CORRIENTES
Corrientes may be regarded, economically, as well as geographically, as still being one of the outlying Provinces, inasmuch as its population and cereal production are much less than those of the Provinces already dealt with.
It is, however, numerically richer in Live Stock than either Córdoba or Santa Fé[24] and has large areas under maize cultivation.
Corrientes is bounded on the North by the River Paraná, which forms the boundary between it and the Republic of Paraguay. This river is also its Western boundary, while on the East it is bounded by the National Territory of Misiones and the River Uruguay, and on the South by Entre Rios.
It is served by the Argentine North-Eastern Railway system, which links up and is in every way closely connected with the Entre Rios Railway: and by a small narrow-gauge industrial railway which runs through a large area of Quebracho forest and also serves some sugar mills.
Other communication is by old-world diligences. Another railway is, however, projected to run almost along the north boundary of the Province from the City of Corrientes to Posadas in Misiones.
The inhabitants of Corrientes, like their Paraguayan neighbours, from whom, especially in the more Northern parts of this Province, they differ but slightly in racial characteristics, are the true lineal descendants of Spanish soldiery and their native Guaraní Indian wives. They are as a rule a pleasant enough people, good-humoured and somewhat indolent. As to the latter quality one must, however, remember that in Corrientes one is already among subtropical vegetation (Palms begin to rear their tufted heads in the North of Entre Rios). One of the most beautiful examples of this vegetation is the Lapacho with its great branches of pink flowers.
One must not delay long, however, if one wish to still catch the old-world flavour of Corrientes. Its capital, founded in 1588 with one of the long names in which the Spanish conquerors appear to have delighted, namely, San Juan de la Vera de las siete Corrientes (St. John of Vera of the Seven Streams), is already provided with modern waterworks and electric trams. Still, one yet finds many mysterious looking low houses with vertically barred windows, and covered verandahs lining long narrow streets. Modern buildings, however, are rapidly spoiling the attraction of the place for those who appreciate the charm of more leisurely, spacious times. That charm yet lingers in the city of Corrientes, but, as has been said, is already being startled into flight by modernity.
The latter and Corrientes are, nevertheless, still fairly far apart. It would be curious to know how many inhabitants of the Federal Capital have even the faintest notion of what City of the Seven Streams is like (?). Very few indeed; except those who have or have had direct interests in the latter place. The notions of the rest would be similar to those of the average European regarding the Pampa.
Corrientes is for the most part well watered, and has immense tracts of excellent pasturage.
Besides its Capital, Corrientes possesses as its, even more commercially important, centres the towns of Goya, famous for its cheeses, Ituzaingó, Bella Vista, and Empedrado, all ports or rather possible ports on the Paraná, Mercedes, the centre of prosperous sheep-farming districts, and Curuzú Cuatia and Monte Caseros, with good railroad facilities.
With the necessary expenditure on wharves, etc., Corrientes could be brought into a much greater economic activity than it shows signs of as yet; by utilizing its great natural riparian means of communication, although the River Uruguay is at this height difficult of navigation, owing chiefly to the rapidity of its current and frequent floods.
The Correntino has not yet, however, developed much commercial enterprise. His cattle still show the native long horned and limbed characteristics of wilder days and he himself seems to find it less trouble to get tobacco, mate, sugar, coffee and many other things from Brazil or Paraguay than to grow and manufacture them himself; as he could do easily and profitably. Much of his nature is Indian; to be modified in time by the overwhelming forces of civilization.
One cannot leave Corrientes without mention of the lake Iberá in the North of the Province, a vast natural hollow filled with water, the surface of which is in many parts covered so solidly with interlaced bamboos, grasses and aquatic plants as to enable one to walk on it as if on a huge raft. There has been much talk of reclaiming the land by draining Lake Iberá, a task which owing to the gradients of the surrounding lands would not present great difficulties; if so be that the lake is not connected by subterranean channels with the Rivers Paraná and Upper Uruguay, as there are several reasons to suppose it may be.
The islands of this lake form a perfect zoological garden of animals and reptiles long since practically extinct in the surrounding country; among which are Jaguars, Alligators and Boa Constrictors.
The present writer remembers an interesting if somewhat terrifying collection of such and other wild specimens being cast up a little more than a decade ago on the river shores of the Province of Buenos Aires, near to the Federal Capital, by the swollen waters of the Paraná during extraordinary floods. These creatures were washed down clinging to trunks of trees and islets of intertwined vegetation which had been torn away by the force of the waters. It is safe to assume that they were much more terrified than were even the peaceable inhabitants of the places where they involuntarily landed.
The illustrious General San Martin was a Correntino, born in what was once called Yapeyú, now an important Live Stock centre and renamed after him.
A monument has also been erected there to his memory, a patriotic embellishment which no Argentine township, however, is without.