SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO.
The distance from the city of Cordova to that of Santiago del Estero is 110 leagues by the post-road. Portezuela is the first station beyond the jurisdiction of Cordova, shortly after which commences what is called the Travesia, a vast sandy zone thirty to forty leagues in breadth, for the most part covered with a saline efflorescence, and producing a salsola, from the ashes of which the inhabitants extract soda. It borders the Sierra de Cordova to the north, and extends west as far as La Rioja, running southward nearly to San Luis. In this arid district the sultry heat of the north wind, which is very prevalent in the summer season, is almost insufferable.
My intelligent correspondent Dr. Redhead, who has lived for more than a quarter of a century in the upper provinces, and to whom I am indebted for some of the most valuable of my information respecting them, speaking of its geological appearance, observes in one of his letters how forcibly he had been led to conjecture that the southern part of the province of Santiago must once have been a sea-coast. "Its sandy hillocks, he says, always reminded him of those on the shores of Flanders:"—certain it is, that throughout the whole extent of this sandy zone, from Ambargasta to Noria, the level of the country becomes very much depressed, and falls very nearly to that of Buenos Ayres; thus in the very heart of the continent, at a distance of 700 miles direct from the sea, we have a considerable tract of land hardly elevated above its immediate shores.
The following table of barometrical observations, taken by Dr. Redhead, will not only show the variations in the height of the country intervening between Buenos Ayres and Santiago, but also of that to the northward, along the high road, as far as Tupiza in Peru:—
Barometrical Observations, made on the road from Buenos Ayres to Potosi, by Dr. Redhead:—
| Distance from one place to another Post leagues | Point of Observation | Barometer | Thermometer | Date | Hour | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 134 | Rio Tercero from Buenos Ayres | 28·945 | 86 | Feb. 11 | 11 a.m. | |
| 3 | Cordova | 28·400 | 86 | 20 | 4 p.m. | |
| 14 | Sin-Sacate | 27·990 | 75 | Mar. 12 | 11 a.m. | |
| 22 | San Pedro | 26·990 | 60 | 17 | 6 a.m. | |
| 4 | Durasno | 27·300 | 73 | — | 9 a.m. | |
| 4 | Piedritas | 27·500 | 72 | — | Noon. | |
| 4 | Pozo del Tigre | 27·550 | 71 | — | 5 p.m. | |
| 6 | Portezuela | 27·860 | 69 | 18 | Noon | |
| 6 | Ambargasta | The Travesia | 28·875 | 67 | 19 | 9 a.m. |
| 6 | Punta del Monte | 29·260 | 82 | — | 4 p.m. | |
| 6 | Salinas | 29·600 | 68 | 20 | 6 a.m. | |
| 14 | Noria | 29·400 | 76 | — | 2 p.m. | |
| 24 | Santiago del Estero | |||||
| 40 | Tucuman | 27·563 | 75 | Feb. 10 | ||
| 100 | Jujuy | |||||
| 30 | Humaguaca | 21·415 | 57 | June 2 | 4 p.m. | |
| 8 | Cueba | 21·200 | 54 | 1 | ||
| 3 | Abra de Cortaderas | |||||
| 3 | Colorados | 19·350 | 50 | May 31 | 8 a.m. | |
| 6 | Cangrejos | 19·625 | 32 | 30 | 6 p.m. | |
| 9 | Quiaca | 19·300 | 50 | 29 | 4 p.m. | |
| 5 | Cumbre del Cerro de Berque | 19·100 | 60 | 28 | 11 a.m. | |
| 4 | Berque | 19·975 | 54 | 27 | 4 p.m. | |
| 5 | Talina | 20·800 | 56 | 26 | 9 a.m. | |
| 8 | Tupiza | 26·260 | 60 | 25 | 9 a.m. | |
Note.—At Buenos Ayres the mean of the barometer for the month of March, 1822, was 29·61.
In the upper parts of the Sierra de Cordova granite everywhere breaks through the surface, and innumerable fragments of it may be traced in the descent to the Travesia, whilst beyond that sandy zone there is not a vestige of it throughout the rest of the road to Potosi, the formation the whole way being of blue argillaceous schist and slate, with occasional strata of limestone and red sandstone. In the neighbourhood of Potosi, however, and on the tops of some of the highest mountains in its vicinity, Helms tells us that he fell in with a pretty thick stratum of granite pebbles rounded by the action of water. How, he says, could these masses of granite have been deposited here? Have they been rolled hither by a general deluge, or by some later partial revolution of nature? His astonishment would have been infinitely greater had he known that marine shells are to be found on the lofty mountain of Chorolque (about twelve leagues north-west from Tupiza, between Salta and Potosi), the summit of which has been determined by Dr. Redhead to be 16,530 feet above the level of the sea.
The word Chorolque is corrupted from Churucolque, signifying in the Quichua tongue that the mountain contains silver and shells. The Spaniards, however, little suspected that the latter were to be found there, till, in 1826, an enterprising Frenchman ascended the mountain and brought down specimens which established beyond doubt the fact.
A further study of that language might lead the scientific inquirer to many an important discovery. The disposition of the Peruvians for observation is well known, and their nomenclature of places is generally expressive more or less either of the nature of the soil, or some peculiarity attached to it: thus a person well versed in Quichua is beforehand aware of what he is to see. Peutocsi, for instance, difficult to be properly pronounced by an European, and corrupted into Potosi, signifies, "It is said to have burst forth:" such must have been their tradition, which the very appearance of this singular cone, standing alone and distinct from the system of mountains which surrounds it, and the hot springs in its vicinity, would seem to corroborate.
It is in the province of Santiago that the Quichua is first met with. The Jesuits reduced it to a written language, and published a grammar and dictionary of it in Peru.
The city of Santiago is a miserable ill-built place, containing not more than 4000 souls. It is situated in lat. 27° 47´, according to Azara, upon the banks of a considerable river which rises in the territory of Tucuman, and running south through this province is finally lost, under the name of the Rio Dulce, in the great lakes called the Porongos, to the west of Santa Fé. The whole population of the province it estimated to be about 50,000; the greater part of which is much scattered in small villages built along the courses of this river and of the Salado, which runs parallel to it, and separates the province on that side from the gran-chaco, or desert, the low lands along their banks being better suited for the pasturage of cattle and for cultivation than the other parts of the province. The soil there is well adapted to the growth of wheat, which is said to yield eighty for one.
In most parts of the province the cactus may be seen growing to an unusual size, and the cochineal gathered from it used to form one of the most valuable productions of this part of the country: from 8000 to 10,000 lbs. of it were annually sent to Chile and Peru. Large quantities of wild beeswax and honey were also collected in the woods and sent to the other provinces, in which they were always in demand; but the civil dissensions which have of late years been so frequent in these provinces have checked the industry of the people, who have almost entirely abandoned their old pursuits, and given up their yearly gatherings of these once valued productions. This is the more to be regretted as they are said to be naturally an enterprising and intelligent race, less given to habitual indolence than some of the other inhabitants of these latitudes. The women manufacture ponchos and coarse saddle-cloths, or blankets, which are sold in great numbers to the people of Tucuman and Salta.
To the eastward of the river Salado lies the vast region commonly called the Gran-chaco, or desert, which extends to the Paranã, and reaches north as far as the province of Chiquitos, solely inhabited by Indians of various tribes, who, safe in their own forests and jungles, have there found a refuge from Spanish domination and persecution. It is through this territory that the rivers Pilcomayo and Vermejo wind their tortuous courses to the Paranã from the most remote parts of the interior of the Upper Provinces.
Some way beyond the Salado, about seventy leagues east from Santiago (in lat 27° 28´), was found that very remarkable specimen of native iron which I sent to this country some years ago, and which is now deposited in the British Museum. Its existence was first made known by some of the people of Santiago, who had passed through that part of the country in their journeys to the forests beyond to collect honey; and their reports, which were transmitted to Buenos Ayres, induced the Viceroy, in 1788, to send Don Reuben de Celis, an officer in the King's service, to examine it. His report upon it was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1788, and excited much speculation at the time.
As in those times the working of iron was forbidden in South America, after sundry specimens of it were forwarded to Lima, to Buenos Ayres, and to Spain, the remainder lay neglected for many years in its original site.
In the beginning of the struggle for independence, however, when the Spanish ships of war blockaded Buenos Ayres, iron, amongst other necessaries, becoming extremely scarce, the people recollected De Celis's account, with the reports of the Indians, that in the same parts there were extensive veins of the same mineral; and at a great expense the mass in question was sent for and brought to Buenos Ayres. By the time it got there the blockade was over; and as it was evidently much easier to procure iron from Europe than by a cart-carriage of 1000 miles from the uninhabited wilds of the Chaco, no further trouble was taken to determine whether or not the Indian reports of its being procurable in larger quantities were true or not. By way of experiment a pair of pistols were manufactured from it, which were sent as a present to the President of the United States, and what remained was placed at my disposal by the Minister of Buenos Ayres on the occasion of my signing the treaty with him in 1825, which recognised on the part of Great Britain the political independence of his country. I sent it to Sir Humphrey Davy to be placed in the British Museum, hoping that he would himself have analysed it, and given his opinion respecting its supposed meteoric origin. The analysis I believe was never made, owing to his death, which occurred very shortly after the arrival of the iron in this country.
It seems, however, to have been assumed here that this iron, as a matter of course, is meteoric, because it contains those admixtures of nickel and cobalt which accompany other known meteoric productions. It appears to me that the hypothesis is not very satisfactorily or conclusively made out.
The mass I sent home weighs about 1400 pounds, and, making allowance for what may have been taken from it at Buenos Ayres, may probably when it arrived there have been not much less than a ton weight. Now De Celis estimates the mass he examined to have been about fifteen tons weight, and of much larger dimensions: either this therefore is only a fragment of what he particularly described, or it is another which has been found in the same part of the country, and if so, is corroborative of the Indian accounts of there being more in the vicinity. This was the opinion of Dr. Redhead, who, in writing to me on the subject, says, "The native iron found in Santiago is not a single mass, as has been said; there are several, and the most recent accounts describe them as huge trunks with deep roots (I use the expression of the natives), supposed to communicate with each other."[60]
Dr. Redhead's observation was caused by a discussion which arose here upon some other specimens of native iron, which he had forwarded to me, from the desert of Atacama, in Peru, and which were described by the late Mr. Allan in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1828. They were analysed by Dr. Turner, who found them to contain—
| Iron | 93·4 |
| Nickel | 6·618 |
| Cobalt | 0·535 |
| 100·553 |
a result which he considered decisive concerning their origin, because, he says, it differs from any compound hitherto described in the earth, and corresponds exactly both in appearance and composition with other meteoric iron.
But these opinions differ entirely from the belief of those who procured the specimens.
That iron is found scattered in large quantities over a plain at the foot of a mountain a little to the south-west of a small Indian village called Toconao, ten leagues from San Pedro, the capital of Atacama, and about eighty from Cobija, on the coast. The tradition there is, that the fragments have been thrown out by some volcanic explosion from the side of the neighbouring mountain, in which the people of Toconao say there is a large veta of pure iron. The Indian who collected the specimens which I sent to this country was employed to catear, or search for mines; and the nature of his occupation rendered it requisite for him to be particular in his observations: his account was, that "they were taken from a heap of the same nature, estimated at about three hundred-weight, and that they existed at the month of a veta, or vein of solid iron, situated at the foot of a mountain; he called them 'reventazones,' or explosions from the mine, or veta. He had been charged to bring a piece of the veta itself, and some of the rock in which it is embedded, but this he said he could not effect for want of tools; he therefore contented himself with picking up some of the pieces that were at the foot of the hill, where the mouth of the vein opens."
Dr. Redhead says, that in giving him this account the man endeavoured to give him also some idea of the direction of the vein in the mountain.
Further inquiries were subsequently made, the result of which corroborated his testimony. The alcalde of Toconao, who had been at the place, stated that the fragments had issued from a cavity of about fifteen feet diameter, which, from the nature of the soil, was filling up. This is sandy, and for three leagues round there is neither wood nor water nor pasture of any kind. Several persons in San Pedro, and amongst others one named Gonzales, who had likewise seen the cavity, gave a similar account.
The Atacama iron is certainly remarkably similar to the specimen of that met with by Pallas in Siberia, which is to be seen in the British Museum, but what proof is there of that being meteoric?
The Santiago iron differs from them both in appearance. The Atacama and Siberian specimens are full of cavities, looking like large sponges or scoriæ. That from Santiago, on the contrary, is more like a solid lump of well-kneaded dough.
So long as such specimens were supposed to be of very rare occurrence, and differing as they do from the character of all other known minerals, it was not extraordinary that they should have been ascribed to an extraneous origin; but now that further discoveries have proved their existence in all parts of the world, and that enormous masses of similar iron have been met with in the northern parts of America, in Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Brazil,[61] and the provinces of La Plata, to speak of that continent alone, I think we may begin to doubt whether they may not be bonâ fide productions of our own planet, instead of bringing them from the moon, or elsewhere. On this I shall only quote another passage from the letters of my excellent correspondent, who took the trouble to institute the inquiries for me as to the origin of the specimens from Atacama. "Time," he says, "may perhaps justify the tradition or opinion of the Indians relative to the origin of this iron; nor do I know why we should refuse to Nature the power of reducing in her laboratory a metal so easily separated from its combinations by the efforts of man."