SALTA
With Salta we complete the list of the less important outlying Argentine Provinces.
Like Jujuy, it is bounded on the North by Bolivia, on the West by Jujuy and the National Territory of Los Andes, on the South by Tucumán and Santiago del Estero, and on the East by the National Territory of Formosa.
Salta is indeed historic ground; so full of reminiscence of the Wars of Independence that it may almost be called the cradle of the Republic. It was also in Salta that Jabez Balfour was at length taken into custody, after a long struggle for an extradition treaty between Great Britain and Argentina.
The writer is well acquainted with a gentleman, since then become a prominent figure in the railway world of the River Plate, who “specially” drove the engine of the train which brought Balfour down to civilization and captivity. The prisoner had money which he had spent freely among his new neighbours, and attempts at rescue were expected. So the train rushed on its downward course with a velocity to which the then permanent way and rails were totally unaccustomed, but, as all the world was soon made aware, arrived at its destination without accident.
The prisoner had been the victim of his own luxurious habits, for he had grown so fat that it was impossible to convey him through frontier mountain passes into Bolivia, as his friends had intended and as would have been possible, in point of time, to do before the expected warrant for his arrest could have found its way into the not too willing hands of the local authorities.
Until his recent death, the present generation had scarcely heard of Jabez Balfour. Yet he was widely celebrated in contemporaneous popular song as “The man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”
In Salta is still to be found a much more really interesting personage in the Gaucho, the Cavaliere Rusticano of the River Plate and the hero of all its earlier poetry and romance. He of the guitar-accompanied improvised verse, of the quick flashing knife and equally quick Rebenque.[26] He was no small element in the victories won over the Spanish soldiery nor in the long years of civil war which followed Independence. He is still in Salta; one of the last parts of the Republic in which he can be found. Comparatively uncontaminated by the encroachments of the drab uniformity of civilization.
He remains romantic and brutal, chivalrous and treacherous, hospitable and quick to resent the mere implication of an insult. Still a cattle herd adept with lazo or boleadora,[27] a nomad ever seeking fresh fields and pastures new within the limits of his native territory. Give him a uniform he is a very useful soldier, and a fair military policeman, save for his rather erratic fits of truculence. For the rest no good at all outside of the few spheres mapped out for him by the limitation of his own strongly marked individuality. But he will always know again an animal he has once seen, and will track out a lost sheep across a very maze of confused spoor.
Mr. Herbert Gibson[28] has written of the gaucho with true feeling and appreciation in the following words:—
Skilled in horsemanship, quick of hand and of eye; in his beginnings the Arab and nomad of the plains; indifferent of his neighbour’s life, for his own he carried in his hand to risk at the first hazard, yet “loyal to his own law” even in his most lawless exploits—the gaucho of the Pampa constitutes the genuine emblem of the Argentine genius. He is the materialized expression of the spirit of the vast and lonely plain. “Bearing allegiance to neither King nor thing,” as Azara writes, he followed the fate of the live stock of the colony; when the cattle escaped control he too declared himself free, running wild and beyond the pale of even nominal domestication. The Pampa was his home, and in his ears the breeze moving over the plains whispered to him of liberty. To colonial rule succeeded the new order of Independence, and the gaucho, inured by his style of living to the stress of weather and to the struggle with savage animals, became the right hand of the petty chiefs of party faction, ever joining the side in conflict with the ruling power. The words law and order signified for him oppression and servitude, and he became the declared enemy of all authority. But with all his faults the gaucho, in his own element, mounted on his beloved horse, with lazo secured to the back of his saddle and his boleadora hanging from his waist, was the henchman beyond price for the work of the old estancia, knowing how to dominate and domesticate the savage herds and droves of wild mares. In all that he has seemingly been modified by the progress of the times, he has remained unmodified in his spirit which is the essential manifestation of his climate and of his habit. The nomad gaucho of the colonial period converted into the loyal gaucho of the estancia, the man with no other belongings than his horses and the silver clasp and buttons hanging at his belt to whom the breeder entrusted all his herds, and the grazier the money wherewith to buy the droves of bullocks, without for one moment thinking, either the one or the other, that he would neglect his charges or fail to render account to the uttermost farthing committed to his care. Alike loyal and venturesome in the fulfilment of his duties, and kindly and hospitable in his lowly home life, he is the hero of the rural romance of the Pampa. Not without regret and tender reminiscences must we take farewell of a period of pastoral life, from whose remembrance all the hardships and bitterness have disappeared, only leaving to us the recollection of that patriarchal and wholesome life which the late Hernandez has so skilfully depicted in the picturesque language of the gaucho who tells his story by the fitful light of the fire on the kitchen hearth while his fingers caress the melancholy strings of the guitar.
And now approaches the new era of railways, of fenced-in paddocks, of ingenious drafting gates and all the mechanical entourage of the modern pastoral industry. The gaucho, like Othello, is without an occupation, but the spirit which in divers forms and epochs has characterized him shall not die. It is the native spirit of the Argentine genius which enters the immigrant ere for long he has settled in the land and which inspires the sons born to him in this country; it is the instinct of independence and individuality engendered by the free air of a rural life, and which is the antithesis of the dependent spirit symbolized in city life by socialism.
Salta is a large, sparsely populated Province, the inhabitants of which outside the circle of its aristocratic families, are composed of our friend the Gaucho and his families and the Coya Indians. These last, cowboys and shepherds, are much more unpleasant people; morose, avaricious in their necessarily small way, and full of sullen duplicity. Their only obvious virtue is their devoted attachment to the small allotments of land they can call their own. This solitary virtue does not, however, make them any the pleasanter to strangers; all of whom indiscriminately they regard as possible enemies come to rob them of their rights in some mysterious way or other.
Naturally, with such a population and on account of its distance from the great commercial centres of the Republic, Salta is not yet very far on the road to any great or settled prosperity.
It has some sugar plantations, cultivates some tobacco and makes some wine, but with its many generally well-watered and easily irrigable large areas of rich soil it could easily, and of course eventually will, progress.
It could grow a great deal more maize and alfalfa than it does, and could carry much more and better live stock than it yet troubles to do.
It produces some fruit and could produce all sorts of much choicer kinds in great variety; also potatoes, cotton and, as experts affirm, excellent coffee.
Of course there are here the old difficulties of irrigation, in some places, cost of transport and lack of intelligent labour. The first two are rapidly being overcome by the National Government, the last must be looked for overseas. The Gaucho and the Coya not only are not sufficiently numerous for Salta’s future needs, but (alas for the romance of the former!) they must be classed amongst the doomed unfit; to be merged in or overwhelmed by the march of modernity.
The aspect of Salta, like that of most of the northern Provinces and Territories, is varied. Mountain and low valley, broad plain and forest, deep river and rushing stream all alternate and give picturesqueness and diversity of climate. Goats, mules and sufficient horses for existing local needs are to be found here as in the neighbouring Provinces; all of which are justly famous for products, the mention of which must on no account be overlooked, the native cloths and PONCHOS, hand-woven of vicuna and guanaco wool. Soft, warm and durable, these cloths are highly and justly valued in the more civilized regions of the River Plate.
The manufacture of them dates from times which are prehistoric in America.
The forests of Salta contain a great quantity of Quebracho of excellent quality, and there are several indigenous creepers of caoutchouc-bearing kinds. This latter has as yet been little exploited, and then only in an extremely primitive manner.
Salta boasts a large hydropathic establishment in connection with the hot mineral springs of Rosario de la Frontera.
Salta, the Capital, is another of the old Colonial cities, amid the low houses of which fine new public buildings occur incongruously; iconoclastic. It has also a zoological garden which, wisely, contains many interesting specimens of local fauna, fine, luxuriantly planted public gardens and Plazas and an excellent Police Band.
In the oligarchic days of only a very few years ago the police forces of these outlying Provinces were extremely important political instruments. Under the Constitution the Provinces cannot raise or maintain independent soldiery; but who could say them nay if the exigencies of an uncultured population necessitated a large police force armed with Mausers?—to ensure due obedience to the orders of and agreement with the policy of the Provincial powers that were.
There are few commercial centres in Salta having populations sufficient to give them importance as towns. Metan is the largest, and after it come Cafayate, Campo Santo and Rosario de la Frontera, which, as has been said, is noted for its hot springs.