FOOTNOTES:
[59] This latitude is the mean of four observations taken by M. de Souillac (in 1784) one of the astronomers attached to the commission for determining the boundary.
[60] Since this was written I have met with a gentleman who had seen the original drawings of three masses, with their respective measurements; which drawings, he understood, were made by the persons sent in quest of this iron by the government of Buenos Ayres when my specimen was brought down.
[61] Luccock, in his Travels in Brazil, speaks of a very singular metallic formation which he met with in the province of Minas Geraes, not far from Villarica. He says (page 490), "A hill on our left now presented a wonderful object; it was one entire mass of iron, so perfectly free from any mixture of common soil as to produce no vegetation whatever, but was covered with a complete coating of rust or oxide of iron. The hill is so lofty and steep that its top was not accessible; but from its more elevated parts nodules of corroded metal had rolled down, and greatly embarrassed the road: at the foot of the mountain the soil is red clay mixed with ponderous brown dust. As we advanced the metal seemed to become less pure, until, after an extant of two leagues and a-half, it altogether vanished, and was succeeded by the common clayey land, &c. I had often heard of this immense mass of metal, but none of the reports had presented any adequate picture of it to the imagination. The very core of the hill, as far as we could judge, appeared to consist of vast blocks of iron, in tables; and it is so free from alloy as to produce when smelted ninety-five per cent. of pure metal."
[62] As mining labour was imposed as an obligation upon the Indians by the conquerors, so it came to be looked upon as the occupation of a caste, and of a caste looked down upon by all who boasted of the slightest admixture of European blood in their veins.
[63] The "Uninhabited Region."
[64] When Soria descended the Vermejo in 1826, it was deemed a good opportunity to send a collection of specimens of the various woods of these region to Buenos Ayres that they might be examined and more properly described, and he told me he had no less than seventy-three different species with him, the whole of which were taken from him by Dr. Francia, in Paraguay, with everything else on board his vessel.
[65] In 1834 a series of trials was made at Toulon in order to ascertain the comparative strength of cables made of hemp and of the aloe (brought from Algiers), which resulted greatly in favour of the latter. Of cables of equal size, that made from the aloe raised a weight of 2000 kilogrammes, that of hemp a weight of only 400.
[66] Pulqué is described by Mr. Ward as the favourite beverage of the lower classes in some parts of Mexico. The aloe plant, from which it is prepared, is cultivated for the purpose in extensive plantations; and so great is the consumption of it, that before the revolution the revenue derived from a very small municipal duty levied upon it at the gates of the towns averaged 600,000 hard dollars a-year, and in 1793 amounted to 817,739, or about 170,000l. sterling.—See Ward's 'Mexico,' vol. i. p. 55.
[67] A small iron steamer, which might be had for 25,000l. or 30,000l., would be quite sufficient to begin with.
CHAPTER XIV.
PROVINCES OF CUYO.
The town of Cuyo formerly attached to Cordova. Value of the old municipal institutions. San Luis, wretched state of the population. The miserable weakness of the Government, exposes the whole southern frontier of the Republic to the Indians. Aconcagua seen from the town. Mines of Carolina. Account of a journey over the Pampas in a carriage. Mendoza, extent, rivers, artificial irrigation, productions. Mines not worth working by English companies. Ancient Peruvian road. City of Mendoza, and salubrity of the Climate. San Juan. The productions similar to those of Mendoza, Wine, Brandy, and Corn. Quantity of Corn produced yearly. Mines of Jachal. Character of the people. Passes across the Andes. Dr. Gillies' account of an excursion by those of the Planchon and Las Damas. Singular animal found in the provinces of Cuyo named the Chlamyphorus, described by Mr. Yarrell.
The towns of San Luis, San Juan, and Mendoza, with their several jurisdictions, each of which is now considered a separate province, in the time of the Viceroys were subject to the Intendency of Cordova. In 1813, by a decree of the National Congress, they were separated from that government, and formed into a distinct province, under the denomination of the Province of Cuyo,[68] of which Mendoza was made the capital; but in this, as in the other divisions of the republic enacted about the same time, the bonds were too loosely knit to resist the shocks of party struggles and domestic convulsions; and this arrangement, though wisely planned, fell with the dissolution of the Congress at Buenos Ayres which created it.
But for the cabildos and municipal institutions which still existed in most of the principal towns of the interior when the metropolitan government was dissolved, in 1820, I believe every semblance of a legitimate authority would have ceased. They retained to a certain extent powers not only for the preservation of the public peace, but for the administration of justice; and although perhaps, under the circumstances, they afforded facilities for the establishment of the federal system in opposition to a more centralised form of government, there is no doubt they saved the insulated towns in the interior from worse consequences. Those institutions were by far the best part of the colonial system planted by the mother country, and they were framed upon principles of liberality and independence which formed a very singular exception to her general colonial policy. I doubt whether those which in most cases have been substituted for them have been so wisely cast, or are so suitable to the state of society in those countries. The people at large were habituated and attached to them, and had they been retained, with some reforms adapting them to the new order of things, they might have been made the very best foundations for the new republican institutions of the country. But the truth was, they were essentially too democratic for the military power which arose out of the change; they succumbed to that, and the people, having no real voice in their new governments, made no struggle to preserve them.