indian tribes). The women remained apart at some distance, but in groups, and indistinguish- able. We landed on the bank, au'd the Cacique came forward and made us a speech througli the interpreter. He yelled like a madman, fretiuently slapping his thighs, and then shouting louder still. Each syllable was very staccato, so that the language seemed to be monosyllabic ; this, however, is not entirely the case. This mode of utterance is necessary to prevent one word from being mistaken, for another, from which it fre([U('ntly diflers only by a slight shade of sound. He repeated the same things in ditierent phrases, and made a long disconnected discourse. This custom seems to prevail among other Indians ; at any rate, in the Pampas, according to Colonel ^lansilla, in his " Sjiedizione ai Kancheli." He told us that his abode was near, that he and his were friendly to the Christians, anil would continue to be so, and he invited us to come anil visit him. We replied that we could not at that time pay him a visit, that we too were friendlv, that thev must not fear us, and 26 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO that, in fact, our friendship would procure for them cloth for garments and good things to eat. The great chief was tall and old, bu,t robust ; his hair was white, an unusual thing, and short ; at his side stood an Indian with so expressive and pleasing a countenance that it was delightful to look at him. He trans- mitted his chiefs orders, and gave him advice. He leminded me of the numerous country-folk in Italy, upright and well- to-do, with faces browned by working in the sun. We proceeded to distribute tobacco and mandioca-flour among the crowd and the same, with a few additional presents, to the chiefs. Some resolution was needed on our part to give away anything in the way of food. But we bought fowls from them. We were informed that the Cacique's counsellor was the son of Colompotop, a chief celebrated for his fidelity and for the services he rendered to the Argentines in their war of independ- ence. All honour to him ! When the dishes on which we had served the rations to the Indians came to be collected, one was missing. Complaint was made to the chief, and he immediately called to his com- panions who were going away, at the top of his voice, and seemed by his tone to be rebuking them. They returned, but we did not recover the dish. Among these Indians are many Christian convicts, who have made their escape from Santiago, Corrientes, and Paraguay ; but they are not easily recognized, except by the hair on their faces. Men who have but a little white blood in their veins, and only a few points of the European type, become still less dis- tinguishable in the costume of Adam before the Fall and after years of an Indian life. A youth, however, who had been stolen when a child had retained his natural light brown hair, and his face left no room for doubt as to his parentage. We called him to us, and he came : he pretended to be half-witted, but, on the contrary, was spying. The interest I felt in him at first soon died away, and every time I looked at him it was with a repug- nance that I feel still. And yet people say that " il sangue tira," or blood is thicker than water. Another Christian was a chief. He was a certain Vincenzino, formerly the manager of an estancia at Santiago, Avhere he was well known. He was a fine, tall man, sunburnt and with a short grizzled beard ; he looked like a diplomat. He had left his Indian followers, who were coming after to join the others. He uttered very few words, an(' affected to be ixnable to express himself in Castilian. This waii OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 2/ an artifice to avoid rousing tlie suspicions of the Indians, by whom Iiiiliavized Christians are foi-Indden to speak in an enemy's language that is not understood by themselves. Such Christians, therefore, remain mute and motionless as statues. We gave Vincenzino plenty of tobacco, which he divided in equal shares among the Indians, This is the general custom, and the obser- vance (or neglect) of it is the cause of the aO'ection or dislike that decides the destiny of the chiefs. I know not whether our good or evil destiny prevailed, Imt we were unable the next day to approach the shore where the Indians had assemliled in great numbers,'and had waited, although the weather was wet, until eleven o'clock, the usual dinner-hour throughout the Chaco. We had run aground on the opposite bank. They departed in high dudgeon, and we heard them that evening at a little distance shouting their war-cry. We did not see them again for several days, when they tried to kill us. For many days we did not see a living soul. At last, one fine morning, a swarm of Indians a]ipeared on both sides of the river. AVe were on the Toba and Mattacco frontiers, where various tribes had assembled for war. Here we met with Faustino, who was destined to i)lay so large a part in our life, and, alas ! to sacrifice his own in our cause ! It was a glad day for us, and gave us at once a feeling of home. It is well known that the Mattaccos are not hostile to the Christians, nor distrustful of foreigners. Faustino informed us that they had lately been fighting, and had just made peace. Each Indian nation has its own territory, and they will fight for a foot of land just as we do ; while to each tribe l)elonging to a nation, is assigned a certain portion of land, beyond which they cannot trespass witliout provoking war. Wars are frequent on various pretences, and from tlie prevailing sjiirit of ro])bery. Xo sooner do they hear that another tribe is enriched in one Avay or another by the possession of animals or other property than they endeavour to surprise and plunder them. Woundi?, war-prisoners and loss of life naturally ensue, and these in their turn are the causes of future wars, which are undertaken with- out further explanation. Every tribe employs a number of spies. Fortune for a long time has favoured the Tobas, who occupy the best lands on the banks of the Parana and Paraiiuav, beiuLj 28 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO about sixty leagues, or if measured by the windings of the river, a hundred. By secret trading with Corrientes and the Paraguayan Eepublic they have provided themselves with fire- arms. Moreover, being farthest from the continually advancing Christian frontier, they receive a considerable contingent of the convicts of whom I have already spoken. In this way the Vilelas and the Chiulipos have become mixed with them, and the case will be the same with the Mocovitos, who live in the south-Avest along the frontiers of Santa Fe and Santiago, and whose language is not dissimilar, many words being identical. The same thing will occur with the Mattaccos, who are con- tiguous to the Salta frontier on the west, and on the east to that of the Tobas. Thus being straitened between two enemies, those nearest the east allied themselves with the Tobas (among whom we now found ourselves), and those on the west with the Chris- tians, joining them in warfare. Nevertheless they all speak the same mother-tongue and hold to it jealously, although with some difference of dialect. For example, the Eastern Mat- taccos always use chid and tzd, pronounced Mali and izali, where those of the west use cid, pronounced shah. Those of the same tribe, however, make use of either expression without experiencing any difficulty ; they do so also with chio, tzd, and cid, pronounced kio, tzo, and sho. For example, gamma is tzonac, chiondc or ciondc (the last pronounced shonac) indif- ferently. I have mentioned that the Mattaccos jealously preserve their language. In almost every Indian dialect the new animals introduced by the Spanish were accepted with their Castilian names, pronounced as well as the Indian throat and the Indian nature Avould allow. The Mattaccos, on the contrary, sought for native animals resembling the new importations, and if there were any, they conferred on the strangers the same name accompanied by a modifying particle, also belonging to the language. This rule also they followed with regard to any new object. And they showed acuteness in its application : thus they call a sheep, izonafdc, tzondc, meaning gamma ; an ox becomes chluuassetac, cliiiiuasset, meaning a stag ; the horse is jelaldc,jelac, meaning tapir or anta. With regard to the horse, it will be remem- bered that thousands of years ago the Greeks, wishing to be- stow a name on a pachyderm somewhat similar to the tapir, called it a river-horse, i.e. hijjpojjotamus, from hippos, horse ; OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 29 and potamos, river. Is it not wonderful that the poor, despised redskins should have reasoned in the same manner as the splen- did genius of Greece ! I also remark with gratification that the word far, the modifying power of which I will exjdain later, would he better expressed by the Spanish jota than by the German cJi. I must add in my own praise, that I took great pains to discover the relation between the new and tlie old words, and that each time I succeeded I experienced a real delight ; and I may say the same with regard to the various pronunciation of the words. 30 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER VII. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MATTACCOS AND OTHER INDIANS. The difference of size between the Tobas and the Mattaccos is considerable. In general the Mattacco is almost half a hand shorter than the Toba, without, however, being a small man when compared to us Italians. His chest is wide, he is bull- necked, with well-marked muscles ; his limbs are strong, his head is large, his face is broad, with high cheekbones, and tlie upper jaw is deeply arched, like a horse-shoe. The lower jaw is long and sloping, the forehead is seldom wide, and, generally speaking, partly hidden by the unkempt hair. The feet are well-proportioned, the hands small and wonderfully Avell-knit, especially the women's ; the beard very scanty and kept shaven. Among their thirty-two teeth, the canine or eye-teeth seemed to me to be but slightly developed, and this would be explained by their habit of eating fish or fruit, and either very little meat or none at all ; there are ex- ceptions, however, to this rule. The teeth of the young men are fine and sound, but among the elders they are often u^ly and decayed. The enamel does not seem to be precisely the same as ours; it resembles bone rather than ivory, and I tliink would have less resisting power. The gums are of a pale rfd, likewise the lips. Does their diet account for this 1 They eat no salt because they have none, but they are fond of it, and suck it like sugar when any is given to them. The lips of tome appear swollen, prominent, and of a redder tint. The eyes aie nearly always slightly oblique, slanting upwards from the nose, and almond-shaped ; but some individuals have fine eyes, round in shape and placed horizontally. These latter are black wiih very blue whites, but in the oblique eyes the white is generally of a greenish colour, especially in the older people. The nose is broad, straight, not very prominent, and with wide nostrils, nut it is not flattened. Indeed, they are seriously afraid of having OF THE ARGENTINE RErUHLIC. 3 I flat noses, so much so that they will not eat mutton, which is supposed by them to caiiso flatness in that feature. This is a device of their medicine-men and soothsayers, in order to prevent the destruction of their few sheep, and also the conse([uent loss of the woul, which they weave and make use of ii\ many ways. It is a pious fraud, resembling many that are taught by our holy religion ! And thus are men found to be alike in artifice and presumption in every clime and every age. The hair is smooth, but in some few individuals I remarked it to be waving, if not curling, but I am ignorant whether this was natural to them or produced by artihcial means ; and I noticed incipient baldness in some. The adults have black or blackish hair ; in the old it is sometimes, but rarel}', white, possibly because very few attain to old age. The children up to ten or twelve years have reddish hair — a curious fact recall- ing the theory of J)e Salles, according to which primitive man was red-haired. This is an illustration of heredity. The hair is generally worn long and unkempt, but during periods of mourning it is cut off' for a year. Nevertheless, they are eager to possess combs, the women especially. I recollect on one occasion being most anxious to ol)tain from them a spade or mattock made of legno fen'o, in the shape of a double oar, with narrow, sharp blades. It belonged to an Indian, a friend of mine, whose wife was a handsome woman. I ofiered them a comb in exchange, but after thinking it over, the Indian would not come to terms, to the deep disappointment seemingly of his wife, who, however, persuaded him out of love for her to return the next day and offer spontaneously to make the exchange. My reader would perhaps approve of a little more generosity on my part, but had I freely given away the comb, [ should have had nothing left to offc-r for the spade, in which I was more interested than in this naked Indian couple. The above description of the ^lattaccos will serve also for the Tobas, only that the latter are taller. I ious animals ; where the mountains are imposing, but ifew in niunber ; and where there are populous cities in latitudes which would bo regions of eternal snow in Europe. The truth is, each language is spoken throughout vast territories that are in many instances marked by no natural geographical divisions, and languages get easily grouped in one when belonging to a large family spreatl over immense regions. My belief is that in Chili, Peru, r>olivia, the Argentine Republic, and at any rate in part of D 34 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Brazil, viz. the South of the American Continent, there are two great families of languages, distinct as they are according to the two best known idioms, the language of the Chicciuas along the Pacific, and of the Guaranis in the bason of the Plata. Allow me to make two further remarks : the Chirionossos are said to be troglodites or dwellers in caves, lair, extremely- fierce, with blue eyes ; their women, too, have crooked feet turned inwards, so as to be hidden when they are seated. Both men and women are always naked. I have never seen them myself, but such is the universal account of these people. But are not these fair-haired, blue-eyed Indians like the fabulous Phoenix 1 A Chiriguano, who assured me he had seen them and fought with them, told me that their knees were turned backwards like those of ostriches ! I repeat his exact words. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 35 CHAPTER VIII. AT CANGAGLIE A HUNTING PARTY — A TOLDERIA. To return. We had remained on the spot where we had met witli Faustino and various Indian trilws. The phice is called Canijaglie, and is marked on all maps ; it is historical besides, for a mission was establislieil there, and another one fifteen leagues farther up, in the last century, and they were shortly afterwards destroyed by the Indians. So many days had elapsed without our leaving the steamer for fear of being made into mincemeat by the natives, that it seemed well to take advantage of an opportunity that appeared safe, to tread once more on terra firma, and see something of the country. The information that there was a lake at no great distance determined us on getting up an expedition in search of sport. Seven of us, therefore, went ashore, myself, Signor Natalie Roldan, Faustino, one of our men, and three natives. We entered on narrow footpaths, which are the high roads of the Indians. We were sometimes in the midst of grass so high that it concealed us completely ; at other times on a perfectly flat surface, from the recent burning of the dry hay, and then the eye could scan a vast horizon. The least trifle arrested our attention, and seemed to have some great meaning for us. ^leainvhile we saw nothing of the lake. When halfway we came to a wild-gourd field. These are common in the Cliaco. Near to it was a madrechon, or part of the channel that had been hollowed out years before by one of those floods that displace the river for leagues and leagues. In this same place we also lighted upon a Toba Indimia. Oh, shall we see Indian women at last ! and what will they be like? 36 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Meanwhile our three Indians were quaking. "Tooba," said they, and seemed disposed to turn back. But we, on the contrary, remained firm, awaiting them, and resumed our fishing in the madrechon. Ladies first. But what a disappointment ! old, flabby, wrinkled, with shrunken breasts like dried figs ; with squinting, greenish, half-opened, blear eyes, and with a few rags to represent fig-leaves. They were loaded moreover, with netted bags crammed full of filthy, stinking fish, that seemed like a mass of manure. They were on their way to the tolderia. They carried the bags or other load in the usual way behind the shoulders, held by a rope that goes round the forehead, and they looked like beasts of burden. The women passed by, as if in haste, in a straight line. The men suddenly joined them, armed with their bows, arrows and lances, which they never lay down, and with the clava, a thick heavy club of hard wood, terminating in a larger or smaller head, which has caused the Mattaccos to call it e-tec-tdc. I was struck at first with this name, which seemed tome an admirable imita- tive sound of the noise produced by the clashing of two clubs against another, but I discovered afterwards that it was a rational rendering of the shape of the weapon, signifying in fact, a large head. The bow and arrows are carried in one hand ; the natives have no quiver, nor anything resembling one for their arrows. They halted for a moment, and exchanged a few words, then a large number approached nearer, observing lis, and we deter- mined to push on for the lake, which we found at a distance of three kilometers from the steamer. This lake was more like a bog, and full of rushes, reeds, and aquatic plants, with a muddy bottom. There are numerous lakes of the kind, all within certain limits, and called by me on another occasion osdUatioiis of the river. They are portions of the channel, hollowed out in the season of floods, and in the course of years they have gradually filled up with water, until they are permanent shallows, in which the rain-fall and the floods lie stagnant. In the beginning those that were of the same depth as the river were called madrechons. Both lakes and madrechons dry up in part, and provide good localities for fishing. On this account the Indians are in the habit of halting on the banks during their nomadic marches. After some sport with water-fowl, we resolved, as it was getting OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 37 lato, and on the advice of our tliree Mattaccos, to retrace our steps. These men, althou<^li friends of the Tobas, were ex- cessively afraid of them. They are friends, ratlier from necessity than choice, and their connection with the Christians is dis- pleasing to the Tobas. I was anxious to learn a few Toba w^ords, and this seemed to me agooil opportunity for the purpose. One morning, therefore, I got an Indian on board who knew both Toba and Mattacco, and with the help of Faustiiio, who knew Mattacco and Spanish, I began to set about my task. At the first word a Mattacco chief, who was observing us, came up, and, rebuking my two instructors, placed himself opposite us, so as to hear all that passed. After, a few more words, I gave up the lesson, for I began to tloubt the sincerity of my interpreters, and I never found an opportunity for resuming it. The mciqtie was carrying out the To ban law. The next day we began, with the help of Faustino, to prepare an expedition to Rivadavia, a district near the frontier, about 500 kilometers from where we were. Our object was to o])tain additional provisions and a reinforcement of our numbers. Three of our crew, well-armed and resolute men, taking with them a horse and a small amount of food, were to proceed under Faustino's guidance, to the confines of the territory menaced by the Tobans, and there were to be introduced by him to his friend the chief, I'a-i-lo, who would furnish them with a guide as far as the frontiers. The expedition would be ready to start in three days. One of our three Mattaccos was the famous cacique whom we called Mulatto. In the last war he was said to have fought singly three of the enemy, and to have vanquished them. A short time before he had suddenly come upon a tiger in the forest. He just escaped its spring, and, clutching hold of its two fore-paws, stood on the defensive. His wife meanwhile unexpectedly came up, and striking the creature a blow with a club, laid it lifeless on the ground. There are many fierce tigers in those parts. Only a short time before a tiger had suddenly sprung on a poor Indinn deaf- mute, who was gathering wooil near the lake where we had fished and shot, and, after mangling him horribly, would have devoured him, had not his companions, on hearing the noise, rushed up and put the brute to flight. Tigers are one of the most serious dangers of the Chaco, both 38 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO to Indians and Christians, but principally to the former, from the absence or scarcity of firearms. They are a perfect scourge to the cattle on the Estancias. There are many tiger-hunters in Christian Chaco, who breed hounds expressly for the purpose. When once started, the tiger is pursued by horsemen and dogs until he either turns at bay in a thicket or at the foot of a tree, or else climbs the trunk. A carbine, or more frequently a lance or dagger, puts an end to the combat. A tiger sometimes waits for the discharge of a volley from the guns, and if he does not drop dead, springs at once upon the enemy. During my residence in those parts, two famous tiger- hunters were found dead, with their heads mangled by the teeth of some ferocious beast. Such an one will spring on the crupper of a horse, and nothing but a sharp dagger, perfect self-possession, and herculean strength, can in such a case save the hunter. Every owner of an estancia is a tiger-hunter. A certain Sign or Diaz, living on the frontier near the Tenco, had a short time previously killed his fourteenth tiger. Another estancia-owner, a certain Celestino Rodriguez, a fine-looking old man, had his nose deeply scarred by a wound from the claw of a tiger whom he had encountered alone and on foot. It was fine to hear him tell the story, and to see him show how he drove his dagger into the belly of the brute, whom he had already wounded, and who was then standing upright before him, kept at a distance by his strong arm. The skin of a tiger, killed at no great distance from me, measured when fresh nine hands, from the root of the tail to the nape of the neck. A cebado, or man-eater, will spring on you at once, without waiting to be attacked. In truth, the tiger * of the Chaco, is little inferior to his brethren of Africa, whether for ferocity, size, or beauty. "We were coming to a Mattaceo tolderia, and so great was our wish to see something of the home life of Indians that we determined to make the journey thither on foot. After walking about a league, we came to a wood reaching down to the water side. Under the guidance of an Indian, we followed a steep footpath that at last led us to the tolderia. While on our way we could hear the sound of the wood-cutter's axe, the clamour of their cine, or women, and the voices of the children singing over their games. We were much impressed ^ I give the jajuar his popular name of tiger. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUULIC. 39 by these tokens of a life of which we were as yet completely ignorant. We were five in number. On our appearance in their midst there was a general disturb- ance ; some running to seize their arms, some to conceal them- selves in their huts, and others to escape to the forest. They shouted " ChUiucle, Chihucle !" meaning "Christians, Christians !" But, on recognizing our guide, who was one of their own people, they became quiet, and drew nearer to us, the men standing round in a circle, and the women in a group apart. We had brought tobacco with us, pieces of cloth, and little fancy articles, partly as presents, but especially in order to obtain sheep and poultry. With the greatest difficulty we succeeded in obtaining two or three fowls, partly because they possessed but few, and partly because we had no interpreter, Faustino having left us in order to meet the expeditionary party, of which I have already spoken, at the frontier. I turned over the leaves of my note-book, in which I had jotted down Faustino's lessons ; but even when I could make these peoj)lo understand a few words of mine, I could by no means succeed in understanding any of their words to me. We thus got through a couple of hours. This tolderia was bounded on three sides by the forest, the fourth was open country, the river was at a distance of half a kilometer. It is customary, probably with a view to security, to establish the tolderias against a wood, in wliich to escajie if surprised by tlie enemy, who would be miacquainted with' the forest paths ; and in close proximity to water, both for fishing and for drinking and bathing purposes. These Indians are said to be very dirty in their persons, but I doubt the accuracy of this assertion. I have seen great numbers of them in srfmmer taking the greatest delight in plunging into the watc/ at certain fixed hours, both men and women, but each seX a]^art. This seems to point to a settled habit rather than a momentary caprice, moreover they are frequently in the water when fishing. True, they have a dirty appearance, first on account of tlieir dark skin, and then from the scars produced by tattooing, and the scorching rays of the sun that dry up the cuticle, especially on tlie shoulders. Moreover, tramping naked and barefoot on the mud, through bushes and forests, and lying on the bare ground, they natu- rally become travel-stained, just as each one of us who can 40 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO wash countless times in the day, if we chose, would do. But I assert that their habits are not dirty. A tolderia consists of a greater or lesser number of huts, built of willows fixed in the ground and the upper part enlaced in the form of an arcade. They cover this with such a quantity of straw that it looks more like a waggon, so loaded that the wheels are hidden, than a hut. They fling on the straw from a distance with wonderful accuracy, all the more wonderful that this work is done by the women. When finished a toldo is strong enough to support the weight of a man on the roof, and is impervious to water. Each cacique, or chief, has his own group of toldos apart from the others. At times the chiefs assemble in great numbers, especially when intending to make war. Toldos are, in general, so low-pitched that one cannot stand upright within them, but they vary in length according to the size of the family or the number of kinsfolk who are to assemble in it. The longer toldos are generally slightly curved, and have two or more doors, or rather entrances. These are almost always provided with a wing to the windward side, fixed up somewhat in the fashion of a folding screen. It is necessary to stoop on entering. There are various parts in a toldo, viz. the cooking-place, and the place where the inhabitants live, sleep, or wash, &c., but there is no partition-wall between them. The kitchen is merely a level space whereon the fire is kindled, and this is only done when the weather is cold, or in the case of mourning, by the woman, who for one year does not go out, or let herself be seen, or speak, except when absolutely neces- sary. It is customary to cook the food out of doors, before the entrance. Every family has a kitchen. The living room is that part of the hut in which the Indians live, and where they keep their clothes and skins, when they have any, to stretch themselves upon. They wear them after- wards when they go out if the weather is cold. They hang up their various appendages, such as bags, nets, &c., and some of their weapons, all over the walls. Sometimes they place four pitchforks about a foot in height, at the four corners of the bed, across these they lay two planks, and then as many rods or switches as will make a kind of wattle, on which they stretch their mats and skins. They make use of this bed OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 4I ill summer principally for the sake of coolness and to escape insects and venomous reptiles. A similar custom exists among the Christians, only they use forconi instead of forconrini, about a couple of yards high, as a protection against tigers. I have slept on all these beds, and I can assure my reader it is merely a question of getting used to them ; sleeping on the ground is nevertheless more comfortable. When the Indians change their quarters, they set fire to the huts. InMattacco there are two words for house: hditdt and Jippj) (the h being pronounced as in English or German). Now hcpp means smoke, vapour, and mist, and is likewise moreover ^lattaccan for steamboat. Now, is not the analogy complete between the Mattaccan and Italian languages in this instance 1 We Italians name the family or the home /«oco and focojare, and we call a steamboat vapore. Here, therefore, we perceive another link between Aryan and ^Mattacco man. A tolderia is heppei in Mattacco, the plural of hepp, and Huna kel-la hep-pei, " Let us storm the tolderia," is one of their war-cries. The k is strongly emphasized, and produces quite an imitative harmony. As for the plural forms, I should state that these Mattaccos possess various declensions of nouns and all of them inflected, whilst the Guaranis, the Chicciuans, and the Chilenos add to the singular form a particle expressing the idea of plurality. It is certain that the Chicciuans are more civilized than the ^lat- taccos, and so are the Guaranis, if we may judge from their kinsmen the Chiriguanos. Now to a student of philology an inflected language would appear to represent a more advanced condition of speech and consequently of civilization. But in this instance we have a clear and luminous contradiction to such a theory. We must i»e on our guard, therefore, with respect to absolute theories in matters of pliilology, both for the present and for a long time to come, during which the study of Iiuliun languages in the old and new worlds may remain as imperfect as hitherto. They stick their lance upright in the ground opposite the entrance to the hut, and place their arrows and bow against one of the walls. This gives a martial aspect to the scene, which is attractive. The huts are not built on a geometricaUy straight line, yet between one row and another they endeavour to leave a broad space representing a street. It is delightful to see their fires while they are cooking. Thoy 42 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO boil various kinds of roots and vegetables, in separate earthen vessels. They prepare a species of bean and a kind of potato that are both excellent. The Chenas or women wash the kitchen utensils very carefully after using them. And when the hour of meals draws near, which in the tolderias is generally at 11 a.m., and again at 6 p.m., they appear with a spit laden with fried, smoked, and dried fish, in order to stimulate the appetite. Game or wild fowl or rabbit as a frequent addition to the meal, these are all very rich dishes, and the absence of salt makes them less acceptable to an European accustomed to its use from infancy. The Indians feel gratified when a Christian is civil to them, and does not show contempt for their surroundings. When therefore the inhabitants of the tolderia had become familiar with me, I sauntered in and out, examining their food among much hearty laughter from them, while I repeated several times hiss, hiss, meaning good, good. But one must eat with the forks provided by Nature, except in the case of broth, which is eaten with the shell of a large oyster, found in great abundance in numerous lakes. But I found drinking from a hollow gourd with a very dirty rim the hardest trial to my politeness 1 I shut my eyes, and a few seconds later opened them again, proud and triumphant ! On this occasion they were anxious to see our firearms dis- charged before we took our leave, and to please them we fired two or three times in the air. The shrieks of the women and the wrangling of the boys over the cartridges are things to be remembered. How wonderfully human beings resemble each other, whatever the amount of their civilization ! I was forgetting to mention that the width of each toldo does not exceed six or seven feet. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 43 CHAPTER IX. THE CIIENAS. Let me say a few words concerning the Chenas. Mattacoo women are in general rather short, but this does not prevent their being often very attractive and well-shaped when young. Among themselves they are seldom clothed, but they wear garments, more or less, before strangers. For a few days we had a married couple on board witli us. The wife merely wore a short pair of drawers such as we use for bathing, and as she was young, well made and very handsome, some of our Argo- nauts, anchorites by necessity, found the trial rather dangerous. To see this couple, nine parts naked, seated on a bench among the cylinders and pistons of the engine, and remaining motionless for hours, was to be forcibly reminded of the Garden of Ellen. When with strangers the Chenas are silent and impassible, but among themselves as noisy and gay as children, ^ind this is the character of Indians on the whole. The Chenas have a curious way of holding their hands when standing upright. Having no pocket in which to thrust them, nor fan or other ornanjent to play with, they cross tliem on their breasts, which tlius serve as a support to the arms crossed above them. This liabit would seem likely to lengthen the breasts, but it has not that effect. They are wide, certainly, but shallow and straight when young ; but after suckling children they become wrinkled and shrunken and extremely unsightly. It must be remarked that both men and Avomen age very quickly and bloom early, and to this must bo attributed the absence of white hair among them, although from the appearance of their face and body they might be of the age of Methuselah. I have noted the shape of the breast, because in other parts of the country the women are said to throw the breast over 44 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO their slioulders in order to give suck to the infant they carrj"- on their back. This is certainly not the case in these parts. "Women and men alike have an abundance of smooth hair ; the former wear it rather long, but not extremely so ; it is shortened, partly by being tangled over the head so as to screen the eyes and forehead from the sun, and partly by being cut. The jawbones of a fish called palometa are used as scissors, both for the beard and the hair. These bones are furnished with a double row of very sharp teeth, those in the upper jaw locking with those in the lower. The 2^ttIo7neta, raya, and yacare are the terror of bathers in the river, and in the lakes and madrechons belonging to it. The palometa uses its tusks to tear out pieces of flesh. It is a flat, oval-shaped fish, holding itself upright in the water. The 7'aya or razza is a flat, circular fish, with three points in the tail, the one in the centre is furnished with a sting that inflicts most painful and dangerous wounds, and is used by the fish when attacked. It suddenly turns over and gives a blow with its tail. Some of these fish measure a yard in diameter ; they prefer the calm and shallow parts of the river, and therefore remain near the banks. The yacare, a species of crocodile, will treacherously snap off" the leg or arm of an unfortunate bather, and then drag him to the bottom of the river and devour him. Bathing, therefore, which is a necessity in the suffocating heat of these climates, is constantly interrupted by the presence of these anthropophagi. The Chena after marriage is faithful to her husband out of aff'ection, through training and from fear. Frightful stories are told of the vengeance of husbands, who have the right of life and death over their unfaithful wives. If these are girls, the husbands may be and usually are generous. There is no doubt that they would feel sympathy towards the Christians were it not for the prejudices of race ; since the poorest Christian is always in a position to make better presents than the richest cacique. The women are fond of ornaments and dress, but their habits are not adapted to wearing petticoats or stays, and in place of these they wrap cloths round the waist, which they keep on by a cord tied round them. They arrange these cloths so as to display their fine figures without impeding freedom of movement, although one does OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 45 not notice this at first Their garments consist of cloths, and when they possess any, they put them all on at once, whether summer or winter, partly because of their wandering life, partly from choice, because they are careful people, and seem to verify the proverb, " Quel che para il freddo para il caldo." Both sexes are fond of variety and of bright colours, espe- cially red. Nevertheless they prize white materials very highly. The Chiriguans wear white hoods, but, as I have already said, they live nearer the equator. When they wear anything over the shoulders, one arm is usually left uncovered. They like the shirts worn by Europeans. They make themselves ornaments of skins and pieces of oyster-shell with more or less claim to elegance of shape. The girls wear a kind of leather bracelet until they present it, as I have Ijeen told, to the first recipient of their caresses. They make shirts of thread, doubly woven, and very, very narrow, but elastic ; these have the appearance of petticoats, they arc sleeveless, and are decorated in various ways with bits of oyster-shell; they are worn principally in battle, and as a protection against thorns in the forests, but they are a scarce possession. er to one's own is drawn in a lottery, it is improbable that one's own number will be drawn afterwards. The impression produced on us nevertheless by B 50 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO the danger we had run quenched our habitually good spirits, and lessened our appetites for the remainder of the day. The hostility evinced made us thoughtful. We were still in Toba territory, although among Mattacco Indiadas ; our vessel made but a few kilometers each day, and sometimes none at all. We were in the very heart of the Chaco, where the Indiadas were numerous and continually increasing on account of a war then in preparation against the Mattaccos on the Christian frontiers. We were warned every day that the Tobas were about to attack us, but had not the courage to do so. Meanwhile we were obliged to keep a strict look-out. Signor Natale Roldan and I generally shared the watch from midnight until 2 a.m., but our enemies did not attack us again. Those long winter nights may be imagined by the reader. Even after days of extreme heat they were cold, and sometimes wet. Other circumstances were not cheering, and our provisions were rapidly dimmishing ! It was not possible to go with our guns in search of game in the midst of the enemy. Occasionally we contrived to kill a charata, something between a fowl and a pheasant, but our staple food was fish. Poetry, however, that consolation of the exiled and the unhappy, came to our relief. We discovered a musician, singer, and guitarist, on board with us. He was an Andalusian mason, called Don Felix, and almost every night we had some music. His repertoire was scanty, and I can stiU recollect two of the verses, as follows : — Si una vez en el mimdo adoraste Y en el caliz de amor tu bebiste, Ah ! porque oompasion no tuviste De un amanto al jui'arte su f e ! Me despierto j te busco a rai lado . . . No te encuenfcro j maldigo a mi suerte ! Ah ! mil voces prefiero la muerte Al vivir separado de ti ! The notes of the instrument, vibrating for the first time in those atmospheres, the glorious vault above us, shining with a light almost as bright as that of day, or glittering with innume- rable stars, made a deep impression on the mind. And a similar effect was produced by the vast country surrounding us, and the OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 5 1 immense fires kindled by the Indians, which we sometimes I»erceived like a full moon on the distant horizon, and sometimes heard the crackling and bursting of the burning bush, like a discharge of artillery, and then we could feel the heat of the flame as it blazed out, and found ourselves in the midst of smoke and burnt straw driven over us by the wind ! "We seemed threatened at times with some inevitable mis- fortune. The mysterious dark forests against the darker background of the fields ; tlie solitude, the danger, the uncertainty, the distance both of time and place between ourselves and those we hold dear ; — all these things stirred our souls with thoughts — half sweet, half sad ! . . . 52 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER XI. SUCCOUR — EIGHTY- FIVE LEAGUES ON HORSE?- ACK. Ah ! it was a touching and beautiful scene ! At a turn in the river w^ere five Indians hastily advancing. " Cap- tain ! " I call out, " news ! news ! Here are Indians com- ing quickly." For in fact it is not their habit to move fast, although they are great walkers. They advanced straight along the shore, arriving opposite our steamer where she had stuck fast. They wheeled half about in military fashion to the left, and iniormed us by gestures that further off there was relief, in the shape of cows, horses, and soldiers, on their way to us. We gave a whistle from the engines, and the loud and prolonged sound was answered by a discharge of fire-arms at a very short distance, and in a few moments more three, ten, twenty naked or half-naked Indians rushed out from among the trees and shrubs that clothed the bank. Moving impetuously forward, adorned with feathers, and armed with lances, lithe and soldier-like, they drew up in line on the shore. Our ambassador with his guardamonte came next, mounted on a mule, and then two soldiers and three cows, and horses and Indians ; the whole forming a picture on the river-side that might well be represented on the stage. Tor a week we have been without meat, and for two months we have eaten it salted ; our peas and beans are already exhausted, and our dietary reduced simply to fish and some few wild-fowl we contrive to snare ; we are in a wilderness among savages who are gentle, ferocious, and perfidious by turns ; — let the reader imagine therefore how heartily we welcome the succour that we expected indeed, but not so soon. In a few minutes an officer with two subalterns and other soldiers come up. We despatch the canoe, and they draw near in order to get on board. But what is this % I feel my heart-strings tightening. By the side of the officer I see the ladino, who, formerly a OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 53 soldier, has already twice deserted, and now finds himself for the third time in the hands of those who may order him to be shot to-morrow. For forty days he has been, as it were, sharing our life ; after deserting he hunted with the Indians, learned their language in his three years' sojourn among them, and served them faith- fully all that time. It was through his influence, when our progress was impeded after a navigation of forty days, that we were able to obtain permission from his friends the Indians to send an express to the Christian frontier, a distance by land of 100 leagues, to ask for help, which came to us in six and thirty days. And then he has been my teacher of the Indian language all this time ! Oh, may we be able to save him ! ***** Poor Faustino ! our compassion harmed thee ! It diverted from thee the punishment due to military discipline, which would, however, have restored thee to the society to which thou didst claim to belong, but it caused thee to fall a victim to the ferocious jealousy of thy unbaptized companions. Envious of the affection we all showed thee, and of the gifts we offered thee, although thou in thy generosity and according to custom, .shared them with thy comrades and with thy partner, a daughter of their tribe ; fearful lest thou shouldst depart from the e(]uality that is so dear to them, they put thee to death. They first transfixed thee with darts, then when wounded and already unable to resist, but suffering and conscious of their tortures, they cut thy throat. Still unsatiated, tlie monsters became inhuman ! After decapitation, they hung up thy body by the feet, and they used thy unshorn head for a cup, from which, when full to the brim, thy former partner will drink during their orgy, while the fermented liquor drojjs from the locks in which she has so often entwined her hands when soliciting thy caresses ! But if he who leaves behind him an inheritance of affection finds joy in the grave, and if the tears of the survivors like drops of dew on the awakening flower are refreshing to the dead, as our poets have sung, then art thou indeed happy ! For thy friends, numbering three times seven, in misery will weep over thy dreadful fate, and will keep thee in dear and holy lemembrance ; thou who wast rejected from the com- pany of the baptized, because thuu couldst not endure the in- 54 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO human rigour of their law. Oh, civilization has its tortures too ! and I groan as I render this tribute to thy memory, thou who twice wert outraged and contaminated by the lash that scourged thy body in the name of civilized law ! Thou, Faustino Diaz, who wert trumpeter in the 12th Eegiment of Dragoons, an orphan from thy birth, twice flogged ; ever a pariah among thy own people, a victim among those thou hadst chosen for thy people, a friend in need to us wayfarers in the midst of thy murderers ! ***** We had spent seventy-two days in navigating the Vermejo, when the long-wished-for relief arrived. Three days later we began our land journey through the Indian territory, with a very small supply of provisions, and we had also to leave some for the men who remained on the vessel. There were ten or eleven of us. After a forced march of 110 leagues, we came to a tolderia called Chaguaral, of which the principal cacique was the same Peilo, besides eleven other caciques. We had already left behind us another less important tolderia called Cruz Cheka, at a distance of seven leagues. We surprised the Indians standing in the water, fishing. They were Mattaccos. This tolderia is situated on a beautiful lake on the borders of which are the toldos, extending for about the length of a kilometer in front and two or three rows deep. A large number of them were standing in a row, fishing, uttering loud cries, and stirring the water as they advanced ; from time to time they almost immersed themselves in the water ; then raising themselves again they shook the nets, and struck them so as to stun the fish they had caught. These Indians have various modes of fishing. That of the palisade I have already mentioned, it works in the same way as our weels. Then there is that of a separate net to each man. It is fastened at both sides lengthways to sticks which are held one in each hand. The net is two or three yards long and about one yard broad; they open it, dip it in the water, raise it again with the two handles held close toge- ther, and then capture their prey after stunning it with blows. The name of this net is hut-tanac. There is another mode, also with a net, but one of a larger size, from eight to fifteen yards long, and carried by several men. It corresponds with our sweep-net, and is called Imec-lu. They use arrows, moreover, and short lances. The latter are OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 55 pointed with metal, like our own lances. They let fly the aiTOw by means of a bow, but they simply hurl the lance. They do this repeatedly in Ijattle. The l)ow i.s Jrfzet/, the arrow, lufec, the lance, hen. Finally, they also make use of the fish-hook, twiec. Their food consists principally of fish, game being extremely scarce ; tlie fruit season lasts only for a few months in the year, and is at times very deficient. Tliey keep but little cattle, because they mutually rob each other, and slaughter tlie few beasts that can accommodate themselves to a nomad exist- ence. For the same reason they do not sow, excepting a few gourds, water-melons, and Indian corn, all of which spring up quickly. But even these are gro^vnl in very small quantities. We passed the night near the tolderia, at a distance of about a kilometer. Towards evening we invited the caciques to come to us ; they were placed in order, and Signor Natale addressed them. He explained to them, through an inter- preter, that we Avere their friends ; that they should not molest him, and then our steamer would remain ; that they should rather help him, now that he was near their tolderia ; that they should give him fish and other things ; that the captain would give them tobacco, pieces of cloth, and shirts ; that he would immediately despatch Peppe, one of liis men then present, to bring tobacco and cows to the steamer, and that two cows should be killed for them. He accompanied with words and gestures the speech of the ladhw, repeating as he held out his arms and lifted two fingers : " Dos guassettas . . . y tambien giuqquds . . . giuqquas . . , guassettas . . . dos ! " viz., meat and tobacco, pronounced rather in Christian fashion, since the Mattaccos would say, Chiu-uas)uenos Ayres. He was very fond of her, and it occurred to me that I could not do better for him than to present his wife with some ornaments and articles of dress. The husband joined me in doing the same, so that the girl was able to dress and adorn herseK better than all the others. When she appeared among her companions in an almost Oriental costume of varied and brilliant colouring, the admiration was general, but so also was the jjrotest. I was in the tolderia once, and asked to see the beautiful Mattacco in her new dress ; this I considered was my right, but I never succeeded in obtaining it. The Caciq\ie liad forbidden it, because the other women complained that so much finery humiliated them ; and, for the sake of peace, the poor beauty had lieen obliged to distribute her drcsses among them, and to wear the few things she retained one at a time and very seldom. There ai'e sumptuary laws even among savages 1 I30 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER XXIIL SOCIAL CONDITION. {Continued.) Is it really true that these Indians abandon themselves with- out measure to sexual passion 1 and that they exhaust their dynamic and reproductive powers by abuse, as has been fre- quently stated 1 The explorer who finds himself for the first time in presence of these daughters of the forests in a state of nature, without veil or garment of any kind, may find this novel spectacle of nudity f idl of danger and almost irresistible ; but in fact it is not and cannot be so, in the ordinary intercourse of daily life. Habit weakens impressions, and consequently tlie stimulus to the passions — which, moreover, are not excited by meretricious and bold caresses, or by irresistible coquetry. The primitive clothing of these Indian Avomen, always in one's sight, the menial offices they fulfil, and liberty, cause the appetites of man to be satisfied by their exercise in such due measure only as contributes to health. As a matter of fact, who is ignorant of the attraction of forbidden fruit ? But this is a thing unknown to these in- genuous children of nature. On the other hand, how could the orgies of luxury take place among a people so poor and so simple 1 Moreover, we must bear carefully in mind that all which is deadly to man, cannot be attributed to him as original or per- manent ; how then has it been formed and multiplied 1 When therefore we attribute vices to the savage, we should reflect that either the observer may be mistaken from precon- ceived ideas against a state of life so diff'erent from his own, or that those vices have been introduced by cont; ct with other people, and are foreign to the very nature of savage life. It has been said of the American Indians that they have revenged themselves for the Conquest and for the smaU-pox OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 131 that we brought among them, by bestowing on Europeans venereal disease. I believe this to be one of the usual statements made on insufficient grounds, and easy to disprove. I have heard of learned woiks in whicli the scourge in question is referred to a very remote period. Popular feeling (often fallacious) refers its origin to France, and historians solemnly fix the date as the period of Charles VIII. 's invasion of Italy. In Leviticus, chapter XV., are the following words : — " When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean. " And this sliall be his uncleanness in his issue : whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, it is his uncleanness." 1 leave to annotators the true signification of these words. Meanwhile this scourge is unknown among the Indians of the Chaco, or it is unknown at any rate where Cliristians have not introduced it. And although this may be e.Kplained by saying that a new malady disappears or becomes weaker when once it has gathered in the victims predisposed to it, nevertheless the facts are as I have given them. Tiiis is the scientitic theory, and in my opinion it is supported by the modern school of medicine, and seems to be in accordance with Darwin's theory of Selection. Moreover, where this disease exists, the Indians do not escape it ; while the Africans are either exempt altogether, or suffer from it far less severely, as every (jnneho can testify — the various races existing in the country having afforiled opportunities for making tliese observations, which I note here for the benefit of those who may happen to have overlooked them. It is known, but not sufficiently known, that these Indians are nomadic ; it is not a custom with them to keep domestic animals, the few they do keep are an exception that proves the rule. Even at the time of the Conquest the Spaniards were sur- pri.sed by the want of domestic animals among them, and this want, which prevails throughout the whole continent, is a charac- teristic that from Robertson to Humboldt, and down to the very latest explorer, has arrested tlie attention of historians and philosophei-s. Nomadism still, as formerly, exists in Asia, but domestic animals, such as the horse and camel, have always been well K 2 u 132 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO known. But the Laplanders, the Samoyedess, the Ciutci, and the inhabitants of the Kamtschatkan Peninsula, have domesticated, the former the reindeer, and the latter the dog, to draw their sleighs. To what then must we attribute the undoubted inferiority of the nomadic Americans 1 Not to an innate incapacity certainly, which at first sight might appear a simple and con- venient solution, because in that case Greenlanders would not have kept domestic animals, since American Esquimaux, wdio are of the same race, make no use of them, although the bison, a species of bull, inhabits the polar regions and can be domesticated. Nor, on the other hand, does the domestication of animals present such difficulties as to require a very elevated capacity in man, since these nomads have succeeded after some attempts in domesticating them, and the Indians of the Chaco do in fact habitually keep ostriches, churjnas and charatas, or wild fowl, and we know that mute dogs were found domesticated among them. I believe that the fact of the absence of domestic animals is due to three circumstances peculiar to this continent and its inhabitants, viz. their physical conditions, their social condi- tions, and the scarcity, if not the actual absence, of animals that can be domesticated. Everybody knows that the cold on this continent, for easily explained physical reasons, is much more intense than in the same latitudes of the Old World. Thus the temperate zone is far more circumscribed here than there. This has rendered the care of animals difficult, and the means of feeding them extremely limited, among the inhabitants of the cold regions of North America, where the bison is found. But these difficulties apart, the social state of the American nomads makes the preservation of domestic animals almost im- possible. For a time the same nation occupies or has occupied immense districts, yet that nation may be divided into small tribes to whom belong relatively small portions of land, and these tribes will wage continual war upon each other. It follows that the first condition for rearing animals, or for any other peaceful occupation, i.e. security, will be wanting. At this very time the Indians of the Chaco, although they know our domestic animals and attempt to rear some of them, only do so on an insignificant scale, because the fact of possessing them is an incentive to neighbouring tribes to attack and OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 33 plunder tlicm. If tlieir social state had reached to the point of teaching these Indians to dwell together in large populations, then, although nomadic, and in spite of continual war, they could always, in case of invasion, have placed their animals in some safe spot of their enormous territory. Finally, the scarcity of tameahle animals has made it easier to do without domesticated animals, and this in its turn has remlered large social aggregations less inevitable. This scarcity is a notorious fact, and an irresistible proof is furnished by the Peruvians, who, though o-wning a religion, a government, and agragrian institutions, yet among the larger animals have tamed only the llama, which for shape and strength may well be called the camel of the Andes. On the other hand, the ^lexicans, albeit they have a government, and may be called civilized, and also the Kogotans, have only domesticated animals such as we should keep shut up, viz. rabbits and poultrj', because there are no other animals that can l)e tamed. The same Peruvians who domesticated the llama, of whose flesh and wool tliey made use, and who also utilized it as a beast of burden, as those at tlie present day in Bolivia,^ had to content themselves with hunting the sheep of the country, the fine wool was then, as now, greatly appreciated, and this may be the reason that these animals cannot be domesticated. The hunts took place at certain tixed periods, and, Ijy order of the Inca, a great number of persons assembled and enclosed a large extent of precipitous country with a thin rope supp(jrted on stakes. Tlie sheep would rush together and huddle in a small .space, for to them the smallest obstacle that they could clear at a single bounil appears insurmountable. Then the hunters, drawing in the rope Ity degrees, a large number of the animals, linding themselves thus enclosed between the rope on one side, and a precipice on the other, are easily captured. The chase wa.s restricted each year within certain limits, antl thus the danger of extermination was avoided. A similar plan is pursued at the present day, and although without limitation of zone, the race of sheep does not seem to diminish. AVe see liy this tliat, had there existed any other tameabl animals, they would have been reduced to servitude, and we must conclude, by analogy, that where this has not been ' The llamn, when trained as a beast of burden, carries only a weight of four arrohas, i.e. fifty kiloi^rams ; while a mule can carry twelve, that is, one hundred and fifty kilograms. 134 EIGHT MONTHS ON TPIE GRAN CHACO done, animals must either have been non-existent or scarce in the highest degree, which we know, in fact, to have been the case. The result has been a very sharp line of demarcation on this continent between its nomad savage races, and those who have devoted themselves to agriculture ; while in the Old World there is an intermediary state combining the nomadic and the pastoral life. The absence of this intermediary state is sufficiently explained, in my opinion, by the non-existence of domesticated animals, or of animals that could he domesticated. Hence I believe it would be a mistake on the part of any one suddenly finding himself in presence of agricultural nations, such as Peru, Mexico, and Bogota — surrounded, nevertheless, by multitudes of barbarous tribes — to attempt to explain the anomaly by a reference to the history of Asiatic races, and the hypothesis of an invasion by the people of another continent, who would suddenly have intro- duced and enforced their own pursuits in these regions. The explanation is to be sought, on the contrary, in the natural causes we have laid down ; and so far as Peru is concerned, I believe I may affirm, with due knowledge of the facts, that the language spoken there officially in the time of the Incas was kindred with that spoken by the savages. But if we admit the kind of Deus ex machhia of a supposed invasion or immigration by a people of the Old World into the regions inhabited by the above-named nations, the question arises, to what are we to attribute the civilization of Peru and Mexico ? These are countries where we find institutions of which some appear to be copied from those of the peoples of the Old Continent. We find, in fact, planets, gods, temples, priests, nuns, and caste. At Mexico a calendar that Humboldt foimd to be similar to the Egyptian ; at Cuzco, in Peru, a period of years almost equal to that of the Hebrews ; strings for counting, like those of one time in China ; a pedagogic government ; a periodical distribution of land ; an assemblage of marriages made publicly by the Inca, recalling to one's memory the pedagogic governments and the agragrian laws of the Old Con- tinent, the jubilees of the Hebrews, and the marriage customs of the Assyrians. The question is one that arises, and has always arisen, in the mind of every thoughtful man, but the solution is difficult. Some of the greatest historians answer it in this way. " The OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 35 rprrions occupied by those empires enjoy abeautiful.but enervating climate, therefore their people will more readily accept the discipline of civilized life. A conqueror, or a victorious people, can subdue them and rule them with despotic sway, ferocious at Mexico, mild at Cuzco, but invariably terrible. Human genius, which is everywheixi human, will develop here in the same way as elsewliere ; hence civilization and likeness to the peoples of the Old World." I do not fully endorse this reasoning?, especially the fii-st part. I re^'ret that I am unacquainted with the physical conditions of Mexico, but I know those of many parts of the Empire of the Incas, and I find in tl)em the natural explanation of the fact. That empire resulted from necessity, not from the enervation of its inhabitants. Throughout the whole of Peru, on all the western slopes, and on almost all the eastern slopes of the Andes, and in Bolivia, life is not possible for man, or even the lower animals, without agriculture, and agiiculture is impossible without irrigation. These two facts oblige man to remain in one spot and in association, and hent.e to live undf-r laws, and to constitute and liuild up successively arts, discipline, religion, and governuient. I)f-spotism explains nothing. Proud nations and weak ones Lave alike endured it ; they endure it now, and will endure it in the future, without therefore becoming inferior to nations under liberal rule, I In the Chaco, on the contrary, in the Pampas, iJrazil, and Xorth America, the soil sp mtaneously brings forth IVuits, roots, and food for quadruiicut here, separated by a few steps only, is the naked Redskin, with his bow and arrow, on one side, on the other the soldier, in variously-coloured uniform, armed with his breechloader. On the one the natural law of retaliation, and of compliance with innate tendencies ; on the other a Avritten code, equal and superior to those of the most advanced nations, compiled by such jurisconsults as Velez-8arstield and Tejedor, Avhose names are known throughout the whole republic of science ! On one side the spontaneous and territietl atlju- ration of evil and of phantasms ; on the other the artificial, incomprehensible Christian theogony. On one side nomadic races expecting from inviolate nature spontaneous fruits, and happy in a state of poverty equal for all, and in the savage independence consequent upon it ; on the other tlie agricul- turist, the shepherd, the mechanic, the merchant, the magistrate, poor and rich, master and servant ! 138 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO We reached Fort Gorriti about 10 a.m. "VVe know already what a fort is, but I will add that forts are almost always named after some distinguished citizen. On asking after the captain, who was a friend of Signor Eoldan, my fellow-traveller, we were informed that he had recently been transferred to a place called Rivadavia, at twenty kilometers' distance, in order to assist at the provincial legislative elections, which threatened to be stormy. Eoldan had a brother at Rivadavia ; we lost no time, there- fore, and although Ave had been in the saddle for above five hours, we mounted fresh horses, and accompanied by an ensign and two men, we set otf with slackened rein. After a gallop of two and a half hours through an exuberant growth of algarrobo, vinal, chebracci and giuccian, diversified here and there by pasture land, enclosed sometimes by a hedge, we reached the settlement. No one expected us ; moreover, it was dinner-time and Sunday ; the few streets were therefore deserted, nor did the clatter of five horses in a place where no step is taken except on horse- back, and at the close of a day of elections, attract attention. We arrive at the corner block, and at the place of business of Roldan's brother ; the doors are shut, we knock, nobody comes. We find our way to the piazza, this is likewise deserted ; then we bend our steps towards a leafy giuccian tree, loaded ^\'ith bursting fruit, all clothed in its tufts of white cotton. We reach the house ; Eoldan ascends the steps, knocks — and the two brothers are in each other's arms ! They are speechless with emotion, and can find no other expression for their delight than repeated embraces, until they exclaim in tuin, " Brother, we have met at last ! " The captain and the others long for their own turn, and a series of embraces, hand-shakings, interrupted questions and anticipated replies is commenced, amid a friendly rivalry of eagerness, and demonstrations of atfection. Every eye is wet, except perhaps mine. I am still in the saddle, waiting for an invitation to dismount, with legs dangling, body curved, head bent, shoulders up to my ears, and hands on my saddle, while I watch the scene with dry eyes, and deep in thought I contemplate things present and past, and in the far- off distance. It was a scene that lasted perhaps five minutes, but was indefinite in time and space and substance to me. I know not what happened to me, but never have I felt so lonely OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 39 as at that moment in the midst of that joyful gathering. AVas I niortitied at heing left out by all those good people 1 "Was I grieved at counting for nothing in their joy] And then, my thoughts suddenly reverted to my paternal home, to my aged mother, my beloved brothers, and the friends and inhabitants of my native village. And suddenly it seemed as if I too had lightly bounded up the hill, had knocked at the door of my home, and had been answered by a cry of joy and delight ; and that I found myself encom- passed by my loved ones, called by my boyhooil's name, and apostrophized in a thousand exclamations. All this seemed to be happening in the hall of the hcnise, while the neigh- bours stood grouped romul the entrance, telling each otlier tlie news, beckoning to me with their lingers, and talking about me. And then it seemed to me that visitors began to arrive, and that in the little drawing-room there was a great cruwd of persons, and a constant succession of cpicstions, a continual iuHux of fresh visitors, with greetings, questions, answers, and excla- mations as before. And then all at once a dense cloud chilled me to the heart, as I recollected the burial-ground where so many of my house are at rest ! " The Seiior National Engineer," explained Signor Xatalio Eoldan, as he introduced me to his brother and the rest of the family. We shook hands, and I dismounted. I40 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER II. The settlement of Eivadavia consists of about twenty houses situated round a square and along the neighbouring streets. It is laid out on the same plan as all the towns and districts in America, i.e. straight streets about nine yards in width, inter- sected at distances of one hundred and thirty, by others at right angles, thus forming quadrangles. The land thus enclosed between four streets is called manzana, that is, a table. In new districts and the new parts of towns, for which a great future is in store, the width of the streets has been increased to fifteen or twenty yards. The houses are built of unbaked bricks, made of clay or other plastic earth, and worked with ground straw, dried in the sun. These are called adohe in Spanish. A similar system has been found to exist among the Indians of Peru, except that the adohe are round instead of square. The same clay serves for mortfu' when a little less stiff, and for plastering the walls. A coating of whitewash over the plaster completes the busi- ness, and gives the appearance of a house built of better materials. When I say better materials, I must explain. For houses of one story only which have no great weight to sustain, and are not to be used for the same purposes as higher houses, the adohe is serviceable in these hot climates, for it necessitates thick walls, and is a non-conductor of heat. But from another point of view there are so many objections to it, that the habit of employing it can only be explained by the necessity of economy, or the inability to procure other material. For these reasons the cities of the Republic, including the old town of Buenos Ayres, are built of barro. The roofs are thatched with straw, and for the most part are daubed over yviih several coats of clay called harro. The OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 141 straw resemLlcs that of our straw hats when untwisted, ami is plentiful throughout the RepuLlic. The interior arrangeruents are extremely simple. Tin; rooms are few in number ; sometimes there is only one. "With rare exceptions there are no windows ; on the other liaiid there are plenty of doors, some on the street, some at the back of the house, ojxMiing on to a covered condor or gallery. Detaclied houses also have these galleries or verandahs as a protection from the sun, while in summer they are used in preference to sleeping-rooms, for the stifling heat within the house and the insects of every description that swarm in the straw of the ronf and the Jxtrro of the walls ol)lige one to sleep out of doors. The kitchen is always detached from the house, to which also bclMiigs a courtyard or gar a force of five, and stationed them in readiness to act on the first signal. Then he witli eight or ten others issued from the house, and, making a circuit, re-entered the f/alpon through a door at the hack, and confronted the Electoral Board, vho, surprised and confused hy tlie audacity of the Opposition, Ave re at a loss how to proceed. 1 stood apart, watching the drama. After a few short moments of amicable discussion the dispute waxed warm, and was supplemented by shouts, gesticulation, and invective. " Buc this is a pronunciamiento ! " cried the president to the cai)tain. " Proimnciamiento indeed ! " replied the latter ; " do you think that because I am a soldier, I am not a citizen as well ] " "This is an atteii.pt against the majesty of the law!" ex- claimed the secretary, addressing himself to Xatalio Eoldan. " It is yours that is an attempt ! " returned Don .Natalio. " The law is on our side ; look at it ! " and he held out the sheet in his left haml, tapphig it with the right. " Now we shall see ! " exclaimed the commissioner, and he ordered the electors of the National Guard to advance in line, while he and the captain left the enclosure, and those who remained engaged in discussion. kShortly after this a group of National Guards were seen ad- vancing on foot, ten abreast, Irom the back of the piazza, armed partly with carbines and partly wiih. far uns. On a whistle from the captain, the five soldiers stood in readiness. The National Guards advanced about twenty steps, and a scct>nd whistle from the captain brought up the soldiers from one side of the piazza, where they were stationed, to the church. " lAjrward, forward ! " shouted the Commissary to the Guards, wlio had already formed into four bodies of two ranks each. A third whistle brought the soldiers between the door- way of the church and the National Guards, who were half-way across the piazza. The Commissary and the captain standing side by side formed a curious contrast. The latter had laid aside his sword on entering the electoral precincts. The former in poncho and ehiripa, the other in a plain tunic worn with some elegance, L 2 148 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO and wide cavalry trowsers. Both carried revolvers. The Commissary was furious at his position having been taken with so much ease ; while the captain was as calm as if on parade. The commissary shouted, " Forward, boys ! up with your f aeons ! " And the captain, " Present arms ! carry arms ! " The National Guards waver. They are on foot, as are the soldiers ; they come in order to vote, not to kill, or be killed with Remingtons discharging fourteen shots a minute. The commissary vociferates : " Forward, friends ; don't be afraid ! — out with jonrf aeons — al de — (he meant to say deguello, the act of cutting the throat). " Ready ! " cried the captain at the same moment, and five rifles were levelled in readiness for the word " Fire ! " It was a solemn moment ! There, like a point in the vast square, stood the little troop of five foot -soldiers, in linen clothes, rough highlows, and red caps, armed at all points — breech-loaders, cartridge-belts — slender, upright, resolute, and ready to obey the orders of the elegant officer standing on their right. Here, a parti-coloured crowd of peasants, in ponderous ^ot^c^os, or large cloaks, held together at the edges, cliiripas, and white, fringed caJzoncillos, with wrinkled boots, and tattered hats, of various shapes, and worn in different ways, like men always on horseback, and who have only just dismounted, and stood awkwardly on their feet, balancing their carbines, and holding their unsheathed daggers in a hundred different attitudes. At the back of the galjyon were a number of cahalleros in two files, one in front of the other, with uncovered heads, composed, but resolute of mien, but scrutinizing countenance and calm, observing by turns the adversaries in front and the troops in the square. All the rest of the square was empty, and the doors of the few houses near were either shut, or, if slightly ajar, disclosed upon a dark background white-robed female figures, who re- vealed their presence and their fears by the stealthy movement of the doors. The silence was sepulchral ! It seemed as though we could hear the beating of our hearts. And how all hearts were beating at that moment, on which hung the lives of scores of fellow-citizens, of comrades, of friends, of relations ! OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. I49 lint suddenly the Xational Guards, already wavering, bruke — some stood tirm, some, with their faces to the enemy, drew back. There was confusion in their ranks. The Commissary's orders by voice and gesture are no longer obeyed. The entire column retreats, disperses, and abandons the square when con- fronted with those five rifles that, at a moment's notice, would have scattered death and destruction around. It would avail nothing to recall them ; victory is on the other side, on the side of principle, siiid Eoldan. On the side of discipline, of improved tireurms, and of courage, say I. I do not wish the reader to retain a bad impression of the National Guards. They were numerous, it is true ; but half of them at lea.st were at heart on the side of the Oppositionists ; and all of them knew that the latter, who were there before their eyes, li.id come to prevent an act that they declared to be illegal, and which the Situationists made to appear so by the unusual, lurtive, and scheming manner in which they managed it. Moreover, their arms were inferior, and then they were fathers of families and owners of property. How could they be ex- pected to tight, or to wish to do so ? At this point some one says to me, " This is all very well, but in the meantime this is the beautiful Republic ? Abuses, civil wars, anarchy, misery ! You require a Dictator, not a Republic ; or, better still, a king !" I do not think so. In politics accomplished facts must be taken into account. Now the Republic is a fact, and its historical reason appeai-s to me to reside in the other fact, that its in- dependence was achieved outside of, and in oi)position to, the monarchy. If the Bourbons, when Xapoleon drove them from Spain, had retired to South America, and had there placed themselves at the head of the movement of indejjendence of the mother country, they would probably have taken root, as the House of Braganza umler similar circumstances took root in Ihiizil. But the Bour])ons were too much in love with the vast and glorious kingdom of Spain, containing as it diil double the numl)er of iidiabitants of the whole of Si)anish America, the population of which was at that time three parts Indian, and they knew not how to practise the cheerful st^-lf-renunciation of the House of Braganza, when driven fn)m their modest Portu- guese throne. The House of Bourbon, with the authority of tradition, with prestige of service rendered to tliose countries, might, with the 150 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO aid of other elements, have constituted an aristocracy of birth 9nd Avealth to be the base and nucleus for the concentration around itself of the followers who would by degrees have arisen in the different parties, and to discipline and educate them. This we may believe, and it was much to be desired. But the contrary took place. Independence became possible, and therefore inevitable ; but it was vigorously resisted by kSpain. In order to attain it, the people rallied round the most conspicuous individuals, and by them were led to victory. Afterwards, there being no superior centre of attraction, each wanted to preserve supremacy, and this was only possible, tirstly, with the inde- pendence of the great territorial historical and natural groups, historically or geographically ; and secondly, by the federation, in all these new nations, of the provinces that were distinct, either by their physical or social characters, or by the part they had taken in the war of independence. The ideas of '89 had indeed taken hold of those classes who had directed and inaugurated the war of liberation ; but the physical and social conditions of these countries were and are little adapted to such ideas, because their chief men were and are inspired to abdicate a part of their liberty in favour of a conventional personage, not supported by services rendered. How then could a new dynasty take root 1 How the old, since they had shed their blood to free themselves from it, and had conquered. To attempt it was to ensure ruin. This was proved in the case of San Martin, the great Argentine commander, who was suspected, and perhaps not unjustly, of attempting it on behalf of another ; and, again, Bolivar, the great Columbian general, who was accused wrongfully, I think, of attempting it for himself. These countries, therefore, separated by immense distances, by great natural demarcations, and by the limits of colonial administration, felt the necessity of separating into different nations, and when the Eepublic was constituted they became federated on a basis of the widest political and administrative liberty. Was this federation an evil 1 Was this basis of liberty an evil 1 The occurrence of an historical fact is difficult without the ojieration of potent reasons, which, while they have made it inevitable, make it also a substantial good — if, indeed, the expressions bad and good can be used in reference to political necessities. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 15I J\e must also be obsorvod, that if we only recur in thought to the times when the political and social centres were separated one from anotiier hy hundreds and thousands of leagues and by intervals of months of travel, before railways, tel<'graphs, or even stage-coaches and mails had shortened the distances or facilitated communication, federation was a primary fact, which was written in the constitutions ; and because it was a fact, it Avas also sanctioned in the constitutional laws. It may come to pass that in time, with improved communications, and altered relations, federation may disappear ; it is certain at any rate to be modified, first in tlie actual relations between the ])rovincial and national (lovernments, and next in the written laws. lUit then and non' it was and is so. The same law is imposed by similar physical conditions, upon Brazil, where notwithstanding the monarchical and imperial form, the provinces are true con- federate States, constituting an immense empire. The necessity and hence the excellence of the federal order is granted ; l)ut it is denied that written institutions, however liberal, have been or are good for these people, who are not supposed to be ripe, as it is called, for liberty. To this I reply: The evil is not in the laws, but in the social conditions. If liberty is, in fact, illusory among some nations, it would be so to a still greater extent under a Dictator or a despot. If the thirst for command agitates the whole country at election time, and frecjuently renders them either violent or fraudulent, this very thii'st has made and would make it quarrel with the ruler who was not made one by election. If the Government, in order to keep power in its party, corrupts or coerces the electors, the same Government, if abso- lute, would certainly, in order to prevent revolt, corrupt and coerce the citizens. ]'>ut we have had peace ; with peace, prosperity ; and with prosperity, the possibility of attaining true liberty. We have also had frightf\U tyranny, and with it the reverse of the medal. Under the social conditions of these countries, a l)i(;tator or a Life President, in order to free the country from elec« toral agitation and from the anarchy of liberty, would be quickly transformed into a merciless tyrant, who would repress his quarrelsome fellow-citizens in their distant provinces by means <5f a crew of satellites more brutal than himself. Rosas was an instance of this. And then, besides the danger to peace, is the 152 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO education of citizens to be coxinted as nothing, and free activity r in all, for the moral and material progress of the country 1 v However much these institutions and countries may be traduced, the fact is, that power alternates between the two parties ; that no citizen abandons his country in despair on account of the eternal persecution of authority, which is curbed by its precariousness. And according as wealth and political education progress, the people become more and more the sovereign power ; while in the solid reality of the constitutional guarantees, and in the wide horizon now open to all, each citizen becomes a better and a happier man. Lastly, even when the tendency of a governor is towards an abuse of his power, the institutions of the country virtually exist. Then will the remembrance of fraud and violence endure in the minds of the citizens, and when the day of reparation comes, society resumes the suspended tradition with the mere disappearance of the despot, and continues to confirm and assimilate it. To conclude, a periodic electoral agitation, in order to gain the magistracy, is better than permanent political agitation in order to obtain the control of the vote, where that manifesta- tion of the popular will does not take place. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 53 CHAPTER IV. POBLACIOXES — MISSIONS — CIVIC GOVERNMENT. From Rivadavia I was to go to Oran, a city of 4000 inhabi- tants before 1871, when it was destroyed and depopulated by an earthquake. The distance geographically is 200 kilometers ; but as I was to visit on my way that point of the River Vermejo where it divides into two branches, the distance I should have to cover on horseback would be doul)led, and, including the return journey, quadrupled. At the fork of the river, the stream on the right retains the name of Vermejo, that on the left taking the name of Teuco, from Tenrh, a word meaning river in the language of the !Mattaccos who live on its banks. The two branches run with many windings to a distance of lifly kiloQieters, and in a direct line for a distance of 400 kilometers, thus forming a large oblong island, its width being one-tenth of its length. It begins at about 100 kilumcters within the frontier, and ends at the mouth of the Tcuci', 300 kilometers below the frontier. In the Christian territory westward from the frontier the banks of the island and those on the farther sides of the two arms of the river are partly populated, i.e. they have been sold as allotments or pre^ellas, consisting of a certain number of jnovincial half-leagues, equal perhaps to 11:00 7«r/«/v.s- under con- dition that the purchaser shall build a raiicho and set up a pohlacion, that is a family with some cattle. "When the pobla- ciun is on a large scale, from the number of animals, and the extent of land, and consequently, with a large dwelling-house and outbuildings, it is called an etitcntria. Some of these exta7icio.-i are also met with beyond the frontier within a radius of four leagues (twenty kilometei-s), the farthest spot legally under the inspection of the patrols {comisiomi>) from the Forts; beyond this distance the estancieros are deprived 154 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO even of that amount of protection. The love of gain, however, induces the owners of estancias to push still farther forward, if the bordering country (campo) affords good pasturage. I leave you to imagine the kind of life led in these parts, surrounded by savages and Avild beasts, at long distances from the nearest inhabited districts, and hundreds of leagues from any town. And nevertheless I have met with ladies in these estmicias. I can assure you that the Argentine lady is inferior to none in the world, in her spirit of self-sacrifice as a wife and a mother, and her admirable domestic qualities. It will easily be understood that individuals of certain classes, such as medical men, priests, and gendarmes, are rarely found out here, or, generally speaking, in the heart of the Argentine countries. But life seems none the worse for their al^sence. For the doctor, there is sometimes a substitute in the curandero — but almost always in a sufficiently salubrious climate, whole- some, though plain food, and a frame trained to this kind of life. The gendarme is replaced by tlie strong hand of the master over his j>eowes (labourers), and by the few opportunities for evil-doing, with the exception of quarrels, and then the guilty party can always lay his hand upon a horse and escape. The priest's place is perfectly well filled by the moral sense innate in man, and practically exhibited when required by the exigencies of human society, Avhich depend in their turn on the state of that society, whether the fact be or be not pleasing to the advocates of an absolute morality, armed at all points, pre- existing in the head of Jove. And" then, too, the priest does not come to these parts, be- cause he does not find it profitable either for himself or for his Church. But in order to preserve appearances, he sends mis- sionary brothers, who are as incapable of teaching savages one step in civilization, as the Indians are incapable of appreciat- ing their good intentions. On this subject a large part of the public is in a state of mental aberration, and some of the governors enact a ridiculous part for their benefit. It is believed, and the belief is en- couraged, that one barefooted friar is worth a battalion of soldiers, or a police station, and funds are provided and expended on this account. But it is not so. Savages understand nothing about incarnations, transub- stantiations, immaculate conceptions, and indulgences. And should they, when those who are born amidst these beliefs OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 55 either laufjh at them or become mad on tlie subject ? The idea of reward and punishment in a future life, by wliidi they might be elevated and morally improved, is not new to them ; they already possess it, as we have seen. Hence it is more natural that they should remain in the faith of tlieir fatliers, and it should be consiilered more moral also, ])y those whose morality consists in the impossiltility of believing what one no longer believes, or in cheating and lies. The savage will learn the new religion, that to him is no religion, as a business, and according to the measure imparted to him. Where is the education in this 1 Whore is the march of civilization'? We cannot make much of having taught him to gabble the creed, or be sjirinkled with holy water ! A battalion, on the contrary, by preventing robbery, obliges the savages to work for their living, and the station otfers relief and help, in the day of want, that comes even to the nomad ! ifeanwhile the hope of gain attracts them to the new lite, from which they are not able to witlidraw, and into which they will enter as one of its necessary parts on the day that tlie inevit- able progress of the superior race must despoil them of the lands that they do not cultivate. This is education ! This is civilization ! T!ie missions may supply convenient resting-places for tra- vellers, as in Africa, or afford opjKirtunities for useful scientific discoveries, if their members can be imbued with the scientific, instead of the religious spirit; l)ut until then, I cannot see what results they have to show, with the exception of some acts of charity and courage, such as the rescue of ])risoners, a trjjiy noble and holy deed. Among all the Indians of the Pam- is, not one has joined us through the attraction of religion, and the same is the case with the Chaco Indians. If a few score live near the esfauciccd and work on them, it is because the land was formerly theirs, or because they felt attracted to the new life and lu'came unconsciously bound to it. If some hundreds go to the sugar hacietu/as, it is because paid labour is more attractive than idleness and misery. Let us enclose them within the circle of civilization, and they will come to us quicker than if enclosed in a circle of friai-s. And if this is not suffi- cient to absorb them within the period jiidged necessary by civil society, invasion antl force must be employed, not preaching. The missions please neither savages nor citizens ; but they are liked by governors, who use them for the purpose of deceiving 156 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO the people as to their devotion, and foreigners as to the mild- ness of their rule. Meanwhile there is strong antagonism between the pohladores and the missionaries, and some years ago a regular pitched battle took place between them, resulting in the burning of the settlement and the destruction of the inhabitants. A monk, whose name I forget, wrote a pamphlet on the subject at Genoa, on his return to Italy. The divergence of the course of the Vermejo subsequently destroyed two new houses (I have already explained what these houses are) built by these same mis- sionaries, and the neighbours declared and still declare it to be the finger of God ! Is that finger, then, a two-edged sword 1 Eventually, at the time of electing a Deputy to Con- gress, the estancieros of the Eivadavia district united their votes, in order to return a candidate who had assisted them in their legal struggle before the Salta tribunals, consequent on the battle I have already mentioned ; and at the present time, as I am writing, this same gentleman. Dr. Oliva, has been elected Governor of the province. If the priest be wanting, so also must the marriage ceremony be wanting, which is celebrated here by means of the Chiirch exclusively. But the concubinage prevailing in the cavipo is caused rather by the unwillingness of the man to contract marriage than by the absence of the priest, because from time to time some priest makes an excursion into the country, not unprofitable to him, if he be a poor man ; and, on the other hand, it would be no great thing to ride some score of miles for once in a way, as in fact any wdio care about it do. It would be wrong to attribute the same immorality to this custom, as if it prevailed among ourselves ; the circumstances being totally ditterent, whether as regards means of communication, social conditions, or the race itself. While the unmarried man who comes to these wildernesses is nearly always white, or presumed to be so, the woman, on the contrary, is almost always an acknowledged half-caste. Now this constitutes a social inequalitj'' that very few have the courage to face. The lower orders — I use this term unwillingly, but in order to make myself clearly understood — consist of a breed almost entirely native. There- fore the custom of concubinage is the quickest and the least costly. We must add that it preserves freedom, which is pre- cious to a people who have it ever before their eyes in immense and solitary lands, and among whom the women age very OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 5/ rapidly ! The Argentine laws, however, have looked to thi.s, and have decreed that a natural sou shall inherit name and property in the same, or almost the same, manner as a legitimate child, and that he shall have the right to verify the father. The learned jurisconsult, Velez-Sarsfield, who drew up this law, was equally great in head and heart. The social disorder, there- fore, that might perhaps be dreaded among ourselves only appears here on a small scale in consequence of this provident law— which, moreover, promotes fruitful unions and the blend- ing of races, and thus contributes to the increase and improve- ment of the population, objects of the highest importance in a country such as this, of which it has been well said, to govurn is to pojtnlate. Nor do the women live in a state of humiliation. There are few countiies in which women are more respected than here. "Whether from Spanish traditions, or from lial)its formed under the social conditions of the country, when the po]ndation was only one-tifth of its present numbers, and each individual be- came of increased value in the solitude of country life, women possess extraordinary influence, and are loved and respected by men. During the atrocious civil wars that distracted the country for the lirst fifty years of its indejiendence, woman was alternately the guide of a man's life and the companion of his misfortunes. Hence the participation of women in the very springs of politics, which, while it may seem imprudent, never- theless excites the admiration of foreigners. The respect and consideration for women that exist in the upper classes of society are also found among the peoi)le, either from the force of example, or from innate custom produced by the causes I have mentioned. One example will suffice. One of my servants, acting as guiile, was a poor country lal)ourer, a married man with a family. After a couple of months' absence, he asked me to ^^'Tite in his name to his wiCo. Not quite knowing how to begin the letter, I asked him to tell mo. Alter a moment's thought he said, " Write, *My esteemed kvh/f" This kind of tone is mutual — I do not say among the classes privileged by wealth and education, for there it is a matter of course, but among the lower classes and even among the Indian nomads. The very prostitutes conceal and ilislike their mode of life. The calm and apparently impassive Indian nature conduces to this outwai-d bearing, which may be called irreproachable. IS8 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Their manner of walking is generally majestic ; and their way of holding their arms, which has so much to do with the elegance of motion, is nearly always absolutely correct. Two Indian sisters, wives of the same Indian husband, who had settled among the Christians, made such an impression on me when they came with him to Eivadavia, that I took them for two ladies in disguise, so correct and elegant were their manners, although they were seated on the ground in the shade of a tree at the side of the street, and busy over a child of the husband's and with various little domestic duties. In order to understand all the contingent value of any civil institutions whose social and individual influence is so much extolled, and also the conditions of their merit, it is necessary to have been in places where they do not exist or act in a contrary sense. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC- 159 CHAPTER V. DETARTUUE FROM RIVADAVIA — FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY. Ix tlie niidtllt! of October we set out for Oi-an. A few vrrinos accompanied us for half a league, and then Signor Xatalio Roldan and I continued our way, attended only by the Santia- gueno 1 and the Chiriguan, who rejoiced in the name of Sardina ! On entering the territories of the savages we i'ound ourselves on a vast wooded plain sloping imperceptibly from west to east. Yet on this immense table-land there are frequent and unex- pected breaks in the ground. These are due to the action of the waters, aided by the friable nature of the soil through which they wander. The forking of tlie river has been repeated over and over again since the primeval times, when the immense plain first came into existence, and the abundant waters flowing over it formed for themselves channels in which they were confineil. Only five or six years ago Rivadavia stood on the brink of the river ; now it is half a league away and is reached by a series of steps or terraces. The ancient bed of the river has become an immense natural tank, retaining the water all the year round, and replenished afresh during the floods. It is the favourite haunt of the yacare, a kind of crocodile. Deposits of mud will gradually fill it up ,and the level, being thus raised by a succession of layers, will remain dry, tii-st in the season of drought, and later during the moderate rains. Finally, with the lapse of ages, joined to the deepening of the river's course, it Avill remain dry even in the great floods, unless the overflow, being impeded by banks formed across mouths belonging to a former period, it becomes first a lake, then a hahado, and hxstly a marsh. ^ Inlmbitant of tbo proviuce of Santingo. l6o EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Such is the genesis of the existing alluvial lands. They are due to the working of causes still in activity, and which every year are forming a more extensive and closer network, in the meshes of which the primitive soil, broken up into islands of different size, is enclosed. This soil, so long as it endures, will retain its own altrimetrical, physical, and vegetable characteristics. The waters will not overcome it, though they never cease from their operations, sometimes carried on with insidious caresses of the clay foundation of the perpendicular banks, and, by continual lapping, bringing it down, bit by bit, into their bosom ; at other times, turgid and impetuous, they seek to destroy it by force, assaulting, dragging, demolishing, until, laden with its ancient forest-growth, they whirl it into their seething currents. The rings of the net already formed are subject to similar action ; for the river, conscious, as it were, of its irresistible strength, both for building up and for destroying, seems to take pleasure in undoing its own work, and substituting other work for it, tracing with its spume, more powerful than adamant, a fresh network above and across the former one, which is unfitted to resist the attack on account of its brief gestation in the bosom of the waters. And as it will cost nothing to the land that in the beginning afforded an asylum to the waste of waters to receive on its soil the axe-defying quebracho and the giuccian, with its produce of white cotton, these trees will accompany its infancy while the waters are coiling about like monstrous serpents. In the same way, without cost, the later inhabitants will enjoy the fertility of lands producing the algarrobo, the chauar, and the nutmeg, with their delicious fruits ; and the medium lands will freely provide for health and cleanliness in the growth of the splendid and elegant pacara, with its saponaceous berries ; while the more recent soil hastens, with child-like grace, to adorn the paths with poplars, willows, and silvery-leaved shrubs that grow in countless profusion along the wooded banks. Alluvial action is very powerful, and exists on an extensive scale. Diiring our journey we frequently came across dried-up channels, sometimes many leagues in length, that had been full of water three or four years previously. And it is certain that if suitable engineering Avorks are not carried out, the existing arm of the river that retains the name of Yermejo will soon form, along its whole length of nearly a thousand kilometers, a series of tanks that wiU themselves undergo the trans- OV THE ARCFA'TINE REPUIiLIC. l6l formations I have descriljetl. Fort Agiiirre only a short time a^'O stood on the riglit V»ank of the Teuco, from ■wliich it is now lialf a league distant, and a "madrechon," or natural roscrvoir, lias taken the place of the river. The alluvial lands, funned by the existing currents on Avhirh, as hcin,^ the most ancient, the highest and driest, the algurroho lluurisliL's, are always lower than the primitive soil, wliere the (luehracho and the giuccian grow ; thus forming a kin«l of stair, never less in depth, I think, than a couple of metres. The steps of this stair are, of course, not always very distinct, for the length of time in which atmos])heric agencies have Leer at work has alloweil the parapets to slojie, and time has filled the space between the two soils with detritus from tlie surface, as is easily understood. ]>ut the perpendicular banks of the rivt-r allbrd clear evidence of the facts i state, and 1 do so Avith the greatest confidence, although based only on my own observations. Occasionally, in the time of gi-eat floods, the algarrobo lands are under water, but never the quebracho ; the former lie at a height of six or eight yards in the centre and west, and eight tu twelve yards and more, eastward, in Paraguay, for about thirty leagues from the mouth of tlie river. This first stair is generally succeeded by others before reach- ing to the river, ami, as its course is more or less circuitous, the bank on the outer side is almost always perpendicular, and of greater or less height according to the nature of the soil. The inner side of the curve is alluvial. U'^'ow this alluvial land is nearly always in steps or terraces, and seems as if butting against a high bank. One can actually see these steps in process of formation Viy the river, which is very muddy when swollen, besides which the friable soil on the exterior side of the curve is easily disintegrated, and thus the absolute, and even the relative position of the steps, is frequently and rai)idly changed. This occurs when a liuge mass of earth falls over into the stream, especially when trees are carried away Avith it, or when the unevenness of the river-betl fails to olVer a equal and homogeneous resisting power. In that case the terrace becomes still more irregularly formed. Tluis we find that the steps or stairways in the bed of the river are owing, not to one year's work or one single flood, but to the normal and continuous action of the stream in ordinary seasons. These steps, however, are shallow, and the terraces very narrow. They can be levelled with little trouble. M 1 62 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Tliose terraces and stairways which, from their size, are important features iu the aspect of the country, are due to the heavy floods which for considerable distances deposit wide terraces four to six yards high, their width being increased by the debris of a former smaller terrace — other lesser ones are due to the ordinary floods. jS'ow, a different degree of productiveness may be said to correspond with each terrace, because the com- position of the soil in each must vary according to the known laws of deposit, and on account of the depth of the water and their longitudinal distance from it, which is a considerable ele- ment in every respect in this country, where the climate is so dry that agriculture is almost impossible. To give an idea of this, Eivadavia is, or rather was, at a distance of half a league from the river. In that space there are, as it were, four stairways, with terraces six to eight hundred yards long covered with algarrobo, and soils of all kinds, marshy, dry, sandy, and clay. ]\[adrechons, lakes, and swamps, all formed by the same force, constitute with the terraces the only features of the soil that break its monotony, and partially alter the uniformity that results from uniformity of climate. OF THE ARGKXTINE REPUBLIC. 163 ClIAPTEIl vr. ON OIR WAY TO ORAN— TIIK RAINS AND ACRICULTURE A LEPEU. "We proceeded onwards acro>;s the imnionse level plain, broken l)y the natural accidents I have descrihed, and clotlied with ■woods, varyin;j; according to the nature of the soil, hut so fre- (]uent that they seemed to be the same, only with darker and ilitl'erent shades alternately predominating. Every eight or ten kilometers Ave came to some rancJio inhabited by t\m jyobkulores ol the estate, and le.'^s frequently to the dwellings of the extancieros. Our march Avas arranged so as to bring us at nightfall to a place where Ave could get Avater and jnisturage and a ]dace of safety for our horses. i)\i drawing near such a halting-place, one of us Avould go forward, and riding up close to the stockade that always surrounds a house in the eampo Avould clap his hands to'^'ethi'i, and on the appearance of the owner salute him Avitli the words :— " Ave, Maria ! " " Ave, Cal)allero ! " The customary courtesies Avere then immediately exchanged, and our Avants Avere named ; the traveller remaining on horse- back until the sacramental words, '■^ Baj<',,Main is harvested. The cause is simple enough. The climate is so dry during the growth ami ripening of cereals that they almost always fail, if not artificially irrigated, and on tliis tal)ledand, with rivers running in very deep channels, that cannot be accomplished without mechanical means or an ex- tendt (1 system of canals, for which the lime is not yet come. Flour is therefore purcliased at a distance, and brouglit in from time to time on mules, for the most part from Catamarca, Kioja, and even farther, a distance of a thousand or iifteen hundred kilomete'-s. This dryness of climate is so disastrous that even maize, which is indigenous in America, is frequently ruined by it, although sown expressly in the bed of former tanks, near riuining water, and although it comes to maturity in forty days. I affirm tliat agriculture in the centre of the Chaco within a limit of four to five hundred kilometers in breadth, and of some thousands in length, is the most hopeless of pursuits, and it Avould bo the greatest imprudence in the world to uneeause that scale represents a different period of formation ; not, of course, a geological period, but one of those into which the existence of the river has been divided up to tliirf very day. Consequently there is not only a difference of duration, during Avhich any given fibrous growth may easily have predominated and imparted a particular character to the ])astures, but, more than this, there is a ditt'erence in the cc>m- ponent parts and in structure, which causes varying conditions of growth. lam aware that I am saying no new thing; but I believe that in general little attention has been given to this subject, and I write for the geneiality. Learned men, if 1 have any among my readers, will find their opinions confirmed by observa- tions made in the presence of these vast solitudes. "While navigating the Vermejo, the first thing that struck nje was the presence of clover along the dampest parts of the sloping banks, where the crumbling soil belonged to the most ancient period. I thought the seeds might have bei-n brought thither by the river, which higher up in its course might have run through tields of clover; but, on the contrary, the forage grown in the mountainous districts is tiie medi- cinal trefoil, of which there was no trace here, nor did I see it during my ride of 160 leagues through a territory, half Indian, halt Christian, and thus was led to conclude that the trefoil I mention is indigenous. The ^lattacco Indinns call it chiu-asset-locq, i.e. stag-forage. This may be a secondary 174 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO reason for tlie name given by them to a cow which is also a ruminating animal, chiu-nasset-tdch, i.e. a large deer. In Chichuio, trefoil is called mosco-jujo. ^ Clover, which is a biennial, grows spontaneously in the "dried-up shallows, and on the banks of the lakes, tanks, or jjonds, as well as on the banks of the river itself. We found it most serviceable during our journey across the Indian territory. I saw scarcely any on the Christian country. I attribute the scarcity to the cattle, who are fond of it, although I found it bitter to the taste, and who exist in great numbers among the Christians, while the Indians hardly own any. There are t-svo principal kinds of trefoil. The importance of this food, in an agragrian point of view, must be my excuse for having dwelt on it, and I must add that 1500 kilometers south there are natural fields of clover on this same river Negro, and the same are found on other rivers of the Pampa and in the Chaco. In solitary districts enclosed by forests covering the country there are fields of simhdl which, from a distance, might be taken for corn. It is a gramineous plant and grows to more than the height of a man on horseback ; it is j)erennial, and even Avhen burned grows again. It reigns as a sovereign, despotic and exclusive, but it cannot escape the caresses of the franwntcma, a climbing plant that entAvines it, and, mingling its own leaves with those of \h%simh6l, affords a most appetizing food. On land almost ecpially dry and high there are vast meadows consisting exclusively of aibp, a Imsh supplying a hard and bitter food, never eaten but from necessity, and in its natural state, but it does not fatten or give a factitious fat ; it has the appearance of hay. On level but somewhat high ground we find the coda di voipe, or fox's tail, whi(;h is equal for fattening to the medicinal trefoil. We find also in succession tlie par/lia rostra, or red straw, growing to a heiglit of over a yard and a half, and used also for thatching roofs ; two kinds of Afata, remarkable for their h\Yr four years. Hence the colossal and increasing Avealth of some • a-eat eslancifrus. 178 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER VIII. A KIQHT AT THE MOUTH OF THE CHAPAPA. After five days' journeying we reached the river at a place called Bella Vista, where there was a boatman and his chalana, i.e. a narrow, fiat-bottomed boat suitable for floating over shallows. Thence we were to go up stream for about thirty kilometers until we should roach the bifurcation of the river, which it was one of the principal objects of my journey to survey. Along the whole way we had met, at the end of three days' journeying, with only one little settlement, consisting of a few wooden and barro houses, called Villa del Carmen ; the usual leprosy was prevalent, and we had crossed a region of former channels of the Kio that are still deep, although dried up. Two, four, or eight years ago, the river rushed impetuously through channels that arts now sand-pits, and did not even spare the two jNIissions established at Sauzal, but washed tlaem away in its whirlpools — providentially, says vulgar report. The Missions have been re-established two days' journey lower down, near Rivadavia, at a place called Pozo del Tigre. When I passed them, the fathers in charge — there were but two, I think — were absent ; nor were there any toldevias of Indian catechumens, so that the mission seems to be of a somewhat intermittent character. Moreover, the I'ear of another flood has made them seek for higher and firmer ground, which is likewise less damp. The whole length of the route I saw neither priest nor friar, and only one on arriving at Oran. It is true that these parts are not adapted for a profitable propaganda, because the Indians decline to be converted, and the population is scanty, poor, and scattered at great distances. The clergy, therefore, muster their forces in the cities, where, since the suppression of religious orders in Italy, they have largely increased, and acquire greater OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. I79 influence every day, partly by the traditional ability of this powerful ecclesiastical institution and partly by the talents of some of the fathers. Among these I cannot refrain from nii'utioning Father Pio dei Eentivoglio, a man of letters, a jiliilcisoplier and a gentleman; Father Georgi, orator, musi(.'ian, and architect ; the Fathers Donati ^larco and Porreca Quiricn, models of charity and humanity, who more than once have risked their lives in endeavouring to rescue Christian prisoners from the Indians, and in braving the pestilential diseases that have ravaged the country. I am of opinion that through one of those numerous in- versions of things that cannot fail to strike a philosopher- historian, the Catholic clergy are gaining in America in the same proportion as they are losing in Europe ; although ulti- mately the destiny of both continents must be substantially the same, in this respect as well as in all cither social con- ditions. .Starting from Bella Yista, Ave four began to descend the river; the two men being Caronios. At times the waters llowed over an immensely Avide bed, Avhich so diminished its depth that Ave Avere obliged to land, in order to lighten the boat until the difficult bit had been overcome ; and at other times the stream rushed through a deep and narrow gorge, and disaster seemed imminent. We soon recognized that the river voyage Ave had undertaken Avould be long and dangerous, but Avhat could Ave do 1 We could look for no help in the deserts through which the river flowed. Close to a spot called Pozo de la Oreja (Well of the Ear) Ave saAV some Indians on the bank. Thinking Ave might obtain assistance from them, we drew near. But not one Avould come Avith us for all our promises of gifts and our a.ssurances that Ave should turn back after a few days. Their iuA'ariable reply Avas that their enemies Avere a little loAver down, and that they feared an attack. Some bloody fray had probably taken }»lace, and they feared the customary Biblical and Indian reprisals. Croups of Indians are often met with on Christian territory ; on the frontiei-s, hoAvever, they live either in the midst of the riverside forests, or are attached to some t^fa/iria, Avhere they Avork for the owner Avlun re- 2 l8o EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO t.iloe, that in later times was called lS4 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO liy lying greed the Silver FJver (Eio de la Plata), was twice its present size, the two tributaries of which it consisted coni- hining in one full stream along its whole course, while at a subsequent period they were again separated, and remained distinct and apart among the numerous islands they encircled, although circumscribed in their flow and subdivided by many an outlet. Then, the waters rolled precipitously through the narrow rocky channels and steep mountain passes, and sought their level as they flowed over the vast plain beneath, wandering liappily over the gentle slope that drew them to the east and south, while this twofold invitation was seconded by the irre- sistible laws of nature ; and thus flowing neither directly east nor absolutely south, they yet turned much more in the former than in the latter direction. And in this same direction, and lollowing the features of the soil as produced by the very waters themselves, and at times actually coerced by their own products, they excavate an ever deepening and narrowing channel, witli a maximum of regularity and a minimum of force. The soil, which is still recent, especially when it has been elaborated in a short time, and in shallow waters, is therefore, when brought to light, insufiiciently compact, becomes easily divided by the action of the current, which at one moment subtle and persuasive, and at another swollen and impetuous, seeks to force open a permanent channel. In the early but brief period when the Avaters lay level on the plain, the floods may have contributed to form a covering to the immersed surfaces, but the channel of the river soon became suflicient for its wants, compensating in Avidth for any deficiency in depth, until equilibrium was restored. On the first occurrence of inundation, the soil being unable to resist the lateral pressure of the current that was unchecked by the very slight declivity of its course, afforded at once an ample space for innumerable windings, and from the first moment that the bed of the river sufficed to contain the mass of waters, the process of disintegration on one side and of deposit on the other was set up, the latter being inferior to the former both as to level and as to bulk. Hence the extraordinary tortuosity of the rivers of the Chaco, and of this river Yermejo, the windings of which measure 320 leagues over a geographical distance of 130. Hence the terraces ; hence the inevitable lowering of the absolute level of OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 85 the land wlu-n tlie rivers shall have completed the disintorrration of the primitive soil, and shall have substituted a soil composed of their own deposits, the hi}/hest points of which are at present twi> yards lower than the opposite soil. Hence the alluvials which have formed the islands of the Parana and the Unii;uay, and whicli follow on the deposits or dcUatiott of the mouths of tliose rivers, and will end by lillinj,' up the estuary of the Plata. The development of the rivers, their depth, and the frialjility of the soil give rapid extension to this process, and great results must ensue in a relatively short time, geologically speaking. lu fact, if we may suppose (and tin; hypothesis is rational) that the lateral erosion of the primitive soil proceeds at the rate of two yards a year along the whole course of the river, the soil subtracted annually by the Vermejo alone from the territory of the Chaco would amount to G, -400,000 cubic yards, etjual to an island ten yards deep by 1000 in width, and with a frontage of 640 — that is, one of the largest islands in the Pio de la Plata. We can now inulerstand that the disintegration of the mountains in the dcltation of the Parana and the liio de la Plata does not equal in importance that of the plain, and the importance of the latter is increased when we reflect that the jirocess is being repeated under similar conditions by the Pilco- mayo and the Salado, the other two rivers of the Chaco. According to this hypothesis the surface of the basin of the Vermejo plain, which is ecjual to 9000 scjuare leagues, will have lost two yards in level 70.000 years after its emersion, and will then have yielded 450,000,000,000 cubie yards, which will represent an island ten yards deej), 500 kilometers long, and ninety kilometers wide, i.e. twice and one-fourth the surface of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, which contains nearly 20,000 .'square kilometers. In other Avords a ma.ss of earth sutticient to till the estuary four times over, supposing the average depth to be five yards. Nor is this all. This disintegrating action of the river tends towards changing the character of the vegt^tation in the Chaco, because, according to my experience, tlie plants growing on the primitive soil or on the emerged lantls differ from those clothing the alluvial lands, the former belonging, generally speaking, to timber-giving trees, such as the (piebrdcho, the urunday, and the palo-santo. But we will revert to this when treating of the forest flora. The change which thus takes place without the agency of l8o EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO climate affords us an excellent explanation of analogous con- ditions in Denmark with respect to the pine and the oak, Avhich have been replaced by the beech, the last named even retaining the name of one of its predecessors. The cause is usually referred simply to change of climate, while the renovation of the superficial stratum may have largely contributed to it as well as the law of natural affinities. Hence a detailed study of the Chaco, with particular reference to relative altimetry and to the amount of vegetation, might supply us with the chronological data of the period in which this territory first made its appear- ance ; data no less certain than those adopted in respect of other regions by such geographers as Morlot, Forel, and Arcelin. In fact, if we assume a lateral disintegration of the bordojirme, or primiiive soil, at the rate of tAvo superficial yards a year along the whole course of the river for 320 leagues over the plain, we obtain a complete change of the surface of the Yerraejo country and a lower level for the soil in 70,000 years from its appearance. And if we suppose that at the present time the surface we are treating of has risen to one-half of the whole, as is in fact the case, more or less, we still find that the age of the Chaco terri- tories amounts to not less than 35,000 years. In any case it is my opinion that the first appearance beneath the light of the sun of these lands that are now called the Gran Chaco from a Chicciuan word ^ does not date back to the glacial epoch. The existence of that epoch on this continent and in these latitudes is, to my mind, an indubitable fact. In the neighbourhood of the Acconquica Mountains, in the provinces of Catamarca and Tucuman, and at a height of 2000 or 3000 yards above the level of the sea, latitude 27° S., I saw huge masses like high hills clothed Avith thick and ancient forests, but with all the cliaracteristics of IMorenica formation, and I observed also single masses on high and isolated peaks. Following the river back from its mouth to the moun- tains, the recent perpendicular banks disclose a formation of the strength of fifteen or twenty yards in the first cutting of the geographical length of thirty leagues, and of the strength of ten yards, and even less as it reascends. ^ According to a dictionary printed at Lima in 1754 cUacu means the hunting of wild beasts. In the Chaco itself I was told that chacumcaus a place where animals are confined. The pohladores say habitually edos c.hacos for " these fields." In the Italian edition chaco is rendered by lake. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 187 This formation rests upon a substratum called tosra, of a ?oapy and partly niagnesian nature, and consequently not easily friable. This is revealed in the lower parts by small streams of water, which f,Mve place to the rapids or natural cataracts (anrri/as) at seven or eight points. To.tra, sometimes of a bluish colour, at others somewhat red, has a tendency to splinter into small scales, and might be termed niagnesian schist. The scales are very soft. In other districts there are toscas of a different kind. The formation above the to^ra, and which may be called the visil)le part, is again subdivided into stratiKcations from two to four yards in depth, those strata nearest the bottom and towards the mouth of the river being liner, more clayey, deeper in eoloiu, and consequently more compact, while the upper strata, as we ascend the river, become fainter in tint, coarser, less clayey, less comi)act, and of a sandy nature, in accordance with the mechanical laws of deposit. I say deeper in colour and consequently more compact, because colouring depends on the presence of metallic oxides, and every one knows the agglutinative force of these latter. On the oth(>r hand the parallelism between these stratifica- tions and the uniformity in every sense of the inclination of the surface, point to a common grand cause of origin, which has acted at intervals between one and another emersion, during which each would become clothed with vegetation which would at a later period be submerged in the waters, and give place to noAvly formed surface. These operations must have occurred when -the climate of these regions was in the same relative condition as at present, bucause the vegetntion Mas evidently fine and multiform in t!ie lower cutting, and there was a surfnce of dark earth or humua, ]iroduced from its accumulated residuum, as at the present time, while both are scanty in the centre until close to the mountains. In the same way the dark part of the lower stratifications, corresponding with a former vegetation, lies relatively high, while it is thin and snmetimes almost impei-- ceptible in the centre, where the climate at the present day is likewise arid. And then, as now, there existed alkalis in the earth, which are indicated by incrustations and nitrous elllorescence on the uncovered parts of the banks, the same elements are exhibited at the present i!ay in the salnitrali frequently covering the sur- 1 88 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO faces less elevated from the water, and by the growth oljumes and cactus on the higher ground, and of bobos and other shrubs on the low-lying soil scarcely out of reach of the current. The ashes of all these plants yield an abundance of potash and soda that hitherto has only been used for domestic purposes. Thus we find the same climate and the same materials then as now, and the same conditions at the period of the formation of the deepest strata as at that of the actual alluvial lands. Yet this identity of original causes is not accompanied by identity in floral phenomena. We have pointed this out already. Because the physical conditions of the soil, which, if we except extremes, are the most influential in determining vegetable life, vary according to the amount of the deposits and according to the length of time during which all the energies have been in action. The result of these same energies alters the chemical order of the elements to which they are due, either by chemical reaction, or by the products of vegetation giving back to mother earth the aliments received from her, trans- formed and enriched by new ones absorbed from the atmosphere. Hence the variety of the herbaceous and forest flora that respectively cover similarly situated soils. Hence the aptitude ior new growths, and for agriculture, varying according to the above-named conditions. Such is the past history of the Vermejo. What of the present 1 The work of ages is still going on — erosion on the one hand, and alluvial formation on the other, in the shape of terraces, and the later floods either carrying away the previous deposits if these lie in their Avay, or adding fresh deposits, if the former are oidy reached by exceptionally lull floods. As we have already mentioned, the alluvial soil brought by the river is a couple of yards lower than the original soil, which is known in the locality as bordojirme, and is never inundated by the floods. Some of the alluvial soil is several yards in depth, although deposited as it Avere almost instantaneously, so great is the quantity carried by the waters, and washed down almost in one mass from the surrounding land, of which a large proportion is crumbling. Other alluvials are again deposited over these, without obliterating them, and it is not unusual to see bohos, very straight poplar-like shrubs, with their leaves silvered on OF TPIE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 1 89 the lower sitlo. These trees are of rapid growth and bur<,'eon after four or six years, hardly before, if an abundant supply of water be wanting. Their boles traverse three or four different layers of alluvial deposit ; their roots therefore are three or font yards below the surface of the ground. After this fashion does the river, year by year, pursue its task ; tausing changes of every kind, as it alternately flows along the banks of the Jiovdo Jinne,^ or over its own alluvial deposits. The number of these changes, their symmetry, their correspondence with the disintegration of the laml, the constant deposits, and the consequent steps or terraces, cannot fail to make a deep impression on the spectator, notwithstanding that he uutlerstands the inevitability of them, from physical and mechaiiieal laws. The Vermejo divides into two arms ; the stream on the right- hand, which in the greatest droughts carries one-fifth of its waters, is much more winding in its course than that on the left-hand, named the Teuco, which carries the remainder. Tlie cause of this inequality is simply the inferior flexibility of the larger mass of water, and in the lesser influence on this of the numberless accidents to which the river is exposed ; while its course being not so tortuous, it consequently spreads out less, and hence the zone in which the river exercises its erosive and sedimentary action. The state of fulness, moreover, in the smaller stream being proportionately more abnormal, the acci- dental channel formed during the shallow .season is altogether inadequate at the season of fulness, and the waters therefore force into exi^tence an adequate channel, and in so doing destroy many sinuosities formed in the time of shallows, and thus con- tribute to greater changes than would take place, had the bed of the river been at firet less winding and less uneven. "We may therefore assert, however paradoxical it may seem, that the displacements of the river — or I will say of rivers — are, under like circumstances of easily disintegrated soil and heavy floods, in inverse proportion to their mass c>f water. This is demonstrated by the magnihcent Paraguay and the gigantic Paranii and Uruguay. I do not say this of the Kio de la Plata, which is principally governed throughout its immense course by the tides. The eljb and flow of these are pereei)tible for some scoiesof leagues from the mouth of the river, and the case is the > Bordo Jinne, as it is called, is land that is never submerged hy th« flocxls ; I liave loudered it souietimes by emerged land. 190 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO same -with, the Uruguay and Parana. Yet even so, these rivers are not exempt from the law of perpetual displacement wliich is inevitable from the crumbling condition of their banks. It is certain that if we could compare their course to-day Avitli that of a century ago, or more, we should notice remarkable changes in the line of their shores, independently of the effects produced by the deltation or depositation, as I will call it, of sedi- ment from the rivers of the Gran Chaco, which tends to lengthen these rivers at the expense of the Rio de la Plata as well as to choke the greater part of this latter and the other rivers. In the landslips of the hordo Jirme, as well as in those of the alluvial soil, an immense number of trees are precipitated into the Avater and remain hxed, either on account of theii- foliage, or because the greater part of those of the hordofirme are much heavier than water. Immovable banks impervious to water are thus very frequently formed ; the stream therefore rushes to the sides and forms a new channel. Sometimes one of these trees, either falling singly or becoming isolated on its short journey, remains head downwards, and its trunk, not being strong enough to form a bank, becomes, if un- seen, the most terrible enemy to the keels of boats. These trunks are called raigoues. In any case it is a satisfaction to know that it is extremely rare for a tree to be carried any great distance by the stream, or for timber to float, on account of the manner of its fall. In other respects the soil forming the bed of the river is, by reason of the timber that has fallen on it, or by geological accidents, more capable of resisting the action of the stream than is the soil of the banks to resist the friction of the lateral currents. The waters therefore overflow and form almost in- numerable shallows, which, however, are easily cleared by means of spirals or steam-wheels. The bottom of the river-bed is at present crossed, as we have said, by seven or eight veins of chalky magnesia, dithcult to corrode. These diminish the amount of water, and cause rapids and cataracts (arrecifas). All these features render navigation so difficult, that it is only possible in vessels of light draught, and during the season of deep waters. To these causes of the division of the river into two branches, we must add another important one. The limits within which so far the Yermejo has oscillated, may be considered to include from ten to fifteen leagues in OF Tin: ARGENTINE UEPUDLIC. I9I wiilth ; and as tliis increases, a somc-vvliat analogous course is ]juisucd hy the Pilcuniajo {Bird river, in Chichuan), running north of the Verniejo. At no distant date, perhaps, a junction may he etiected hctween tlic lower parts of the two rivers. The uniform level of the country will facilitate this. The land watered hy the Vermejo may be estimated at 13,000 square leagues, of which a fourth part is mountainous, and the remainder consists of plains. The mountain portion, or liigher basin, is comprised witliin lat. S. 21° to 25°, and within three degrees of longitude ; the lower portion, or basin, is comprised between the Equator and 27', i.e. within three and a half degrees of latitude, and five of longitude. The lower Yermejo crosses tlie Gran Chaco from north-west to south-east for a geographical distance of 130 leagues, between the Juntas del San Francisco and its fall into the Paraguay. It runs a course of 320 leagues, making a curve about every (|uarter of a league. It is confined on the east l)y Chaco Central, which lies ])etween the Vermejo and the Pilcomajo. The comjiarative narrowness of Ihe hydrographical basin, with its six degrees of latitude, and the uniformly eastward position of the mountains from north to south, cause the volume of Its Avaters to do])end on a very usual order of climatologic;d ])henomena. N^he rainy season occurs only in summer, from December to ^larch, and the melting of the snow on all excejit the very highest mountains occasions heavy Hoods, which are succeeded by extreme droughts in part of winter and spring. During the time of floods the masses of water are enormous ; in the middle of the dry season — that is, in the month of July — I measured eighty cubic yards per second, and in the next drought, in October, fifty cubic yards. At about fifteen leagues from the Juntas del San Francisco, which are situated at the foot of the mountains, the river ilivides into two branches : the one on tlie east, or left hand, is called tlie Tc'uco, from the Mattacco word meaning " river ;" and that on the west, or right hand, retains the name of Yermejo, Tcncli-tarh, or "Great River" in Mattacco. "When I was sailing in those waters, the Teuco contained four-fifths of the totiil bulk of the stream, and the rest formed the Vermejo. The two arms of the river, with a distance between them varying from five to ten leagues, are reunited after a course of 20U leagues, at a distance by river of ninety leagues from the 192 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO spdt where it empties itself into the Paraguay. This spot is culled ^oca del Teuco. During this last course of ninety leagues, corresponding to fifty leagues in a straight line by land, we come to parts that look like artificial canals ; in ihese plates we find for the most part the clay banks I have already mentioned ; here, too, the river runs deepest. At 1 40 leagues by w^ater from the Boca del Teuco, and follow- ing the banks of the river, is Eivadavia on the present frontier, and ninety leagues fuither on las Juntas del San Francisco, near which, at eight leagues farther north, is Oran. ■ ., In all this long distance from the fall into the Paraguay to the Juntas, there is not one single hill ! The water is brackish, on account alike of its scarcity and its muddiness ; on the other hand, it contains an immense variety of fish, thus providing the inhabitants of the country with unfailing and palatable food. Some kinds weigh from twenty- five to thirty kilograms, without counting the yacare or crocodiles that weigh two or three times as much. Is this river navigable 1 With a steamboat drawing one yard, it would be navigable for at least half the year, with no further trouble than forcing the flow of water through one arm only, which arm should be the Teuco, since it already bears four-fifths of the whole bulk of the river. The cost of such an undertaking, together with the annual expense of maintaining it in working order, would amount, I calculate, to a sum of 23,000 scudi. In order to make navigation possible throughout the year, ^ system of dredging away the sandbanks must be brought into operation, the tosca must be destroyed, and the raigones cut away. These works, supposing the dredging machines to be used for hauling, when not wanted on the river, w^ould absorb about 50,000 scudi per annum. In all, 70,000 scudi per annum. I do not speak of locks or weirs. The expense would be too great at such a distance for commercial enterprise. There should be also a system of steam transports of various draught ibr serving the markets. Those of one-yard draught and of eighty tons' burden should ply between the Foce nel Paraguay, or the cities of Humaita or Corrientes, and Kiva- diivia on the Christian frontier ; others of half a yard draught and thirty tons' burden, between Eivadavia and las Juntas dd OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. I93 San Francisct), or practically Oran. It is useless to dream of sailing-vessels in such a sinuous, deeply-lying river, with its banks crowned with woods and swarming with Indians. The cost of a voyage from Corrientes to las Jnntait and rice rcrsu, including interest on the value of the vessel and its fittings, and the redemption of mortgage, would amount, allow- ing for the highest charges, to about 4000 scuili, with which a 160-ton burden could be carried at a rate of twenty-four scudi and three-f timber, all of them thatched with straw and mud, surround the ])iazz;i. These and a few more scattered round constitute the whole village, which is inhabited by tlie soldiers, their wives and children, and a few tradesmen and their families. It is customary here for si>ldiers to be accompanied by their wives, to wliom Government allows lialf-rations. There is nothing more picturesque, and sometimes a little grotesipie too, than an encampment or military march in time of war, above all when the camp is broken uj). How often have I not longed for a JJe Amicis to describe these and many otlier scenes ! o 2 196 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO A delightful surprise awaited us at Fort Sarmiento, and made our three days' visit seem like a country holiday. The commander of the regiment was Lieutenant-Colonel Emiliano Perez Milan, a brave officer, who on one occasion was struck by a ball in the knee when leading his soldiers to the attack during the war in Paraguay, and immediately on his recovery rejoined his regiment. On another occasion, his men having mutinied, he left his bed before daybreak, seized a revolver, and wrapping a poncho about him, faced the mutineers alone, and disarmed them. As I was already known to him, and he was besides a friend of Roldan's, we were received with the greatest hospitality. How comfortable it was ! What a contrast to the Boca de la ChajMjM, and to every other place we had visited the last five months ! The house was large and cool, there were beds, there was water from a well, there were pleasant meals, with bright, youthful company and gentlemanly men, and — there were also savoury and varied dishes. Two kinds of soup, one of which, called locro, made from maize, was excellent ; an asada a la cnoglia, cutlets a la Milanese, and algarrobo aloja, prepared by the skilful hand of our hostess ; wine and beer. There were roots also and some few dishes of green vegetables — too delicious in these regions where kitchen-gardens are not ! And then some sweets, either of milk and honey, or of preserved apple-quince, or of some other kind ; and, last of all, a cup of magnificent Yunca coffee, and a scented Havana cigar. Could more be desired 1 I felt like a prince, and I thought princes could not have a better time of it than I. Moreover, in the hottest part of the afternoon beautiful earthen vases were brought in filled Avith old aloja, amber-coloured, crystal- clear, sparkling and cool ; and a little later we had our choice of tea, or mate, or both ! In the evening of this delightful day there was a military ball. Everything is military here, and once again the fair Tucuraan ladies bore away the palm from their Argentine sisters, as did the officers from the citizens, whose claims as guests were quite eclipsed by their gold lace. The ball w^as held on a clearing covered by a straw roof, and with the four sides open. At about a league away the colonel had set up a tan-yard, that we went over. A flint hatchet had been discovered there during excavations for a well ; and, to my great disappointment, this had OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. I97 been given a few weeks before to the official paymasters from Buenos Ayrcs, wlio had returned thitlier. The search for fossils in tliese parts might lead to great discoveries, especially in the direction of the Oran Cordillera. I remember seeing some years ago, in a precipitous part between Oran and the Juntas of San Francisco, some bones of a gigantic animal that according to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood no longer existed. Other explorers have remarked similar fossils in the north, in the river-gorges of a road leading to IJolivia, super- jiosed on a stratum of chalk. This stratum is probably the con- tinuation of a chalk formation that I remarked at the foot of the Prccordillera, farthest east between Cordoba and Oran, extending for about a thousand kilometers and forming banks of great size, and high hills that seem once to have been the coast, when the present Argentine table-land was covered by the sea. A true geological horizon is thus presented to us. Kear the tan-yard {cui-tiemhre) there were many wild mul- beiTy-trees, or vwra, as they are called here. They grow in large quantities in the woods between this neighbourhood and the slopes of the mountains. The mora attains a very great height ; the trunk is of close fibre, and is used for articles of furniture and for carts ; the leaf resembles that of our mulberry, but is smaller; the fruit is the same as ours; a milky fluid exudes from the stalk when the leaves are plucked. The tan is made from the bark of the rebil, a large tree like our sorb-apple, but with smaller leaves. It grows at first on the plains immediately contiguous to the mountains, and extends to a considerable height up the slopes. The extent covered by this tree, its importance and its characteristics are sufldcient reasons for taking it into account Avhen determining the dis- tribution of the flora. There are two kinds, the irhitc and the red. The timber is not adapted for building, but is used for ploughs and carts ; the bark resembles cork, and that of the red is preferred, as being less knotty, for the knots cannot be split through, and therefore the timber is less good. The bark con- tains from 1 4 to 15 % of tannin. The worst is that the tree dies Avhen stripped of its bark ; and in Tucuman, consecpiently, where there are many tan-yards, the rrltil is beginning to be very costly, especially as its growth is not at all rapid. As we are on the subject of tanning, I will add that the leaf of the Quehrarho Blanco (Aspidosperraa quebracho), which abounds in the Chaco and in the forests of Santiago, contains 198 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO 27-50% of tannin ; it is not, however, so far as I know, made use of on an}' large scale, although it has the quality of not colouring the hides, like the cehil, and acting, therefore, as a corrective of the latter. But to return to Fort Sarmiento. Besides all the delights I have mentioned, there was another, the crown of all. This Avas a line library belonging to the colonel, full of military and other histories, of Avorks on science and literature, and of those liandbooks that make science popular by presenting it under an attractive form, such as the works of JNIantegazza, of Flammarion, and of Jules Verne. Writers such as these are the evangelists of science, and however loudly learned pedants and sophistical teachers may declaim against the usurpations, the transfigurations, and even the inaccuracy of these authors, the fact remains, that tiirough them and by their means the public learns and enjoys the truths of science distilled in their laboratories, where but for such Avriters they would remain inaccessible to the people, who Avould not appreciate them if not presented under an attractive form. When Avandering in foreign countries, one ahvays seeks, especially at first, for something that appertains to one's OAvn native land. I looked round, therefore, for Italian authors. One only had the honour of being a guest, but to me and to the OAvner of the library he Avas a host in himself. I speak of Cesare Cantu and his " Universal History " (Storia Universale) in a handsome Spanish translation. I have met Avith this history in all parts of the Eepublic, thanks to the public circulating libraries, that, during the presidency of Sarmiento, Avere extended in every direction Avith tlie aid of the National Government, Avho granted in every case a sum equal in amount to that collected in the neighbourliood. They are noAV ruined by the mismanagement of taxes, and are struggling Avith numberless local difficulties, the chief of Avhich are the long distances. I have often wondered Avhy Cantu is not even a senator, and then I have reflected that he must have declined the honour, because it Avould have been a disgrace to jVIenabrea at least, if not to Cairoli and Depretis, not to have offered him a nomina- tion. I am aAvare that he has been accused of historical in- accuracy on certain very intricate questions, but I, Avho cannot unravel them, am struck Avith admiration, not only for the gigantic lines on Avhich his Avork is laid, but also for his lucid OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. I99 ami beautiful style. I loamed more of tlie liistory of American iiuU'pemleiice in twenty pages of his work, than in any special liistory of the subject. It is said that " he has not the philosophic mind." I grant it, but he is a model of the grand historical style, in the di.s- tribution of subject, the grouping of facts, in conciseness, in clearness, and in the literary style which is so greatly a^jpreciated in other authors. " But his history is written in favour of the Catholic Church." I remarked this myself, and 1 luive Jiever been able to forget till' kind of subterfuge made u.se of with regard to a letter on tlie analogy between Christianity and pre-existing Buddhism written by a missionary named ])e (Jiorgi to the Propaganda at Kome. Cantii transcribes it, either in the appendi.x to one of his volumes or among his authorities, Imt in Latin ; and, however familiar the style, it is not easy, and the greater number of readers will not take the trouble to make it out. On the other hand, he translates many other documents. But after all, this is oidy one of the many sides of the work, and although open to criticism, as are some other points, tiie larger remaining Itortion dries not thereby Io.se its value. Be.sides, are there not numberle.ss historians who devote their skill to the service of a cause? — and who, nevertheless, are ajiproved by the majority of readere ? It is merely a question of .sympathy with the writer's view.s. Now let him who is without sin cast the first stone. In the public liln-ary of a mining district I met with another ])ook by an Italian autlior ; tlie " Ltzioni di (Jeologia," by the Abate .Stop{>azii, a well-known name in Italy. To a vast scientific erudition, he adds a style so splendid, that it is a real creation ajiplied to the discour.se on the earth. I feel that I owe much to Stoppani, although I do not even know him by sight. The full discu.ssion of, and his own views on, the circulation of the atmosphere as ba.sed on the theories of Dana and Manry, and his hypothesis on the upheaval by cn. I do not enter into the science of it, for I know nothing of that ; let me speak of what may be called the litcnuy side. To begin with, the author is too argumentative. It may seem strange to call this a fault, but I consider it one in a scientific work. The eagerness of the author to demonstrate his con elusions, his enthusiastic, nay, almost irritable advocacy of views which, if true, are true, and Avhich, if not, can be made so by no (!librt of rhetoric, does not appear to me a good scientific method. It must at first confuse the student, sometimes annoy him, and often compromise the author. The very honesty which leads the writer to correct in the edition I have mentioned some conclusions to which he had come in an earlier edition, is apt to shake the confidence of the reader, and, if he is a pupil, to expose him to severe mortification. The student, as such, espouses his author's cause, and supports all his teaching tlirough thick and thin, and then some fine day may find himself confuted out of the mouth of his own master ! The latter, in his turn, cannot Init find himself trammelled by the previous hot polemic, and the confidence he had inspired lessened by his change of sides. There are, moreover, two other serious defects, which to my mind are anti-scientific : these are, firstly, the absolutism of certain theses ; and secondly, intolerance and contempt for his oi)ponents, who are for him enemies. Our author bases this cliaracter of his on h.\& profound srit-ntifir ronvidiona. But may not his opponents put forth a like claim ? They, however, are more reserved, and do not take it at all that themselves, their pupils, and the public should accept their conclusions, with all the conditions that are i)resented with them. But Stoppani is exasperated by the conclusions of otliei-s, if contradictory of the teaching of the Scri])tures, which he ingeniously interprets so as to harmonize witli the henceforth unanswerable tniths of science. But I ask, are not these very interpretations that harmonize science and the Bildc precisely the fruit of profane truths denietl in the beginning by the authorized exponents of Scripture with such positive con- viction and such contemptuous intolerance? And why should it be surprising that the learned and the curious, not concerning 202 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO themselves with Biblical doctrines, should take advantage of every kind of data in order to draw rational conclusions, and should leave to the expositors of Scriptural tradition the task of harmonizing the two ? It is not only useful, it is honest and right to be prudent, in order faithfully to serve science, which is jeopardized if tram- melled by former beliefs extraneous to her. Our author is indignant at the hypothesis of tertiary man ; and excluding or omitting the greater, interpreting the lesser spaces of time at- tributed to the quaternary epoch, deduced by some naturalists from geological data — none of them very convincing — proceed- ing in sequence with traditional and archaeological elements, he places the appearance of man at an epoch that makes it agree with the words of Scripture. It is a line demonstration, although, of course, somewhat lame, and will be found interest- ing both by poets and ladies who care to seek for it at the end of the second volume. But the basis is unsound. For it is in fact demonstrated that it is impossible to prove the existence of man in the tertiary period. Yes, by the author and some others, to his and their satisfaction, and to that of others, perhaps, up to the moment at which he wrote, but can it be so for the future 1 A j)^'iori the answer must be in the negative, since mammals are shown to have existed in the secondary period, and the following facts refute such a premature and positive conclusion, albeit accompanied by anathema. Quatrefages, in- deed, who is beyond the suspicion of the most orthodox, who at the time that Stoppani's work was published suspended his judgment on this difficult and transcendental qu(!stion, came later to the conclusion that the existence of tertiary man is proved by the fresh discoveries of the Abbe Bourgeois at Thenay, and those of Professor Cappellini at Monte Aperto. Moreover, he came to the opinion that tertiary man is proved, and not only as belonging to the last period of the tertiary epoch, but also to the middle period, and also he does not hesitate to accept the idea of man as still more remote. Now, one such proof, if accepted, relegates man to an antiquity with which it is impossible to make the Bible (ransacked to establish an opposite conclusion) agree, unless by means of a retractation like the famous one concerning the immobility of the earth. Such a retractation would be dangerous and scandalous to timid souls and upright minds, in proportion to the fury ami intolerance with which the contrary thesis has been su2:)ported. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 203 I'.ut the incompatibility of science as the servant of dogma, Avith science as the servant of truth, is sliown most clearly in the question that Avill henceforth be called Darwinism. Our author here pushes anger and intolerance to the verge of insult. According to the Darwinian theory, living organisms are the product of progressive evolution in embryonic form, which by exercise of forces of complex kinds, called natural selection, and developed in different directions, with successive subdivi- sions, has given place to the infinite variety of past and present existing organisms. This theory, which is corroborated both by fact and reflection, commends itself so strongly to the mind by its simplicity, and to the understanding by its force and depth, that it would probably have been accepted universally, with an immense longing to search into its truths, only that it clashed with the previous cosmogonies sanctioned by ancient religions. The theory was, therefore, received with indignation, when it was extended to the origin of man. The self-esteem of men was appealed to in order to controvert it ; and it was confouiuled with atheism and materialism, which, although Jio less Avortliy of respect than any other oi)inions, are not necessarily either admittetl or rejected by the l)arwinian theory. Stoppani even goes so far as to ask whether Darwinians are not ashamed of having been born, now that they renounce their origin from Adam. No ! there is no disgrace in admitting the lowliness of our origin, it is our duty to recognize it, when so it is ; ami the vaunt of Themistocles that the nobility of his family origi- nateil in himself may even likewise lie justified. Mans worth is not to be measured by what he or his ancestors may have been, but by what he is. There is no divine righteousness that can be preferred before the righteousness of the human conscience, and this conscience teaches lis that rewanls and punishments must be awarded to the man as he now exists, not to a man who existed in the past and is now no more. What 1 Has the Eternal Father who, according to the orthodox, calls to His bosom the souls of those who are like Him, lost all power, and have we lost all merit because the root of our genealogical tree is an organic mumxl instead of an image of clay 1 Jiut such a theory is atheism and materialism ! By no means ! How do we deny God by affirming that a Creating 204 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Power and a Preordinating Mind— instead of manifesting; itself by the numerous isolated, intermittent, non-coordinate acts of Avill which would be necessitated by the separate creation of each of the innumerable species belonging to the vegetable and animal kingdoms — should have created one solitary germ, and pre-ordained for it the laws according to which it should develop m the numberless directions which correspond to the combination and the empire of these very laws 1 How do we deny the soul by affirming that the vital force acquires new virtue as it becomes incarnated in progressively higher organisms, imtil at last it attains to human life, and sees before it the destiny which is attributed by religion to man 1 Because, in fact, tlie reasonableness and the justice of this destiny actually reside, according to the declarations of philoso- phers and doctors and the common consent of mankind, on the faculties by which man is distinguished from other creatures. Now these faculties are not denied by the fact of attributing to them the various gestations of Darwinism. This DarAvinian theory, independently of all metaphysical considerations, and although not exempt from the severity of scientific criticism, presents itself, nevertheless, with such an impress of simplicity, of fulness, of harmony, and of gravity, that it becomes the duty of the learned and the unlearned to study it with profound attention, and to welcome it as a hope that brightens the future of science and of the speculative intellect. For my own part, I parody the saying on behalf of the existence of God, that " if the Darwinian theory did not exist, we should have to invent it," because the mind and the soul of man may in it find rest in contemplation of the progi^ession and concatenation of organisms, and from that of the irrationality of their existence in such large numbers, if their appearance must be attributed to an equal number of acts of an omniscient and omnipotent will. We much enjoyed our agreeable and instructive conversation with the gallant colonel, but so soon as the storm, of which the climatological instruments included among his astronomical ones had warned us, had passed away, we decided on resuming our journey, and on the morning of the fourth day we took a regretful leave of our kind hosts, and started for Oran. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 205 CHAPTER XL THE CIIUQCHO — REPTILES, BTRDS, QUADRUPEDS. The poor colonel ! An attack of paralysis, brought on by the chu(|i'ho, might hav(^ kept him in bed for a long time. But, fin-tunately, the regimental surgeon, Signor Baldi, froiu Lucca, a man esteemed and liked by all who knew him, and expe- rienced in this kind of malady, diagno.sed the disease at once, and saved him. The chu([cho is the same as our marsh fever. It breaks out fre(piently in the summer and autumn seasons in the northern provinces of the Kopublic, in localities on or near the mountains, where the redundant vegetation, added to a high temperature and a moist atmosphere, determines the production of marshy miasma. The provinces of Salta and Tucuman, and sometimes those parts of Catamarca also that are situate on the plain near hills and villeys, are visited with this scourge. ■ Oran, which is shut in among mountains, and stands in the midst of dense and luxuriant forests, sutlers from it to a still greater degree. It has already been remarked by naturalists that the southern hemisphere suliers le.ss from inarsh miasma than the northern ; it exists in the latter as far as 59° lat. N., while in the former it does not habitually leach from beyond the tropic to 24^ lat. 8. I can add from personal observation that miasma is not only allecled by latitude, but by orographical conditions also — which, interfering with the free circulation of tlu- air, and thus caus- ing the atmosi^here to be more easily saturated with moisture, constitute, togetlier with the latitude, a region possessing the three conditions mentioned above, viz. redundant vegetation, moisture, and heat. These conditions are thus supplied even more easily than by the great masses of running water and the low-lying i)lains of the Parar.a and the Paraguay in the same latitude. Mai-sh fevers prevad, therefore, in the Republic as far 206 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO as 30° lat. S., in the places and under the orogvaphical conditions aforesaid. From Fort Sarmiento we proceeded towards Oran, a distance by road of thirty-four leagues, but only twenty in a direct line, which is, liowever, impracticable. We skirted the line of the tropics, and our shadows no longer accompanied us on our left side, but were sometimes in front, sometimes behind, ac- cording to the time of day ; and at last we drew near Oran in a W.N.W. direction. It was the middle of October. The sun was in its dog-days' strength, and the plants, miserdike, after the earliest hours (jf the day, gathered round them and beneath them all the shade that would have been so grateful to the wayfarer ; while the lizard and the viper, stationed at the edge of the belt of shade, made all approach dangerous. All was silence, not a rustling leaf heralded a refreshing breeze to play on our foreheads and assuage the burning heat within us ; not a warbling note to encourage our progress from the innumerable singing-birds that were hidden among the leaves, or, with ruffled feathers, perched motionless on the branches, or slowly fluttered, as we approached, from one twig to another. But, at long intervals, there was a shrill and prolonged whistle, like that of a steam-engine. This was tlie song with which the coyuyo, a large sort of cicada, announces and rejoices over the maturity of the caruba. As we drew near to the stagnant waters, the frog, hidden under the grass, would suddenly splash in, and for a moment the widening circles would simulate life, as the fetid bubbles rose to the surface; while the stupid toad fancied he was escaping danger by hiding his ill-formed head in the first ostrich egg-hole he saw before him. Our horses, overcome with the heat, were insensible to the spur ; and the riders, wearied with useless endeavours, left their steeds to their own devices. Our progress was slow, but not the less fatiguing. At dusk we lighted upon a numerous vanguard of the new flora. These were chebiU. We were within a little of finding ourselves prisoners until the next day, each step through the plantation, of more than three leagues in length, was so full of difficulty. We reached our halting-place late at night, having made thirteen leagues. This was an edancia called liosario : the few OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 20/ inlml>itants were already asleep, and, stretcliiiif,' ourselves on the ground, we followed their example. Our slumbers were accom- panied by the wailing of women in a neighbouring tolderia, aa they mourned over tlie body of a man who had died of a disease only recently developed among them, and by which they were being decimated. Tlie next morning the mountains rose distinctly in view, and we could see their crests now and again as far as Fort 8ar- miento, standing out against the horizon like immense stretches of landscape suspended between earth and sky. "We were at that moment ten leagues away from the nearest, yet we saw it clearly and distinctly. In cloudless weather the atmosphere throughout the IJepublic is so diaphanous, that European eyes, even when educated to the transparency of southern skies, are often deceived as to distance. 1 have frequently experienced this on the railway, being able to distinguish the huts of the settlers and the stations at a distance of seven or eight kilo- meters ; a more delightiul j)rospect awaits me whenever I go to I'ucuman and suddenly catch sight of the majestic amphi- theatre of mountains by which that province is enclosed on the west and north, while I am still at a distance from it of 200 kilometers. .After travelling for thirty kilometers, we halted for luncheon at the house of a wealthy Spanish estanciero, who was said to own more than 10,000 head of cattle. The hour and the heat of the season made the conversation turn on reptiles. "We were told of several vipers whose bite is dangerous to man and beast, and of the belief entertained by Creoles and Indians that the skin of a serpent, drieil and worn round the head, is a remedy for violent headache. This idea prevails throughout the Republic among the inhabitants of the canqto. A virtue even superior to this resides in the lizard and the chameleon, whether raw or cooked, as a cure for syphilis. Some marvellous cures are reported. It is said that if the belly of a living toad be applied to erysipelas a cure is effected. Thi.s belief is shared by everybody here, whether civilized or savage; and the skin powdend and rubbed on the gums is said to be a cure for scurvy. As to the application of one body to another, there seems no rea.son to reject a priari certain opinions, when accompanied liy circumstances that induce reflection. 2seither mystic signs nor cabalistic words are in question in these cases. I should add 208 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO that an ointment of toad-grease, dissolved in boiling oil, and collected on the lid of the stew-pan, has been of proved efficacy in cases of quinsy. A colleague of mine, who was educated in England, Engineer Pardo Saltegno, knew it to be efficacious on two occasions in the case of his brother, a lawyer. Another of my colleagues. Engineer Valiente, had suggested it to Pardo, who thus escaped the operation he had under- gone on a former occasion, and which was impending a second time several years later. My own brother was threatened with the loss of his leg from erysipelas in Italy, but was unex- pectedly cured, shortly after binding two live frogs for a whole night on the atfected part. He knows how they tortured him ! I was a child, but I remember it. Snakes, including vipers, are very greedy for milk in these parts. There are plenty of anecdotes on the sulyect, as in Italy. I knew a lady in Rivadavia, the wife of an Englishman, with whom I was also acquainted, who nearly lost a precious infant through a viper that found its way to the child's bed. The mother discovered it one day at the hour of siesta, and after- wards, on making a search through the house, its mate was found on the straw roof. It is wonderful that these vipers so continually glide among persons sleeping on the ground without disturbing them, and do not bite, even when unconsciously touched by the sleeper. This proves not only the intelligence of the creature, but also that it only strikes in self-defence. The ampalagua, so common in the province of Santiago, is very rarely met with in these parts. This snake is four yards in length and about the tenth of a yard or rather more in diameter. Its colour is the same as that of our common snakes. My men destroyed a female containing a number of eggs, with yolks three times the size of the yolk of a fowl's egg. I do not know what stage of pregnancy had been reached. A coral-snake lying on an iron rod and trodden upon, gave a sort of electric shock to a friend of mine, who felt too much disgusteii to repeat the experiment. These vipers are diistinguished by coloured rings, white, red, and black, on the back. There is also a species of animal, half-newt, half-lizard, with a short tail, vulgarly called sierra morena, from being marked with a saw {sierra) on the back. It is the colour of wood, lives in trees, and is venomous. It is extremely dangerous. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 209 The iguana, on the contrary, is harmless. It is an enormous newt, and is sometimes a yard in len;^'th, and in tliat case is tifteen or twenty centimeters in diameter. It is amphibious, the skin speckled a dull red and green, ;ind changing its colour according to the light. It is eaten by the natives, and the short, thick tail is considered a delicacy. j^^Thc turtle is a^s much honoured in the kitchen here as with ourselves. It is in general very much larger than our turtles, and the shell is superior — being so delicately carved in geome- trical patterns at the edge of each octagonal scale that it looks like the ■work of some skilful engraver. "N'enomous insects are not Avanting. There are scorpions and tarantulas, like those in the Tuscan marshes, only uglier, and innumerable absurd-looking spiders with bodies as big as a baby's fist poised on the tips of its fingers. They are hairy, extremely prolific, and carry their young astride on their backs when first hatched. They make their nests up trees and in roofs. They are said to be venomous. In contrast with these ugly and poisonous spiders are the numerous kinds of bees, whose honey— or niilh; as the Chiccuan wurd has it {iniJhqui, like the German milrk and English milk) — is so delicious to man and to many wild animals. One kind of bee, called alpamilhqui, makes its honey on the ground (a/pa), in hives divided into several compartmejits of five centimetti-s in length and one in diameter, from each of which a diflerent kind of honey is extracted, according to the prevail- ing flowers entering into its composition. Then there is the ffiD-finii, or sand-bee ; the moro-mdro, that produces a rapidly crystallizing honey in small quantities, but so strong that, on •me occasion having taken a little while fasting, I became, as it were, intoxicated. 'J'here are many other kinds of bees that, like the two last named, deposit their honey in the trunks of trees. All these are harmless ; they do not sting ; and look like flies, from which they are only distinguishable by their persistence and viscosity when they alight on the h;\nds and face, and use their trunks for sucking. The two species of fr/iieatin<,' their -winj^'s until she becomes confused aTnl wanders away from the calf, which, unconscious of danger, bellows witli raised head and open mouth. The rest of tlie brigade tlien swooping down drag out its tongue with a sudthjn stroke of their talons, and then put out its eyes. Thus the mother no longer hears the son. and the latter cannot see the mother, wlio, terrified by the iiorce condors, wanders farther and farther from the poor blind calf, that, without strength to defend itself, soon falls a victim. If the cow has any previous experience of her enemies' mode of attack, she stands over her calf, and freciuently defends her- self with such success as to put her cruel foes to Hight. In the case of lambs and kids, resistance is impossil)Ie ; with two strokes of the talon, all is over. To get rid of this terrible scourge, the f.^tnnriorox have for some years past made use of strychnine. They insert it into numenms wounds made in the carcase of an animal, either slaughtered for the purpose, or that has been fortunately dis- covered Avhen newl}' dead. At first the condors remain round the carcase, tearing it and feeding from it. liut after a while they detect something wrong, and refuse to touch the suspected flesh ; and even if it is removed at night to another place, they recognize it again. In order to convince himself of the truth of his suspicion, the condor waits until the caranchos and crows have thrown themselves first on the prey ; if they do not fall dead, the condors plunge down from the mountain-toits and hill-sides, and fall upon the carcase, while, in the contrary event, they remove to a distance. At present, therefore, strychnine is of no use, except to get rid of a few novices who are ignorant of, or mIio despise the danger. The condor, when full to repletion, is slow in flight, and is obliged to throw himself into space fnmi a height like the SM'allow. Sometimes on these occasions he can lie despatched by blows from a slick, but this happens very seldom. Among the quadrupeds of the Chaco, the tupir or aula (the 214 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Chiccliuan name by wliicli lie is called in these i)arts) is remark- able for its strange structure. It resem})Ies both the horse and the pig. 'l"he Mattaccos, in fact, call a horse jelatatch, or Jcuyje tapir. Above all, when in a sitting posture, supported on the forelegs, it looks like a horse, from the waist upwards. The skin is dark cotfee-brown, almost black, and of a texture between horse and bull. The tail is like a pig's ; the hoofs cloven, with four front toes and three beliind ; tlie intestines are similar to, if not the same as those of the horse ; the excrements are those of the ass. This animal has small, pig-like eyes and ears; the cervix is armed Avith a bony projection of immense power. The legs are short and massive; body thick and short, of most inelegant shape, yet with swift action nevertheless. It has a movable nasal appendage, resembling a diminutive proboscis with the nasal orifices at the end ; and twenty-four teeth, twelve in each jaw, arranged in groups of four, of which there is one in front and one on each side ; the teeth are shaped like the teeth of horses. The creature is herbivorous ; and being a pachyderm, the hide is excessively hard and most valuable for harness, especially the shield-like part along the spine. The liver is large, thirty centi- meters by forty, and consists of three lobes ; tlie centre one being subdivided at the base into four others, which are partly placed over it, and into two smaller ones above. The tapir plunges willingly into and under the water, like the hippo- potamus. Tlie one we killed was one yard in height, and about one and a half in length ; its proboscis measured twenty centimeters. Lt was full-grown and was separated from its female, by which it was generally accompanied, as well as by another couple or two. It is found in the thickets of the tropical regions, on the plains, and on the hills. Hence it abounds in the Chaco and in Tucuman, but avoids inhabited places, although easily tamed. The flesh is sweetish, like horse-flesh, and excessively hard ; the taste remained in my mouth for several days. Its weight may be about that of a medium- sized horse, or perhaps rather more, on account of its corpulence and mas- .siveness. I have given a detailed description of this creature, because I have read inexact accounts of it, written perhaps by persons who had not seen the brute. I derive its name from its copper coloui*, anta being Chicchuan for copper, and not iox large beast, as so many writers have, I know not why, asserted. There are OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC 21$ groat munT)ers of rhvarf dogs and dwarf fowls in tnose parts, not ifroin individual defective groAvtli, but the raee is dwarfed. The tiger feeds not oidy on q\iadrupeds large and small, but, like our own domestic cat, on poultry in times of dearth, and even on fish. To obtain the latter he stands on watch in some suitable place, often the trunk of a tree that has fallen in the river, and either clutches it with his claws as it swims by, or with one blow of his paw flings it on the bank. For killing horses and cattle he hunts against the wind, that his prey may not detect him by scent. He springs on the crupper and attacks the head, tearing the creature's neck with his strong teeth and claws. AVhen it has fallen, he prefers the breast, leaving the remainder to the vultures, who aie never absent from the festival. The ;;«»?a is the other large carnivorous animal. The vulgar name for it here is lion, but this is about as appropriate as the name of horse given to the llama by the Chinese when they dis- covered America on the Pacific side, or that of tapir, given by the ^Mattaccos to the horse. The American male lion has no mane, nor a tuft to his tail, nor is he as large as the lion of Africa. He is a large cat, if I may say so, entirely grey ; about eighty centimeters in height, and a yard and twenty centi- meters in length. Ho can be domesticated, but even his master must be cautious, while strangers must not go near him. He attacks the smaller quadrupeds, such as goats, .sheep, and deer, but ho does not like the woods. "When pursued, he climbs trees, and dares not descend among the pack of hounds at the foot. The hunters, who have climbed into adjoining trees, thou have recourse to the lasso, and strangle him. The puma will attack a man asleep, and even the hunters in extreme cases. AVhile tliey are cubs the tapir and the roclmck are striped with white, and the puma has .muall dark spots. They lose this adventitious colouring afterwards, but it indicates some vanished traits of jirogenitors. The ant-bear is a most curious and ugly creature. It derives its name from feeding on those insects, which are found in onormous numbers in the Chaco. Thoy build cities, consisting of thousands of cone-shaped hills about a yartl in height, in each of which arc billions of these most intelligent insects. The ant-bear is usually dwarf, and crawds, as it were, along the ground ; it is over a yard in length, with a long, sharp snout, more like a fleshy appendage ; its coat is dark yellow, with stilf 2l6 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO hristles. Those along the spine are long and black ; the tail has a crook, with which it holds its cub, which clambers on its back. At Eivadavia a cub, whose mother had been killed, refused the milk offered it, unless it was allowed to climb on the carcass of the dead mother. It makes its way about by jumping, with the muzzle on the ground. The forelegs are armed with claws, and are of enormous strength. They form the bear's sole means of defence ; he sits on his hind-quarters, and contends successfully even with tigers. The tongue is excessively long and thin, and nsed with such twirling rapidity that it reminds one of a venomous asp when in action. It is a prehensile instrument for procuring food. The wild cat or wood-cat is a great enemy to fowls, both wild and domestic ; I killed a speckled one. There are many kinds of doer, and the roebuck, called corzuela, also other lesser ruminants. I must also mention the simarrone, or wild bull, which has escaped from the estancias. It is a terrible brute to meet ; a man has barely time to seek safety in a tree, when the creature stations himself at the foot, and endeavours to tear it up by the roots. Once, when on the top of a steep and solitary mountain, I saw the Indian who was with me turn pale on hearing the trampling of simarrones. Hares are very abundant ; they are larger than with us, and slightly different. Their speed is great, attaining two-thirds of a kilometer per minute, as I had an opportunity of verifying once in the province of Santiago, when a frightened hare rushed along the metals in front of the locomotive. An animal called the hiscacha is part fox, part hare, part cat ; its tiesh is not very palatable, it is nocturnal, lives in holes, is most prolific, and does great damage in the fields, selecting by pre- ference those near inhabited spots. The owl, called lecliuza in Spanish, shares in its retreat. I wondered at seeing owls so frequently in the Pampas, because at home with us they live in solitary ruined towers. Wild rabbits are also excessively abundant ; in size and colour they might be mistaken for tailless moles. They are delicious morsels for falcons and vipers, Indians and Christians, as we ex- perienced ourselves after living for months without flesh-meat. ]jut the idea is repugnant to Italians. Among semi-aquatic, not to say amphibious animals, tlie largest, though not the most common, is the carpincho, a kind OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 21/ of wliitc pi;,', bristled like the porcupine, witli bearded snout, slow in its movements, and wliieli avoids danger by long-con- tinued immersion under water. The Hesh is good eating ; it weighs about forty kilograms ; it is a pachyderm. The icatcr icolf^ is of dwarf size, weighing at most fifteen kilograms, the head is catdike and extremely intelligent ; the skin is valuable, and the llesh good. It saves itself from danger like the carpincho, but with more alnlity, making the most astonishing sj)rings. I have oidy met with it in the lower part of the "\'ermejo, where the water is deep and brackish. In the same localities, and likewise higher up the river, we find the otter, or nutria in Spanish. The skin is a most valuable article of commerce ; the flesh is good to eat. It weighs from hve to seven kilograms. Its movements are sIoav on land, but it is thoroughly at home in the water, where it gambols and disports itself in view of the hunter. The skin of the otter and that of the wolf, both brown, supply the greater part of winter clothing. We do not find in the wooded plains of the Chaco the sheep, with its beautiful, almond-shaped black eyes, that lives in deserted fields ; or the llama, a beast of burden ; or the untam- able vicuna, with its valuable fleece; or the domesticated alpaca, which represents our own flocks at home, and that lives on the unforested mountains. All these are ruminants, all have long necks frequently curved in artistic attitudes, and all are graceful and stupid in their ways. ^ Commonly so called ; if not carnivorous, it is certainly piscivorous. OF 2l8 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTEE XII. CHANGE OF LANDSCAPE — PROGRESS OF THE REPUBLIC — IRRIGATION. "\Vb Avere eager to reach' Oran, the most tropical city of the Argentines, situate in the midst of a region in which the irony of Fate showers with one hand every requisite for the most astounding fecundity, and with the other restricts the means of fructification within an angle hundreds of leagues from any Centre of consumption or of traffic, and subject to volcanic convulsions. At about two-thirds of our day's journey we came to the skirts of the chain of hills enclosing on the east the basin of Oran, which is bounded on the west by the high chain of the Zenta. This name, like that of Oran, is African, either trans- planted here by the pious patriotism of the first colonists, or, as some assert, so named in consequence of their analogous destiny, which was originally that of a penal settlement. The forests, denser and more lofty, no longer consist of algarrobo, nor of innumerable kinds of mimosa with their minute and deeply-notched leaves, nor of aromatic flowering plants ; but sebillos, with knotty and wrinkled bark, begin to predominate, and lapachos witli their roseate flowers and hard timber, suitable for all kinds of buildirig purposes ; and, further up, the china-china, with its fragrant resin, and the purgative sarsa2^arilla. It is curious that the chebraccio, that flourishes in the very driest regions, should be numerously represented here, and Ijy trees of exceptional height or size. We ascended the cordon called Loma de la Emharcacion by a path that wound sometimes down a deep ravine, and some- times at the edge of a precipice, the steep sides of which revealed the most capricious stratifications — tokens of the local efl'ects of repeated volcanic convulsions. There are traces OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 219 roiiiainin;^ of the cartlKjuake of 1871, Avhen a gulf of some yanls in width, and many leagues in K'ngth from east to west, openedin the direction of Oran, crossing tlie whole basin and tho hills, and lowering by noontide the surrounding land to the extent of one yard. Time has obliterated any distinct traces in till' plain near Talxu-al, but landslips are still visilile on the hills. Having leached the summit, we easily descended tlie other side by a kind of road that had bi-en out through, and which led us through a forest vegetation continually increasing iu beauty until, late in the evening, we reached the plain. The bogs formed by the rains and by the floods of the Vermejo, which river runs along the western skirt of the cordon and a few leagues lower down joins the S. Francisco, takes a curve to the south-east, and begins its course across the plain of the Gran Chaco — the bogs, I say, formed by the rains, were tilled by an extraordinary quantity of frogs of a thousand ditt'erent species. The croaking of tliese creatures made our voices inaudible to each other at the distance of a few yards. The damp, close, heavy, and cold atmosphere made us anxious to leave these wilds behind us, where every mouthful of air seemed fever-laden. To tin's was added the misery of mosfjuitoes. Countless, persistent, stinging, greedy, insatiable, undaunted, they reduced us to desperation. Exaggeration becomes impossible in describing the misery, the restles.sness, the fury these plagues of nature produce. One must have travelled in these parts, or, what is still worse, have lived on board a vessel at anchor, surrounded by forest, in the miilst of a summer calm, to understand the amount of suffering endured from these tyrants of one's existence. It is necessary to eat before dusk, to go to bed when the meal is scarcely at an end, to enclose oneself in a mosquito curtain as in a sepulchral urn, to endure a stifling heat ami an overwhelming perspiration, an«l to lie awake till dawn. There is nothing to be done beyond tossing and turning on the little bedstead of half a yard wide, Avhile all the time there is a beautiful moon shining, or a starry sky, and one knows that with two stejis out of doors and a fan, one could spend a night in Paradi.se. Nor is this all, fur somehow or other a mosquito always flnds its way inside the curtains, followed by several more. One's liands are soon iiisutficient for self-defence, and with smarting shoidders, and face aching from one's own boxes on the eai-s, and burning witli 220 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO a childish rage, one must wait seven or eight liours for the early breeze heralding the approach of dawn. We crossed the river at night on a flat-bottomed boat, and in a few moments were hospitably received at a military post called La Emharcacion. Here we met with an old acquaintance, Colonel Napoleon TIriburu, commandant of the northern frontier of the Gran Ghaco, with whom we spent a week or ten days. This young and able officer holds a distinct place in the military and political life of the country ; and there are pages in his life's history that deserve to be known. I am confident that the reader and he will forgive me if I say a few words concerning him. His is a remarkable instance of how men are made. When a lad he worked on his own estancia, and being inquisitive, ambitious, and extremely intelligent, he learnt their native language from the Indians who came harvesting to the estancia, lived among them, and ended by occasionally adopting their mode of life when more convenient, while he worked and studied. Belonging to one of the most distinguished families in the province of Salta and the Republic, he next entered the army, thus adopting the most exalted career afforded by this country, and entered the military college. During the Para- guayan war he had the honour of being chosen to bear the good tidings of victory to the general-in-chief and the President of the Republic, gaining promotion by so doing. Later, he was ordered to make a military reconnaissance of the Chaco from Humaita to Oran, and succeeded to the fullest extent. Avithout even the loss of a single horse, though in the midst of Indians, who are adepts at horse-lifting. He published proclamations to the Indians in their own language, gave them presents, and made friends of them for the time being. In 1874 he was made lieutenant-colonel, and while in com- mand of the Northern Division, occupied in quelling the revo- lution which had broken out in that year, he gave proofs of extraordinary activity and ability. Since then he has received various important commands from the National Government, and has been acknowledged as the head of a party in his native l)iovince and in that of Jujuy. A few months after our meeting liiin. General Roca, the War Minister, being in need of an otficer whose fidelity was alcove suspicion for the command of the right wing in the expedition to Rio Negro against the Indians of the Pampas, selected Uriburu, who has now for OF THE ARC.KNTINl': RliPUCLIC. 221 eifflit niouUis been ti<,'htin^' against tln'iii. All the licaviest li;,'liting has fallen to the right wing, which is posted against the Conlilli'ra, across the river Nauquen, and is constantly attacked with desperation. He has thus obtained the rank of eolunel. Physically he is the true type of his countrymen. Rather above middle height, slight of figure, with muscles of steel, lirown complexion, dark and sparkling eyes, jet black hair and beard, well-bred, and of distinguished appearance. He likes illustrative conversation. He is studious, hard-work- ing, and active. He lias, if he chooses, a great future before hiui in this Keimblican, dcmiocratic, restless nation. Now, whether it be from race, or climate, or food, or the freedom enjoyed even by children, or all these together, the fact remains that the people of the Argentines are remarkably intel- ligent, and have a truly a.stonishing quickness of jierception. It remains to be seen whetlier they- possess corresponding go(jd sense ; but this is acquired in a great measure by stiidioua cultivation of the intellect, and l)y living in the midst of fully- developed and complicated socdal conditions. Education and .social development are spreading daily throughout the country, which, in a few short years, has made gigantic strid(!.s in jiopulation, in the development of wealth, and of the means of wealtli, and in the progress of learning. Bank.s, railways, telegraph.s, and other public Avorks, agrarian and industrial nuichinerv, have come into operation in such proportions as to renund one of, and even to surpass, Italy in the first twenty years of her national existence — I say surpass, by reason of the relatively or individually greater wealth. When Ave consider the number of inhabitants is only 2,000,000, and that there is a corresponding amount of railways and of telegraphs, equal, if not superior, to the like proportion in Xorth America and in England. Tiieu the national .system of education and that of the pro- vince of lUuMios Ayres, has taken root and been regulated and developed so as to change tlie face of the country in this respect within a few years. Two universities, a national college in CkIcIi of the fourteen provinces, museums of physics, chemistry and natural science, might well be envied by many of the largest cities of Italy. There are numerous Government libraries, academies, and scientific .societies ; and, above all, gjneral elementary instruction is of obligation in conjunction 222 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO with secondary studies, and these, again, with professional studies. I am speaking now with due knowledge of tlie facts, for I have been present at the examinations both as examiner and as an interested spectator. Splendid results must be, and are in fact, obtained from a generation passing through such an apprenticeship as this. And expectation is the more legitimate, since before the present system of preparation, such self-made n^en as Sarmiento, Alberdi, Mitre, Rawson, Lopez, Tejedor, to name only the greatest, and the lamented Guttierrez and Velez- kSarsKeld, have risen up from among the Argentine people, and would be remarkable in any part of the world. The next morning our spirits were raised by the sight of an unaccustomed spectacle. The immense plain was succeeded l)y a valley surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains, the former clothed with thick forests, and the arid and wild landscape through which we had been journeying for ten days was replaced by a vast chess-board of cultivated fields, growing cereals, oranges, and bananas. Then instead of the rastrillada or beaten track made by the footsteps of animals across the country, like our own dogane, traces of which still remain in the Mare m ma, the road lay across helds flanked by thick and wide quick-set hedges concealing the canals beneath their luxuriant vegetation. For although the climate of Oran is comparatively moist, the harvest could not be depended on unless the fields were artificially Avatered. Irrigation is practised in the Argentines wherever the existence of running streams and the slope of the land make the necessary wurks inexpensive. This is the case in the districts adjoining the mountains, or enclosed within them, and consequently throughout the northern and western extremities of the Republic. In the west the rivers and torrents are few in number and poorly sui)plied with water, and, for the most part, disappear as soon as they reach tlie plain. But it is at this juncture that the industry of man has been applied to dealing witli the scarcity of the element, and has worked wonders by adapting the simplest means to his purpose. Doubtless a professional engineer would add many improvements, and perhaps would entirely recommence the work, but the agriculturist is well aware that the extra cost involved in a ]H;rfect system would swallow up all his profit, and contents liimself with the actual state of things. The provinces of Catamarca, Riuja, S. Giovanni, Mendoza, OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 223 and S. Luiffi owe all their prosperity to the small amount of irrigation tliey are able to effect, the aridity of the climate forbidding tlie growth of even a blade of grass outside of the irrigated districts — but these, on the other hand, are veritalile oases. S. tiiovanni is distinguished by wise use of the treasuie — for water is indeed a treasure — and Mendoza by the extent of its irrigation, that amounts to 100,000 hectares. In order to cut a canal for irrigation the country folk use no other level than that — of water ! They begin excavating, and as long as the water runs without injuring either the bottom or the sides, the work is considered satisfactory. It might be supposed that the art of irrigation was introduced into this country by the Spaniards, by whom it was held in honour ab anfiqiw, principally through the works of the Arabs when they were dominant in the souih. But it is more likely that they found the art already known to the natives, and that they only continued and extended its practice. All the con- (juered provirices, in fact, and those of Salta and Jujuy in the north, Gran included, were inhabited by subjects of the empire of the Incas. History does not tell us this, but I assert it, and I believe I can prove it on another occasion. Now, every one knows that the Incas were perfectly acijuainted with the art of irrigation, and practised it on a gigantic scale — gigantic, of necessity, because without irrigation not a 2)oqcfta of maize could have been gathered throughout the w^hole of the immense empire {-a jyoqrha was a measiire for grain), and in those very provinces irrigation is flourishing. It is true that in Tucuman, a province included among those I have named and among other Inr a pi)pulations, and dej)endent on them, irrigation is not practised to the same extent, although it is being much extended on account of rice, sugar, and tobacco plantations ; but in the tirst place we must understand that it is less imperative in re-jrions adjacent to the mountains, and then we must remember that Tucuman maintaineil a kind of auto- nomy and held a special position with regard to the Incas. These rulers had not colonized it by expelling the original inhabitants and replacing them by their own legions, because ihe Tucuman.s, according to my interpretation of a pa-ssage in (larcilaz de la Yega, had otlereil friendship to the Incas long before the latter were in a position to injure them, and had subsecpiently facilitated the imperial conquests south of Tucu- num. They thus escaped the scourge of the Mituiacs, or Inca 224 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO colonists, who were despatched into conquered countries and very speedily reduced them to their own level. How beautiful is a banana-tree ! The stem is from four to six yards in height, with a diameter at the base of fifteen to twenty centimeters ; the green leaves are thirty to forty centimeters in width and more than two yards long. They are rolled where joined to the stem, and fall by their own weight into a succession of graceful curves, one above the other, crowned at the summit by immense clusters '.of bananas lying on the leaves beneath. The tree lasts three years. During this period numerous shoots spring every year from the roots, each of which bears fruit and dies in the third year, so that one year afterwards the whole of the beautiful plantation has ceased to exist, the soil being exhausted of the aliments necessary for the plant. And what of the orange-trees 1 They attain to an extra- ordinary size, and some trees produce 10,000 oranges. They are planted in rows in the orangeries, and form, as it were, so many porticoes to the leafy vaults, where no ray of tlie sun can ever penetrate, so that the ground beneath is bare of all vegetation. They form consequently a providential refuge for travellers in this torrid clime. We proceed onward for another seven leagues, and when half-way we find ourselves in a magnificent forest, surprising us by its density and the variety and height of its plants, which, imprisoned on all sides, dart up in clusters in search of light and air to the height of thirty yards and more. The forest is succeeded by a stony, barren, and waterless country. At last, on reaching a height, Ave can distinguish Oran, and are at once reminded of its past ill-fortiine and the presages of its recurrence in the future. OF THE AKGENTIXE REPUBLIC. 225 CHAPTER xiir. Oni.v uiiii' vciU'.s ago, a traveller Ixiuiid northwards could have (k'scrit'd a fuw miles beyond the tropics, close to tiio Indian frontier, and a little above the centre of a vast basin, a small but beautiful city, with wiile streets lyin<,' at right angles, with whitish houses of one and two storeys, surrounded 1)y ever fruitful orange-trees, with numerous canals through which the crystal waters from the skirts of the neighbouring Cordillera brought fertility to the rich lands, wliich by their produce con- ferred wealth on their owner?, and enabled them to make their homes beautiful and deliglitful. The basin in which stands the city is slightly undulating in the centre, bounded at the eiust ami north l)y pleasant hills, and on the west by a sixccession of mountains, rising step by step to the highest summit of the Andes. Tiiey were then fitly crowned by the ancient and dense forests that clothe tlu; greater part of the plain and all the skirts of the hills, reaching at last to the edge of the snowy mantle of the Zenta, and comprising the greatest variety of sptnies, which, growing luxuriantly in this rich soil and favourable climate, interlace their branches and mingle their intoxicating perfumes, while they increase and multiply in marvellous fashion. Then, too, the cultivation of rice, plantations of sugar- \/ cane and tol)acco, rows of banani'.-trces, and ever venlant fields repaid the care of the inhabitants, whose labours were sweetened by the ceaseless song of birds, while the perfumed air, laden with a thousand sweet scents, invited all to delicious repose. A sudden shock of eartlupiake, followed by a second, occurred eight years ago — and great houses as well as humble cottages were shaken to the grouml. Perchance nature repented of her crime and would not aggravate it by claiming human victims, with the exception of one young maiden whom she selected to propitiate her wrath. Poor child ! she had fietl from danger, rushing from her bed at the first alarm, but her mother, ignorant of fate, drove her back with assurances of 226 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO safety, and she fell crushed on the very threshold ! All was ruin and desolation. Three-fourths of the inhabitants fled in terror from the sudden and terrible peril ; much of the cultivated land and of the plantations ceased to exist for want of the labour required to keep them in order; the neglected streamlets either for- sook their recently-constructed channels, or formed into angry pools at their intersection, while numbers of frogs, emboldened by impunity, assembled together, croaking in discordant and never-ending chorus. It was melancholy to see masses of ruins in every direction ; the larger the building, the worse Avas the destruction. On one side a shapeless mound of earth, on another shattered, broken, or cracked walls ; here, door-jambs, rafters, and doors, either overthrown or standing upright like military columns amid the general disaster ; and nettles and weeds of all sorts springing up, flourishing and multiplying amid the broken rubbish of what was until recently a humnn dwelling. Farther on there are disroofed and dismantled houses, whose walls, bare and split, otf"er a safe retreat for the amorous embraces of lizards and vipers. Ah ! if it be allowable to compare small things with great ones, these ruins recall to mind those of some cities in the Tuscan marshes. There, also, is a fierce sun, a clear sky, a splendid vegetation, mountains on each side, a wide plain in front and a desert witljin ; there, also, perennial shade, among broken fragments, of the evergreen olive, as here, of the orange-tree and the little noisy stream tumbling and frothing until it reaches the plain, where its waters creep slow and neglected about the city walls, carrying death where formerly they brought life and fertility. Among the houses formerly constituting the town of Oran, there may still be seen a few that escaped the catastrophe. Their dislocated Avails seem to be staggering under the weight of the thatched roof, and new dwellings have been and are being built on ready-made and plastered timber framework and wooden lattices, to lill them up again ; while behind these, or standing detached in the rectangular fields at the back of the orchards, are solitary and poor little cottages. This corner ol' the E.epul)lic, however, is an absolute garden. The very atmosphere seems a poem, so fragrant is it with the scent of the gaggio, the brea, the chaiiar, the thousand species of aromatic plants, the orange-tree, and Avith the floAvers that OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 227 enamel the meadows and bloom on the gi,i,'antic plants of the forest, and the resin tliat exudes from tlieir trunks. Is it not poetry to admire the lofty mountains, tlie lovely liill-j, and the well-watered plain, the astonishing fertility of the soil, and tlie beneficent sunl Is it not poetry to contemplate tlie forests with their innumerable species of jjlants, growing separately in other places, but in this region united and attaining gigantic dimensions, such as the willow, the algarrobo, and the chebraccio — common trees, indeed, but highly useful — the chebil, the . cedar, the walnut, the lapaccio, the quinquina, the aliso, and ./ many others. These forests cover the greater part of the plain, the entire hills, and tlie skirts of the mountains to a great height and for a distance of 4000 square kilometers. Is there not poetry in Yerba mate, in cocoa, in the tea-plant — all of indigenous growth, — in the banana, the chirimoi/a, the sugar- cane, in cottee, tobacco, or rice (all so valuable in commerce), not to speak of other commoner products'? lias tliis country a future before it] It has an immediate and magnilicent future, if the Vermejo becomes safe, periodical, and ])ermanent for commerce. When this is an accomplished fact, the valuable i)roductions of this privileged zone Avill be ol)tained at a small cost through the labour of the thousands of Indians who rove through the immense Chaco; and when cheaply transported to the coast will be able to vie with the products ot other regions. And Oran, being situate on the skirts of the Cordilleras and possessing the finest harbour on the river, will become, there can be no doubt, a necessary and convenient emporium for the international carrying trade with the south of Bolivia, now carried on at a loss of four months' time, and 1000 francs per ton for transjHH't. When this shall have come to pass, the traveller in the tropics will find on the eastern slopes of the Zenta, and skirting the Indian territory, a wealthy and prosperous city, risen from its ruins, and surrounded by beautiful country. And instead of feeling called upon to recount a nudaneholy history of ^laremma desolation, he will imagine himself transported to the deliglitful environs of Florence. In the shade of oiange trees, listening to the song of the blackbird amid the perfumed breezes, and the sweet murmur of the stream, he will rest during the burning heat of a tropical day, and there will come to him sweet dreams of love, country, life, the earth, and — who knows] — perhaps even of heaven ! Q 2 228 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO CHAPTER XIV. The disaster of Oran reminds me of the still greater misfortune that befell another of the jewels in the belt encircling the Republic — I refer to Mendoza. This city is the Turin of the Argentines. It is situated on the skirts of the Cordilleras, whose endless ridge of snow-clad peaks can be discerned at a distance of fifty leagues, and is the last trading-point with Chili, just as Turin is between Italy and France. Railways will bring it into rapid communication with the Atlantic, and when once corinected with its harbours, Mendoza Avill be the richest market for commerce between the two oceans. • The city has had a presentiment of its future destiny, and is hastening to prepare for it. If you could only see it always in gala dress ! Mendoza is the most beautiful and the most agreeable city in the Republic. The principal street is a fine avenue, a league in length and thirty yards in width, planted with a double row of plane-trees, poplars, and weeping willows, and watered by two running streams that divide the foot pavement from the road. All the streets are laid at right angles and are fifteen or twenty yards wide, and are also ornamented with trees on each side. The houses are either on the streets, or stand a little way back in pretty little gardens, and are of various kinds, some being simple and modest, and some elegant and picturesque, but all of them only one storey in height, so as to minimize the dreaded perils — alas ! already experienced — of earthquakes. Mendoza possesses the finest public promenade in the Re- public. It consists of a large octagonal garden situated in a piazza of four quadrants. In the centre is a spacious artificial OP^ THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 229 lake surroinided liy a lahyriiith of paths, kiosks, grottoes, fountains, trees, sliriiljs and rare Mowers both native and foreign. Yet tliis city has been in existence only twelve years. She is the lovely daughter of a fair mother, who, while st.ll young and beautiful, succumbed fifteen years ago to a most terrible fate. It was on the "Wednesday of the week that is called Holy by the Xazarenes, in the year 1861 of tlieir era. The inhabitants were engnged in the customary practices of their religious worship in the splendid and numerous temples raised for the purjiose. The priests were preaching to the crowds, who extended to the piazzas, on the Passion of the God whom 300,000,000 of men acknowledge as the Redeemer of mankind. The sun had set, and the contrite crowds were returning to their homes, indiiferent to the beauty of the wonderfully clear sky, illumined by a brighter moon than usual, and to the cool zephyr that was seeking to refresh these igno- rant children of the soil after a stifling day, wdien suddenly the earth trembled, darkness obscured the heavens, a loud noise struck on the cars of those who miuht thenceforth be called the survivors, and the humblest dwellings and proudest temples fell alike in fragments, becoming sepulchres for those most devoted to their (Jod and their Lares. Five, water, anroken, like the artificial enclosures of an En.L,'lish garden. At the lowest part, where all the ribs are joined, or rather at the hilt-point, where all the three fans meet, there is a handle of suitable size and glittering like silver. The mists rose ])r('spntly to the mountain tops, and the plain lay clear and distinct ])efore us. AVonderful to relate, the three glittering silver handles are the rivers Parnguay, Upper Parana, and Uruguay. The two tirst, after hundreiis of leagues of separate existence, join in one, under the name of the Parana, a little below Humaita, and almost opprtsite the Argen- tine city of Corrientes. The other, that is, the Uruguay and the ]'arana, after loOO kilometers of an almost parallel course, unite a little a])ove Duenos Ayres and form the Rio de la Plata, or the !Mar Dolce, as it was called by its first discoverers, which at that point is thirty kilometers in width, by a length of 270 ; and .at the mouth, where it falls into the Atlantic, lietween Monte- video and Cape S. Antonio, is 160 kilometers wide. The immense basin thus spread out before us is therefore the basin of the Kio de la Plata ; it is in the shape of a horse- shoe, the open part or base lying against the Atlantic, and the upi>erpart towards the Eipiator, and embracing twenty degrees of latitude from the Elatii>n of tlie niountain-ran^'e.s standing,' behind tlio.se I have nientii»neil, Jim I farllu'^it to the east, and of the Cordillera itself with its 1 leaks of 7000 yards in height, although situated many hun- dred kilometers west of the alwve. In any other way their denudatiiin would be inexplicable, since such mountains belong g(>(jgrai)liically to the forest zone as we have defined it. Meanwhili; the plienomenon of a jlara of the jjlain existing and beini,' developiid in a diy climate, and another similar one of ilic iiKiHutaiiis needing humidity for its formation and development is no less extraordinary. ]5oth require the same conditions of heat. The most salient ditlerence in the aspect of the two is that the flora of the plain is smaller in the trunk, and especially less lofty, and that in general the leaves are deeply notched and very small ; while the mountain Hora is of laige and lofty trunk, and with larger leaves, thus Itearing a resemblance to the European flora. It is Bingular that, generally speaking, the timber of the flora of the plain resists tlie action of water better — being, in some cases, absolutely incorruptible — than that of the flora growing in a damp climate. Is this a caprice, a compensation, or a law of nature 1 Having set forth in the preceding chapter the principal con- ditions on which the presence and development of the arboreal flora depend, and having roughly defined the superficial extent of the forest region, letme saya few words on its vertical distribution. I will proceed a.s before on the data of personal observa- tion made while exploring the mountains and plains of the forest region, and I will jx^rmit myself some few rejietitiona for the sake of clearness. As with us the zone of the oak, that of the chestnut, and that of the beech, are vertically distinguished, — a nomenclature which has served since in agronomia, and in practical agricul- ture, to divide the mountainous regions into so many agrarian zones, to which corresponds a climate and soil of certain known pr(^))erties ; so an analogous distinction ma}' be made in these parts with the same results, altlu)Ugh the state of cultivation in the country renders it of less practical importiince than among ourselves. Still, it will help us to place our ideas in order. The forest region of the Argentines — I speak of tliat portion of it with which we are occupied; that is, the north and centre — must be divided, in the altimetrical sense, into three zones, 246 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO which, being named according to the plants distinguished by their greater respective expansion united to their importance, ought to take the name of the algarrobo or carob-tree zone, the sebil zone, and the aliso zone. In the regions where the pine is found, a fourth, the pine zone, must be added. It lies between the sebil and aliso zones. The algarrobo zone includes, as we have seen, the whole plain; it begins at a height of 50 to 100 j^ards, above the level of the sea, and ends at a height of 300 or 400, according to the latitude. Most of the hard timber is found in this zone, viz. the red chebraccio, the iirunday, nnndubay, palo-santo, palo-ferro, guajacan, iscajanta, and others whose specific weight, generally speaking, exceeds that of water. The presence of the algarrobo mostly indicates a dry climate; its forest companions nevertheless, or those trees that must be included in this vast zone, admit of differences which may give room to sub-zones, like that of the somewhat humid urnnday, or of the palo-santo and the excessively dry paiai algarrobo. With regard to agriculture it is unfortunate, but as we have seen, not the less certain, that throughout the great algarrobo zone, unless irrigation be employed, the climate forbids any great prosperity, owing to the absence of rain and of atmo- spheric moisture, except in the sub-zone of the urunday and likewise in that of the nandubay, or in localities very specially situated. But Avherever irrigation is practised, splendid results are obtained ; and the sub-zone of the patai algarrobo is singu- larly favourable to the culture of the vine and the olive, when duly irrigated. In that of the palo-santo, and the conter- minous zones, on the other hand, the chaguar testile, of which we have spoken elsewhere, and the aji or pepper-tree grow spontaneously. Wherever there are rivers in the algarrobo zone, we find ■what may be termed an island zone, going up the valleys among the high mountains, whose flora consists principally of various kinds of willows, of seibos and bobos. Only certain kinds of -willows that are almost like forest trees, and form beautiful groves along the banks of the river, are available, and that to a limited extent, for building purposes. iS^'ext above the algarrobo zone comes that of the sebil, which, in its lower part, shelters some of the inferior flora, while sup- porting among them numerous colonies of its own. This zone OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 247 comprises the lands adjacent to the mountains where the climate is siifKciently moist, and the slopes to the remarkable height of 1000 or 1500 yards above the level of the sea, according to the latitude, diminishing towards the south on account ui the excessive dryness of the climate. This is the region of the timber most valualile for its size, its adaptation to various uses, and the large niirnbci- of trees. The sebil, of which there are three kinds, is ul the present time the basis of one of the most important industries in the interior of the Republic, viz. the tanning of skins. Growing with or near the sebil, Ave find the two cedars, the white and the pink ; the lapaccio, that we have remarked likewise in the sub-zone of the urunday, the walnut, the laurel, the tataue, the pacara, the mulberry, the tipa, the male oak, the orco-moglie, the fragrant china- china, the palo-lancia, the palo-blanco, and many others, in- cluding the biscote, wliose wood resembles ebony. It is very scarce, requiring both dryness and heat, so that but for its altimetrical situation it should rather be classed with the flora of the algarrobo zone. It is in tlie sebil region that Ave find the colossal trees, tif numerous kinds, and in immense quantities, that have made tropical forests so famous. Tucuman and Oran bear away the palm of wealth in this flora. /In the lower part of this zone, that is to say on the plain or tabledand adjoining the mountain skirts, and particu- larly in the provinces of Tucuman, Salta, and Jujuy, agrari in industry has been developed to a certain extent in the cultiv.i- tiou of sugar-cane, rice, and tobacco. In the section nearest the tropics we find the requisite conditions for a great develop- ment of agrarian industry, in the numerous and abundant streams which, flowing from the neighbouring heights, make irrigation eavsy, and likewise afford a gratuitous motive power ; making amply remunerative the large capital employed, where transport does not imply vast expense. Agriculture scarcely exists in the upper part of the zone I am describing, on account of the excessive labour required for the cultivation of the declivities of the hills, and of the quantity of excellent land in more advantageous situations. The cultivation of the vine and the olive will not be suc- cessful in general in all the sebil zone, because of the rains and humidity, which are excessive for these plants, and prevail 248 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO iit unsuitable pcasons, that is, at the setting of the hlossom, and at the maturity of the fruit. Pasture, on the contrary, would be very suitable, notwithstanding the large portion of the land occupied by trees, for the grass grows beneath their foliage o\ying to climatic influences, including that of light, which is admitted by the incline of the mountain sides. OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 249 CHAPTER XYIir. FOREST FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN — THE ALISO ZONE NOMENCLA- TURE — FUTURE DESTINY OF CERTAIN FLOWERS. As we come forth from the splendid vegetation I have briefly described, we meet after a short interval with the first repre- sentatives of the forest zone of the aliso, which after a while, are sncceeded by extensive and dense woods, consisting almost exclusively of that tree. The spectacle they present is entirely ditforent from the la^t, and resembles that of European forests of a single species of tree. Tlie aliso is found at the height of 2000 or 2500 yards above tlii^ level of the sea, according to the latitude ; and consequently crowns many of the lower ranges of hills, and clothes the sides of the higher mountains. It has a tendency, in my opinion, to push its way farther into the lowlands, and on comparing it with the preceding flora, it would seem that the latter begins to extend itself from below, while the aliso works downwards from the heights, and the two are thus endeavour- ing to come into contact. The aliso (a variety of the alnus) is our alder, and is of two kinds, which are much alike in appearance and in properties. It is lofty and upright Avith a diameter from twenty to forty centimeters ; it is very abundant and scattered, holding the same place in the flora of these parts that is held by the beech in the European flora ; and tlie timber also is similar. It is little known, nevertheless, if not absolutely unknown, and for this reason I will say a few words on the sulgect. The timber is adapted for building under cover and will resist water. In the church of Santa Maria of Catamarca, a master-beam of the roof, more than seventy years old, was found the best for replacing; 1800 years ago, Pliny de- clared this timber to be indesti-uctible, and builders inform 2 so EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO us tliat the Icacustrine cities of Venice and Holland have the greater part of their houses supported on stakes of aliso, other- wise alder, diiven in beloAv the water. The height, therefore, of the aliso and its lightness, make it admirable for building, because, generally speaking, timber that Avill resist water in this country is very deficient in length. The difficulty of access to the regions of its growth Avould not constitute any serious obstacle if the system of transport by water, as practised in the Alps and in North America, were adopted. Such a system Avould be quite practicable here by reason of the numerous streams running through every mountain pass, and by this means, the other forests that form the wealth of this mountainous district could be utilized. The aliso is only met with on the summits of mountains, or on the declivities exposed to the south and south-east winds. At an equal height, but on summits and declivities sheltered from those winds, Ave find pasture-land, provided there is moisture sufficient. Grasses grow freely under aliso-trees, because in general there are no climbing plants, nor even shrubs about their roots, the temperature not being sufficiently high. This region or zone of the aliso is favourable, therefore, to pasturedand, and together with the region of natural meadows lying above it, offers immense advantages for estancias, for summering cattle. Between the sebil and the aliso zones, we occasionally find interpolated the pine zone, which seems to fill the void we liave noticed where the pine is absent. This tree appears to like very tropical latitudes, at any rate they seem to be the centre of its diffusion, since it is not met with until the north- west of Oran and on the hills of the Upper Parana. I am told it grows also at Tafi, north of Tucuman. A curious and very unexpected mountain vegetation is tliat of the reed-cane, or cana brava as it is called here. We suddenly come across it in the aliso zone, on the more marshy spots, which are nearly always dark and miry, in bushes con- sisting of hundreds of high reeds, that entangled with each other and with those of the neighbouring bushes, form an archway under which a man may pass on horseback. They frequently make quite a labyrinth of galleries through which one may wander over immense mountain tracts. A similar reed cane, called caiia tacudra, growing along the OF THE argentin'p: republic. 251 livors, in the luwer plains f>f tropical Cliaco, attains such (liini nsions that it is used for props in rootinj,'. ( )n the heij,'hts of the aliso zone, ■\ve also wonder to find the arborescent sa/via and the sambuco, called sauco, the leaves of which are said to have medicinal properties. The zone of the mountain flora above mentioned may he subdivided into sub-zones. But besides the aljsence of sulfi- ciei;t data from Avhich to generalize, 1 have already said enough to indicate the cliaracteristic features of the forest zone, esjte- cially with regard to climate and consequently to agriculture and pasture, which was one of our principal objects. Many of the plants I have named serve for dyeing and tanning purposes, and some, besides those I have noted here and there, are fruit-ljearing ; among which we may remark the mato, bearing a cherry that is good to eat raw, and which makes also a fermented drink, and the arrayan, a shrub bear- ing a kind of currant which can be used in the same way as the mato. Besides these there are several enrcdadra^, in- cluding the tasi, Avith a hairy, milky fruit like an egg, an(jlias, yield a fragrant scent when rubbed ; the same with the flowers of the numerous varieties of acacia and mimosa, particularly the tusca and tiie ciurchi, which are the same as our cassia {). Scientific Nomenclature ok thk said Plants. Asi (pimento) . . . Capsicum microcarpum. Algarrobo .... I'rosopis algarrobo. „ bianco ... „ alba. Aliso ..... Alnus ferrwjinea (var. Alisus). AlfiTirrobillo .... Acacia moniliformis. Anoyiin ..... Eugenia unijlora. Bica ..... Caesalpinia praecrir. Cedro ..... Cedrela Brasilermis (car. Atistralis). Ciaguar ..... GuvUaea decorticans {delle papi- glionacee). Cingnar (textile) . . . Una Itromeliacea. Ciugcio ..... Niereinbergia hippomanica. Ciurclii ..... ProKofiis adstringens. Chebraccio bianco , . . AspiUofpernia Chebraccio. „ Colorado (red) . Loxopterygium Lorentzii, „ Jlojo (elirub) . . lodina rhombifoUa. Cortaiiora .... Gynerium Argetitinum. 252 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Garabato . Acacia tucumanensis. „ shrub ,, subscandens. Giuccian (Yuchdn) . . Chorisia insignis. Guayacan Caesalpina melano carpa. Jiime (dello salicornip) . . Spirntachys vaginata. Lanza .... . Mi/rsine marginata. Lapaccio . Tecoma (gen. belonging to the Bigo gniacee). Laurel .... . Nectandra porphyria. Mato .... ■ Eugenia mato (helonging to the Mir- tacee). Mistol .... . Zizyphus inistol. Moglie or Moje . Beloi ging to the Terebentmacee. Mora .... Gelso Ainericano. Niandubay (Nandubay) . Acacia carena. Nio-Nio (venomous herb) Baccharis cordifolia. Noofal .... Yuglans nigra (var. Boliciana). Ombii .... Pircnnia dioica. Pacara .... . Euterolobium timbavva. Palm of the Gran Chaco Copernica Cerifera f Palo bianco . Belonging to the Rubiacee. l^alo-santo A Ziigopiiyllea. Pino .... . Podocarpus angiistifolia. Eoble (male oak) . Belonging to the Leguminnse. Saloio (willow) Salix Humboldtiana. Sambuco (sauco) . Sambuccus Australis, S. Peruviana, Salvia .... Salvia maiico. Sebil .... Acacia Cebil. Seibo An Erythrina (Christa-galli). Soconto (coloured, climbing) Galium hirsutum. Tala .... Celtis Tala. Tasi (climbins:) Morrena Brachystepliana (Asclep.). Tatane (Espinillo of the North) Belonging to the Leguminose. Tipa .... Machaerium fertile. Tuna Cactus. Tnsoa .... 3'Iimose fam. (Acacia aroma ?). Vinal .... Prosopis ruscifoLia (Mimose faDiilij). The question may be asked whether the flora of these regions is in a state of progression or on the contrary, either stationary or retrograding. There are indications in some species, of one of these three conditions. For example, in the sand of the arid Uacino di Belen, after long journeying across bare and saline land, we come suddenly upon a magnificent forest of jjatai algarrobos, of ancient growth and large bulk, not a young tree among them. I have no hesitation in saying that this flora will not be renewed and must disappear. In the forests of Tucuman, within the sebil zone, it is ex- tremely rare to find a young cedar, although there are plenty of OK THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 253 aiiincnt cedars of stupendous size. I do not think we can roft-r the. destruction of the young trees to cattle, wliicli do nut exist in sulHcient nunil)er. The same may be said of tlie chebraccio in tlnj centre of the chehmrciali. This, however, may be ex- phiined by the famous "struggle for existence ;" air and light, if not soil, arc wanting to the young shoots in the thick of the forest. lUit even on th(3 skirts, young trees ;ire very scarce in the chebraccio and cedar forests, and among the other trees in the sebil zone, and do not seem to exist in sufficient proportion to replace the former growth when it shall have perished, although in general the growth is excessively slow, and hence the decay of the individual tree very remote. But these remarks show us that where the axe anticipates the destruction of Nature, while it cannot hasten its productive i)Ower, it would be well to regulate the felling of timber, and to fill up the vacuums thus created, so tis not to exhaust the forest long before the period popularly assigned to its duration. "\\'e have already seen that the chebraccio of the Chaco has a tendency to become scarcer iis the lauds of euicrsion disappear. The danger, however, is remote, on account of the vast extent of the territory, audit is probable that the conditions of climate and of vegetation suited to its reproduction will jireviously alter. Dut on the hills (Lomas) of the provinces of Santiago and Catamarca, even this danger does not exist, and there yet remains territory for this tree to iuA'ade. In the sebil zone the forest has already spread over almost all the available territory, only leaving part of the strip dividing it from the aliso. The latter, on the contrary, has still a vast territory before it, which it is hastening to conquer by visible forward extension every year. The aliso is in the period of expansion. 1 have not remarked in the sebil and algarrobo zones any tree with a tendency to predominate over the others. It is not impossible, however, that some that may be imported into the still virgin forests may produce that result. I have spoken of territory to be coiU[Uered ; but then do not the forests spread all at once over the ground they occupy or will occupy ? ^ly answer is this : afibrestment seems so have proceeded by irradiation, as it were, from various nuclei of isolated wooils, ever increasing in size, until uniting together they have constituted immense forests. Certain isolated forest centres are still fiecjuently met with, 254 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO both in the Chaco and in Santiago, the expansion of -winch, ]>y irradiation, seems established not only l^y ratiocination, hut hy the facts as narrated to me by some timlier contractors, that in the heart of these so-called islands the trees are of older growth and a large average of them split under the saw, or are defective in other ways, and that, on the contrary, the outside trees are smaller and younger, and exempt in larger proportion from the defects I have mentioned. These circum- stances appear to justify me in an assumption that is based on reason, and is moreover confirmed by the habits of the aliso. OF THE ARGENTINE KErUBLIC. CHAPTKR XIX. THE PUCAKA COUNTRY. At a lieight of 2500 yards above tlie sea, on the range of mountains that divides from north to south the two provinces of Tucuman and Catamarca, and at a point where they join other ranges that turn east, west, and north, we come sud- denly upon a large basin, twenty kilometers by thirty, surrounded by a circle of mountains of various heights, among wliich the Aconguija rise majestically, nearly always crowned with snow for a distance of oOOO yards downward from the summit. This basin contrasts greatly with the surrounding landscape, and is itself in strong contrast with its condition in the past. It still retains the name by which it was known to the aborigines, who inhabited it in large numbers, and is called the country or camjw of the Pucard. The word means strength in the Aimara language, and red in tlie Chiijcluum, both of which appellations are appropriate, the one on account of the general colouring, and the other on account of formerly existing fortih- cations, of which some fragments yet remain. The explorer who, crossing the mountain range at this point, delays his steps for a while, nui} tiiid here an opportunity of acquiring special information. On his riglit liand there is a narrow range of hills 2000 yards in heiglit, tlie eastern slopes of which, facing the south- east winds, are clothed with magnificent forests that sj^read out at tlie base and form splendid wooded skirts to the fertile plain of Tucuman lying at his feel. The western and steeper de- clivity is thick with beautiful wood.*!, which, however, betray their recent origin by being cliieHy grou[>ed where a line of counterforts has sheltered them when still young from the prolonged heat of the sun, ami the spray of a precij)itou3 torrent has charged the atmosphere with moisture. Then comes a second range, higher by 1000 yards than the tii-st, with wider 256 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO crest, with the lower part of its eastern slopes comparatively denuded of forest, and the higher parts clothed with woods of aliso- trees, while the summit is crowned with meadows. The western declivity of this range, entirely hare of arboreous plants and with very scant pasture, encloses on one side the campo that lies beneath at a depth of 500 yards. On the west of the Tucara the horizon is bounded by low- lying barren hills ; beyond a bare and rocky precipice 800 yards high, lies the vast Bacino di Eelen, enclosed on all sides by high mountains and by the Cordillera, whose snow- clad Famatina can be discerned from an immense distance. This mountain is rich in mines ; the table-land is extremely aritl and for the most part sandy, but with some oases of ancient algarrobos (carobs), which, however, are not reproductive. In the concave centre of the mountain there is an immense tract of whitish hue, thirty leagues by three, consisting of salt-mines. During the brief season of light rain these become an immense niarsh or bog. The Campo del Pticara is the turning-point between the grassy ranges on the east and the bare sand-banks of the west. It is itself arid and burning, but affords sustenance to cuttle during some months of the year. Its elevation, however, and the encircling hills, among which the Alpine Aconquija on the north is like a star surmounting a diadem, would seem to promise at first sight a climate more favourable to the vegetable life that only a few steps further is so luxuriantly developed on the eastern slopes. There is, in fact, less than the distance of a league between the ridge of the Tucuman mountains and the eastern extremity of the campo, and only five leagues from the same point to the sandy basin of the Belen. Here the action of the winds is evident ; as is the inference from the position of the mountains with regard to them, and here again we have the same teaching, repeated in less concise language, but much more rigorously by the other immense circuits of the liepublic. The parallelism, or in other words the uniformity of direction in the mountainous system of the Republic, joined to the uniform direction of the atmospheric currents, and to the seasons in which they prevail, in that region at least which is comprised within a limit a little beyond the Rosario and the northern extremity of the Eepublic, afford us an anticipated OF THE ARGENTINE RErt'DLIC. 257 knowledge of the climates of the country, and a.ssij;t us woudur- fully in verifying the theory of atmospheric circulation excogi- tated and demonstrated by the most learned modern climato- logists, Meanwliile a magnificent spectacle is presented to us during the summer season in tlie Pucara Campo. A hot, still, and unpleasant air, accompanied by a diminution of twenty to tw(!nty-tive millimeters of atmospheric pressure, is succeeded first by a light brecv.e that veers rapidly from north-east to south- east, and thfu by a furious wind, raising great clouds of dust from a soil burnt up by eight months' drought, darkening the clear sky, and tormenting any one exposed to violent contact with the grains of sand that are driven before it. Our tent is loosened Ijy the repeated shocks of the aerial current, and soon atibrds an insufficient refuge, as does also the humble ranchn whirh owes its own safety to the numberless fissures that allow of a passage to the gale through which it strikes the powerless inhabitant. On the outside of the crest of the circle of mountains there now appears a subtle vapour which almost immediately vanishes into space and is succeeded by light white clouds that also evaporate, followed by others rather denser; these seem to shrink from resting on the ridge of the mountains and disai)pear almost as quickly as they come. I do not know "wliether they tuni back or vanish away. The south wind now blows furiously, and the air becomes colder, and behind the white cloudlets are big clouds, dark at tii-st and black, that rise up and intermingle, advance and recede, seeming to roll up the steep incline like another Sisyphus, anil when they have reached the top to be thrust down again to the depths whence they lirst rose. To the shrieking and raging of the wind is now added the noise of the thunder and the flashing of the lightning, the battle waxes fiercer, the combatants can now scarcely be dis- tinguished ; the dense phalanxes on the heights are hardly to be discerned as they clash together, intermingle, and form at last a compact dark mass that advances slowly and heavily over the face of the campo. This mass is constantly diminish- ing ; it is whitish and vaporous towards the west and is con- stantly renewed by black clouds from the east ; now it halts, anon draws back, obeying I know imt what occult, mysterious foi"«je, until at last the storm has conipiered every mount;iin summit. Then a leaden pall covers all the heiglits like an 258 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO enornious bell, and after remaining for a long interval will often vanish harmlessly away. Sometimes through a rent in tlie edge the sun can be seen shining in imperturbable splendour on the Belen basin lying beneath. The dryness causes the evaporation of the clouds, which, when the atmosphere is saturated on the side of the eastern Tucuman declivities, are driven by the wind into fresh space above the ridges of the mountains. Hence the rainfall in the Campo of Pucara is very slight, and still less in the Bacino di Belen. Nevertheless, there are large remains of Indian habitations, which are built in clusters, looking like so many separate villages. They are situated not only on the plain, but on the mountain- skirts as well. If the campo were formerly under the same conditions of natural productiveness as are now existent, it could not have afforded subsistence to so many human beings. Can a change of climate have occurred? If this has been the case it has not been due to any change in the accidents of the moun- tains ; there is no indication of such having taken place, or any tradition on the subject. It is more probable that the local conditions have changed by the drying up of some large reservoir of water in the neighbourhood, some lake, in short, of which the fish afforded food, and the water was used for agriculture, while it supplied the first, necessity of material life. And, in fact, north of the campo, in the lands of recent formation, there is a passage for the watercourses of this basin, and its name of Cortadera expresses both its aspect and the phenomenon indicated by it, just as among ourselves we call tlie openings of former lakes indsa (a cwi), rotta (a break), or ripafratta (broken shore). Tradition or popidar acuteness having bestowed these appellations, or else we may infer that either during the conquest of the indigenous tribes of Catamarca by the Chiqchuans, or that of the Americans by the Spaniards, the primitive inhabitants of the land sought refuge there as in a stronghold, and protracted their defence, although anlid serious priA^ation. However this may have been, a country which once swarmed with human life is now almost a desert, useful, perhaps, to the antiquary and to the dilettante traveller or scientist. OF THE ARGENTINE KEl'UIiLIC. 259 CHAriER XX. I CANNOT refrain from recording here the impressions produced by my visit to Tucuman, the garden of the Kepul)lic, after a long period of absence. I had been received there with the most flattering kindness during my first visit of eiglit montlis, in wliich I explored its Avildest and most picturesque parts, spending the winter on the j)eaks, I may say, of its lofty mountains. In the course of this book I have mentioned it freipientiy as one of the privileged cantons of the Republic, so that to return to it now will not be entirely out of place, or unintelligible to the reader. I will add that I claim to be accurate in all essentials, notwithstanding the poetical form in which my description is cast in order to do honour to the subject, and to make it more attractive to the numerous readers of the Ojirniin Italiano, in which it first saw the light. ( ) Tucuman ! thou the most beautiful among thy .sisters, all hail to thee ! "Whether I contemplate the level plain or lift up my eyes to the lofty mountains encircling thee on the side of the Circolo ^lassimo or the Occaso, my soul is thrilled with delight and admiration. Nature, who has been somewhat niggardly to thy companions, has lavished her gifts on thee, her favoured one, because thou wcrt beautiful and beloved ! To thee she has given the vast plain of the Pampa, and bounded it with a semicircle of hills so as to welcome the Alixiati wiwix, that in return for thy hospitality, enrich thee with the life-giving elements gathered in their wanderings over numberless Alpine heights, and fraternize with thy river, called ])y thee the Foiido, but changing its name over and over again, according to the caprice of the friendly lands whose bosoms it fertilizes. And if the sun shines on thee with burning rays, his heat is tempered by the moisture dropping from the clouds as they are rent by electricity, with sudden explosion, or prolonged thunder. 260 EIGHT MONTHS ON THE GRAN CHACO Hence tliy soil is verdant in the winter, and in spring is adorned with innumerable flowers — a treasure-house of exotics — giving place one to the other for thy embellishment during half the year ; and in the summer and autumn thou gatherest abundantly the fruits of a few growths. i!^ature has not bestowed on thee the algarrobo, nor is the mistol, its comrade, abundant with thee, nor yet the dianar, that emulating the tamarind, buds forth in primitive Santiago, on thy southern borders. But instead of these she has given thee the tuna, the prickly pear-tree, the arrayan, and the maio, growing on thy sierras ; and grants thee, with little trouble, the orange, the yam, rice, potatoes, Avheat, corn, barley, and other cereals, in such wise as to make her storehouse within thy borders. Thy climate refuses to give any industrial advantage to the culture^ of that fruit which is first mentioned in connection with sii that, according to Biblical teaching, was fatal to its unconscioi inheritors, the pre-destined inhabitants of unfruitful Africa.' But thou, yielding the glory thereof to thy western neighbour, sober, laborious, and honest Catamarca, ai't compensated by the cana, that while bestowing on thee the principle of the vine, enriches thee with sugar, and is guiltless of the shame of Noah or the punishment of Cham. Thou dost not fear the envy of proud Salta, lying close against thee on the side of the seven- starred Ursa Major, nor the unrecognized claims of distant and neglected Jujuy. Meanwhile thy pre-eminence is assured hy thy many fine estahleciudentos, by thy highways crowded with waggons, the clamour of the husbandmen, the creaking of the presses, the bubbling of the boiling caldrons, the hubbub of ail kinds, the ovens, the buildings, the heat, the smoke, the feast of peeled cane with its fresh juice and syrup, which, at liarvest time, constitutes a, fete cliamiMve worthy of Arcadia. And how shall I fitly praise the soothing herb that in mani- fold guise bestows such bliss on man — tobacco, which is to thee a boundless source of wealth ? Until now it has crossed the Cordilleras in large quantities, and its progress has only been stopped by the seashore, where it is unable to compete with the produce of other lands. But when its culture ceases to be a monopoly in the hands of the representatives of the first inhabitants, and science and art take it under their protection, it will become thy special honour and glory. The iron-fibred chebraccio, wliich is wealth to thy sisters, finds no hold on thy plains, nor are they shaded by frequent OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 26l woods, but thy mountain is clothed witli primeval forests stretchinf,' to its very base, and rich in magnificent cedars and graceful walnut-trees with their ashen bark, orrmnidlnii, tlie two kinds of cebils, whose bark is used for tanning, the pacara with its saponaceous i)roperties, the lai)accio with its rose-coloured blossoms, the two kinds of alilers (alisos), which, with many others, crown its aljnne heights, and daily push forward towards the barren coiist. All these trees atiord building materials or food to thy anerraderos, while at dif- ferent altitudes grow among them the early-flowering cassia {rhurt//(i), its sister-plant, the tusca (])Iack vine), the garravato, and two kinds of wild orange, mingling the perfume of their innumerable blossoms with the arrayan, the mato, and the molli, whose leaves give forth fragrance when bruised, or are of metlicinal value. The borracho, with its barrel-shaped trunk and lemon-like fruit, which, when rii)e, is full of cotton, flourishes as far as thy southern limits, but refuses to grow in a more humid climate. The nalvia likewise enlivens the forest, and in the form of a tall shrub is found on the topmost altitudes, and is rivalled in its Imxving of the elements by the alder, the elder, and the peach-tree. And there, where tree and shrub can no longer live in the cold and rarified atmosphere, strong herbaceous i)lants, food for cattle, take their place. But why endeavour to describe thy flora since the life of a man would not suffice to enumerate and