PROVINCE OF CORRIENTES.
The population of the province of Corrientes in 1824 was estimated at from 35,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. It is ruled by a governor elected by a junta of deputies,—how they are chosen I know not. His official acts are countersigned by a secretary, and in law matters he is assisted by an officer termed the assessor,—a point of form common, I believe, to all the provincial administrations, and derived from the practice of the intendents in the time of the Spanish rule.
The city of Corrientes was begun in 1588, soon after De Garay founded his settlements at Santa Fé and Buenos Ayres. Its position is in latitude 27° 27´, at the junction of the rivers Paranã and Paraguay, and it may also be said of the Vermejo, the mouth of which is not more than ten leagues distant from it:—it affords, in consequence, every facility for an active commercial intercourse with the most remote parts of the republic. The natural productions in these latitudes are similar to those of Brazil, and cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, indigo, and many other articles of the first demand in the markets of Europe, may be produced there in any quantity:—but the same difficulties to which I have already alluded, in speaking of the navigation of the Paranã, aggravated by increased distance, have hitherto prevented the people of Corrientes from profiting, as might have been expected, by these advantages, and have checked all inducement to industry; although they themselves, in their simplicity, ascribe the non-cultivation of their lands to different causes:—they think, with their neighbour Dr. Francia, that foreign ships might just as well go to them as to Buenos Ayres, and that they do not do so they ascribe to the policy of the metropolitan government, which they ungratefully reproach with refusing to throw open the navigation of the river to foreign trade in order to appropriate to their own purposes the revenue resulting from it,—regardless of the fact that the collection of those duties is the only means by which Buenos Ayres can ever expect to discharge either interest or capital of the heavy debts she has incurred in securing the independence, and in since upholding the honour and credit of the republic.
There can be no doubt that it will always be the true policy of the governors of Buenos Ayres to render those duties as light as possible, and especially to reduce, as far as they can, all charges upon the native produce from the provinces of the interior; but if they are to be placed, as they always have been, and from their geographical position always must be, in the vanguard of the republic, to bear the brunt of foreign wars, and all those expenses which must naturally arise out of their intercourse with other nations, they can never give up their right to avail themselves of the ordinary resources for meeting such exigencies which are placed within their reach.
If the expenses of the war with the mother country for their independence, and afterwards of that with Brazil for establishing that of the Banda Oriental, could be fairly apportioned amongst the population of the provinces, the people of Corrientes, as well as of all other parts of the interior, would soon see that the custom-house duties now levied at Buenos Ayres which affect them would go but little way to meet anything like the share of that national expenditure which might be justly charged against them.
It is, however, useless to enter into this discussion, when the truth is, that, whether Buenos Ayres chooses or not to declare the navigation of the Paranã free, the people of Corrientes may rest assured it will never answer to the shipping of foreign nations to avail themselves of it:—foreigners will purchase the productions of Corrientes and of Paraguay if placed within their reach at low prices, but they will not unnecessarily incur the risks and expenses of sending their own ships a thousand miles up a river against wind and tide, in quest of a cargo which may at all times be had in the seaports of Brazil.
Steam-communication will enable the Correntinos to compete with the Brazilians, and it is perhaps the only means by which they will be enabled to find any sale for their produce at such a rate as will make it worth the while of foreigners to seek for it, even in the market of Buenos Ayres. They have every facility for establishing it,—navigable rivers communicating with the farthest extremes of the republic,—and an endless abundance of wood of every kind for fuel.
A remarkable physical feature in this province is the great lagoon of Ybera, extending in width about thirty leagues parallel to the course of the Paranã, from which it is supposed to derive its waters by some underground drainage, for no stream runs into it. Spreading far and wide to the south it occupies the enormous space of about a thousand square miles, and supplies four considerable rivers—the Mirinay, which runs into the Uruguay; and the Santa Lucia, the Bateles, and the Corrientes, which discharge themselves into the Paranã. It was Azara's opinion, from the general aspect of the country, that the Paranã itself at some former period took its course through this lake, and might again resume its ancient channel. At present it is hardly possible to explore any part of it from the prodigious quantity of aquatic plants and shrubs by which it is for the most part covered.
What a store of lacustrine deposits is here forming for the examination of future geologists!
Connected with this lake is the tradition, which has been handed down by early Spanish writers, of a nation of pigmies who were said to have lived in islands in the midst of it, a tale which the first discoverers, who were generally as ignorant as they were brave, seem to have as implicitly believed as that a race of giants once occupied other parts of the same continent.
Both tales are easily traceable to their true origin, and neither of them is without a plausible foundation.
The bones of extinct animals of monstrous size, so frequently met with, gave rise, as well they might, to the story of the giants. The pigmies are a race unfortunately not yet extinct, and are palpably the ants, whose marvellous works (especially in the part of the country I am speaking of), vying with those of man himself, are no less calculated to have occasioned at first sight, amongst credulous people, the most far-fetched conjectures as to their origin. I have made some allusion, in speaking of the course of the river Paraguay, to their ingenious contrivances in the lakes of Xarayes (where also the pigmy tribes were said to have dwelt), but those are nothing compared to the works of the ants of Corrientes and Paraguay, where whole plains are said to be covered with their buildings of dome-like and conical forms, rising five and six feet and more in height, and formed of a cement hard as a rock, and impervious to the wet. Man's vanity might easily prompt him to mistake them for works of his own kind in miniature; but, all-presumptuous as he is, nothing he has ever yet constructed in all the plenitude of his power is comparable to the works of these little insects. The Pyramids of Egypt do not bear one half the relative proportion to his own size which the ordinary habitations of these ants do to theirs.
Their works under ground are no less extraordinary: Azara has described with his usual minuteness the various species which he fell in with. There is one amongst others which is winged, and the swarms of which are so prodigious, that he says he rode for three leagues continuously through one of them. This was in about the latitude of Santa Fé, where they particularly abound, and where the people catch them and eat them. The hind parts it seems are very fat, and they fry them into a sort of paste or omelette, or, mixed up with sugar, make sweetmeats of them.
They are a sad pest to the agriculturist and a great nuisance when they get inside the houses. At Buenos Ayres they are very troublesome: I tried myself every means in vain to get rid of them; their ingenuity always baffled us; no contrivance could keep anything in the shape of sweetmeats or dried fruits or such things out of their clutches; and as to the quantity of sugar they would carry off in a very short time, it was incredible: we thought to escape them by placing our stores upon tables, the legs of which were surrounded by water, but they threw straws and sticks into the water, and so made themselves bridges to cross by. If we hung them from the ceiling they climbed the walls and descended by the ropes which suspended them. In our garden they committed terrible depredations; and in the summer-season it was always necessary to keep a couple of men constantly employed for the sole purpose of destroying their nests. We observed that they could not exist in the sun; so that, if a basin of sugar were half filled with them, as was constantly the case, by putting it into the sun it was presently cleared of every one of them.
The Jesuit father Guevara, in his account of Paraguay, speaks of a species not noticed by Azara, found about Villa Rica, which deposits upon certain plants small globules of white wax, which the inhabitants collect to make candles of. The utility they are of in this respect, he says, in some measure compensates for the damage they do to the husbandman. Against their depredations, St. Simon and St. Jude, and St. Bonifacio[53], have been by turns elected in due form to be the special guardians and protectors of all good Catholics.
Fortunately, however, in those regions where these insects most abound, an all-wise Providence has also placed a most remarkable animal—formed, as it would appear, expressly for the purpose of destroying them and preventing their overrunning the land—the tamandua, or, as we call it, the ant-bear.
I hardly know any animal which exhibits more striking evidence of design on the part of the Creator: slow and sluggish in all its movements, without power of escape, and apparently without the ordinary means of self-defence, its long trumpet-shaped snout solely formed to contain the singular prehensory organ with which it is furnished for the purpose of taking its diminutive prey, being entirely destitute of anything like the teeth of other animals; it would be speedily exterminated by the beasts of prey which abound where it is found, were it not—as if to compensate for these deficiencies—providentially supplied with strong sharp claws, and such courage and muscular power to use them, as enables it to defy every assailant. When attacked it throws itself upon its back, and in that posture will make so desperate a resistance, that it is a match either for the jaguar or tiger, its fiercest enemies.
The ants are not the worst plagues in these countries: destructive as they are, they are not to be compared with the locusts; though, happily (and indeed were it otherwise, all man's labour would be vain), they are only occasional visitors. When they do come they lay the land utterly desolate.
I once witnessed one of their visitations, and, but that I had myself seen the extent of the devastation caused by them, I certainly would not have believed it.
They made their appearance at first in a large dense cloud, hovering high in the air, as if hesitating where to descend. All the shovels and pots and pans in Buenos Ayres were put in requisition to make a clatter to affright them, but in vain; down they came, to the consternation of the owners of every quinta, or garden, in the neighbourhood of the city. They soon spread for several miles over the surface of the land, and so thickly that it was like driving over gravel to go amongst them;—that, I well remember was just my impression upon going out upon the high road in a carriage whilst they were on the ground. They had then been at their work of destruction two or three days, and were for the most part so gorged as to be quite incapable of moving; in a day or two more they had literally not left a blade of grass or a green leaf to be seen; some of those that were not then dying of satiety began to devour one another. This was early in the year 1826. Though they were always as thick as grasshoppers, I never saw at Buenos Ayres what was termed a flight of locusts but that once, in nearly nine years.
It was succeeded a few days afterwards by a flight of small black beetles, which came down like hail, and were swept up by shovels-full in our balconies: it was a small insect, about the size of an earwig, and was said to have the same habits; they worked their way into the house in great numbers, where they fell into a sort of torpid state, in which they became an easy prey to the ants, who upon this occasion were our active allies, and helped us to get rid of them.