Plate XX.

[Click to view larger image.]

The navigation was fairly easy, the journey from Corrientes to Buenos Aires (675 miles) lasting, as a rule, from fifteen to twenty days. Going up, the time was more irregular. They had to stop when there was no south wind, or a little progress was made by hauling (silgar). D'Orbigny took a month to travel up.[119] In 1822, before the war with Brazil, there were 651 boats entered at Buenos Aires for coasting trade on the rivers and 1,035 at San Fernando or on the Tigre, the advance port of Buenos Aires. In 1833 Isabelle put at one thousand the number of vessels at work on the Paraná and the Uruguay.

In 1841 Rosas forbade navigation on the river. There was then a double blockade checking the trade of Argentina. The Franco-British fleet closed the Rio de la Plata and blockaded Buenos Aires, where the Government of Rosas was established. In addition, Rosas's troops on the barranca of the right bank prevented any from going up the Paraná, and cut off the interior provinces from the rest of the world. The injury then done to interests which were already fully self-conscious may be gathered from the agitation provoked by the decision of France and England in 1845 to break the blockade of the river. A convoy was at once organized at Montevideo, consisting of no less than ninety-eight ships, of 6,900 tons in all (MacKann). It went up the Paraná under the protection of war-ships, which removed the chains slung across it by Rosas. The convoy dispersed up river as soon as it was out of range of Rosas. But it had needed so great an effort that the attempt could not be made again before the fall of Rosas.

The closing of the Paraná compelled a diversion of the trade of Paraguay toward the south-east. It crossed the isthmus of Misiones, between the Paraná and the Uruguay, and passed down the Uruguay. At this time the whole commercial activity of Paraguay was concentrated at Itapua, on the upper Paraná. The prosperity of the Uruguay was some compensation for the misery that reigned on the Paraná. The populations of Paysandu and Montevideo greatly increased.

In 1852, at the fall of Rosas, the modern period began for the Paraná. The river-population changed rapidly. It ceased to be exclusively creole. Basques, and later Italians, had settled upon the Uruguay ten years before, and they now spread along the Paraná. In 1850 MacKann found fifty vessels, of 20 to 100 tons, belonging to Italians at Santa Fé. This wave of immigration coincided with the development of relations between the Paraná and the port of Montevideo. From 1852 to 1860 Buenos Aires was isolated, and it remained outside the economic life of Argentina. Montevideo took its place. Urquiza's administration sought, in addition, to establish direct maritime communication between over-seas ports and the ports on the river: Gualeguy in Entre Rios, and Rosario in Santa Fé. Under a system of preferential duties (1857-59), which reduced the burden on goods carried by the river, Rosario grew rapidly, and between 1853 and 1858 increased its population from 4,000 to 22,700. The period from 1852 to 1860 was also the time when steam-navigation was developing, and this doubled the value of the river-route. From 1860 onward Buenos Aires was connected by regular services of steamboats with Rosario, Santa Fé, Corrientes, Asunción and Cuyaba. On the upper Paraná goods (timber, tobacco and oranges) were still carried by sailing boats between Corrientes and Apipé, where they stopped at the commencement of the rapids. Steamboats did not sail up the rapids of Apipé until 1868.[120] From 1850 to 1860 there were repeated explorations of the Salado and the Bermejo, as the interior provinces hoped to be able to find a connection with the vivifying artery of the Paraná (voyage of Page on the Salado from Salta in 1855, and of Lavarello on the Bermejo in 1855 and 1863).

In 1860 the entry of Buenos Aires into the Confederation re-established the normal condition of free competition between Buenos Aires and Rosario. From that time the life of the river reflects the advance of colonization in the Pampean region. The Paraná became the highway for the export of cereals.