MISIONES
If one has sufficient Spanish, one should read Leopoldo Lugones’ Imperio Jesuitico, and also the same author’s Guerras Gauchas, before going to Misiones. If not, one should go there all the same.
This territory is bounded on the North-East and South by Brazil, and on the West by Paraguay and the Province of Corrientes. It is sandwiched in between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, but a very much smaller Paraná and Uruguay than we have seen further south.
Many parts of Argentina have been described as “The Garden of the Republic,” and many as its most picturesque region, but the latter description can surely only truthfully apply to Misiones. If not sufficiently trim and cultivated to be called a garden, its superlative beauty and its crowning marvel the Iguazú Falls must leave even the most callous visitor pleasurably astounded; and not a little awestruck with its ruins and reminiscences of the dawn of South American civilization, which was heralded in these parts by the Jesuit Fathers. These Missionaries made most practical Christians of the surrounding tribes; teaching them the arts of architecture, carpentry, and such-like; not forgetting humility and obedience.
If one wants proof of all this one need but look on the ruins of monastery and church now half hidden amid an ever-encroaching luxuriant vegetation.
The descendants of those same Indians can hardly be got to do as much work in a lifetime now as they must have done in a week under the mild but very firm rule of the Jesuit Fathers. Eventually, the power these Missionaries had attained over the surrounding tribes became such as to label them dangerous to even Catholic Spain; and an order was given, and enforced, for their expulsion. They were scattered: and but the ruins of their solid, sculptured masonry, gardens and orange and olive groves now mark the places where once white-clad natives kept fast and feast days with as much solemn orderliness as ever so many timid monastic novices could do.
Nowadays, one can get from Buenos Aires to Misiones either by rail (North-East Argentine Railway) or by the Mihanovich company’s boats. Both ways furnish delightful travelling through interesting and picturesque country, though for pure scenery the river way is the best. The best of all, however, is to go up by rail and down again by boat and to see all there is, and there is a very great deal worth seeing, to be seen.
By either route one can stop at Posadas, the capital, evidently from its name an ancient resting-place for travellers (Posada being Spanish for an inn).
But people who are bent on reaching San Ignacio, a small river port, or rather clearance on the Upper Paraná, near which are the chief of the ruined Jesuit Missions, and the Iguazú Falls will probably leave Posadas for closer inspection if need be, on the return journey.
Once again we board a Mihanovich boat and go up a seeming river of fairyland.
An adequate description of the majestic splendour and beauty of the Iguazú Falls is far beyond the pen of the present writer. One is gradually prepared for the great sight by a series of smaller cascades and cataracts of other converging rivers which one passes on the way to where the Iguazú hurls its large volume of water in downward jumps or in one horseshoe-shaped, thundering, frothy mass. Where it falls one is face to face with the greatest waterfalls in the whole world,[32] as the following comparative figures will show:
| Volume cubic per minute.[33] | Breadth. | Height. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iguazú | 28,000 ft. | 13,133 ft. | 196 to 220 ft. |
| Victoria (S. Africa) | 18,000 ft. | 5,580 ft. | 350 to 360 ft. |
| Niagara | 18,000 ft. | 5,249 ft. | 150 to 164 ft. |
The only point of advantage of the Victoria Falls is their height.
The present chief source of wealth in Misiones is the various kinds of timber and valuable cabinet-maker’s woods found in its virgin forests. One day Misiones will doubtless export its rosewood and other beautiful and valuable products of its forests, which also produce pine and other building timber of superior quality to that which Argentina now imports from Europe. Transport of timber is effected by means of tying it into huge rafts which go down river as far as Corrientes. The timber supply of Misiones will long continue rich, since the tendency of the forest is ever to encroach on the surrounding land.
A growing industry on which great expectations are based is the cultivation of the Ilex Paraguayensis, or mate shrub. The consumption of mate or Paraguayan tea, as it is sometimes called in Europe, is enormous throughout both of the River Plate Republics, which now import very large quantities annually from Paraguay and Brazil, while no sort of good reason seems to exist why the northern districts of Argentina should not grow sufficient to meet the home consumption.
The Jesuits evidently appreciated and cultivated this shrub, but they had the secret of growing it from seed, a secret the true re-discovery of which by modern horticulturists is not yet quite proved.[34]
Up till quite recently all Misiones mate yerba has been gathered from the abundant virgin growth of the shrub. Once Misiones produced larger quantities of sugar than it does now; and there is no reason why this industry should not revive from the almost total paralysis which it at present suffers; nor why one day the wine output of Misiones should not be improved in both quality and quantity.
Maize naturally grows well (it yields in six months) in Misiones; which Territory with the general warmth of its climate, sufficient rainfall and heavy dews, is most favourable to tropical and subtropical vegetation. Oranges, of course, bananas, pineapples, and guavas grow practically, if not quite, wild and ground nuts and the castor-oil plant are among its many valuable products. The whole of Misiones is well watered by a network of very numerous streams, and if its atmosphere by day is rather reminiscent of a hothouse, the nights are usually cool and refreshing.
The unevenness of its surface, while precluding much idea of extensive cultivation, is admirably suited for the shelter and care of the best natural produce of this exotically picturesque region.
Misiones has quarries of valuable granite at San Ignacio; close to the river as if they had been placed there for facility of transport. These quarries furnished the Jesuits with the material for their famous buildings; though that they persuaded the natives, who before their coming had little ambition for anything save inter-tribal warfare, to quarry, transport and build up solid masonry is nothing short of marvellous. Truly Jesuit “influence” was a very real and concrete thing in the Misiones of those days.
One must not forget tobacco, or cotton, as other of Misiones’ hitherto greatly neglected industries.
One cannot insist too much upon the fact that no one who does not himself visit the River Plate Republics in all their length and breadth can really grasp even a faint idea of their diversified latent wealth. One is apt to suppose that because Misiones, for instance, does not produce much tobacco or sugar,[35] there is some pretty solid obstacle at the bottom of its relative non-productiveness. People naturally think, “Well, it’s all very well to chant dithyrambics of the marvellous might be’s of what evidently are your pet countries, but why does all this wonderful wealth of them continue latent, why does not one see, or at least hear, a great deal more about it, if all you say is true?”
The reply for this is, “Give me sufficient capital and sufficient suitable labour (especially the latter) and I will very speedily prove my every word.”
The River Plate Republics have not yet (again I say it) sufficient population to exploit even a part of their possible cereal industry, the one which naturally gets first attention because it combines the attractions of rich profit and comparatively little care or labour, under the almost primitive conditions under which most of it is still carried on.
When there is a surplus of labour after grain and cattle have been duly provided for, all sorts of other things will be attended to. But it is no good expecting ordinary people, without the many more or less occult advantages of early Jesuit Fathers, to get any constantly careful work, such as cotton, tobacco and many other valuable crops require, out of native South American Indians. They can’t or won’t do it, anyway, they don’t; and it is probably easier to rediscover how to grow mate yerba from seed than how to rediscipline for practical purposes the race which built and gardened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The North Argentine Railway has in project a branch from its Santo Tomé-Posadas line to run through the centre of Misiones to the North-West corner where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay join.