Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de La Plata / Their Present State, Trade, and Debt

by Sir Woodbine Parish

A very different state of things then takes place, and, from the suddenness of such changes, the most ludicrous, though often serious, accidents occur, particularly in the river; whither, of an evening especially, a great part of the population will resort to cool themselves during the hot weather. There they may be seen, hundreds and hundreds of men, women, and children, sitting together up to their necks in the water, just like so many frogs in a marsh: if a pampero breaks, as it often does, unexpectedly upon such an assembly, the scramble and confusion which ensues is better imagined than told; fortunate are those who may have taken an attendant to watch their clothes, for otherwise, long ere they can get out of the river, every article of dress is flying before the gale.

Not unfrequently the pampero is accompanied by clouds of dust from the parched pampas, so dense as to produce total darkness, in which I have known instances of bathers in the river being drowned ere they could find their way to the shore. I recollect on one of these occasions, a gang of twenty convicts, who were working at the time in irons upon the beach, making their escape in the dark, not one of whom, I believe, was retaken.

It is difficult to convey any idea of the strange effects of these dust-storms: day is changed to night, and nothing can exceed the temporary darkness produced by them, which I have known to last for a quarter of an hour in the middle of the day; very frequently they are laid by a heavy fall of rain, which, mingling with the clouds of dust as it pours down, forms literally a shower of mud[17]. The sort of dirty pickle in which people appear after being caught in such a storm is indescribable.

Sometimes the consequences are more serious, and the pampero is accompanied by the most terrific thunder and lightning; such, I believe as is to be witnessed in no other part of the world, unless it be the Straits of Sunda. Nothing can be more appalling. In Azara may be read an account of nineteen persons killed by the lightning which fell in the city during one of these storms.

But the atmosphere is effectually cleared; man breathes once more, and all nature seems to revive under the exhilarating freshness of the gale:—the natives, good-humoured and thoughtless, laugh over the less serious consequences, and soon forget the worst; happy in the belief that, at any rate, they are free from the epidemical disorders of other regions.

Still such variations from the ordinary courses of nature cannot but be productive of strange consequences; and, though the transient effects of an overcharged atmosphere may be quickly dispelled by a pampero, and the people be really free from the epidemics of other countries, there is every reason to believe that, in this particular climate, the human system is in a high degree susceptible of affections which elsewhere would not be deemed worth a moment's consideration. Besides those I have already spoken of as arising from the north wind, old wounds are found to burst out afresh, new ones are very difficult to heal; an apparently trivial sprain will induce a weakness of the part requiring years perhaps to recover from, as I know from my own experience; and lock-jaw from the most trifling accidents is so common as to constitute the cause of a very great portion of the deaths from hurts in the public hospitals. A cut thumb, a nail run into the hand or foot, a lacerated muscle, will generally terminate in it; and our own medical men well know how great a proportion of our wounded in the attack of 1806 and 1807 died from this dreadful cause. The native practitioners attribute its frequent occurrence to some peculiarity in the atmosphere acting upon the system in a manner they are as yet unable to explain. Under the name of the "mal de siete dias" (the seven days' sickness), a vast number of children are carried off by it in the first week of their existence; but, as this mortality is principally limited to the lower orders, it may perhaps in most cases be traced to mismanagement and neglect. With us, the long confinement of the mother ensures the same care of the infant in the first weeks of its life; but, in a country where the mother leaves her bed in two or three days to return to her work, the child must often be neglected. Many a Buenos Ayrean washerwoman may be seen at her usual work at the riverside three or four days after her delivery, with her infant lying for the greater part of the day upon a piece of cold hide, beside her on the damp ground. Can any one wonder that it takes cold and dies? There was a time, and but few years ago, when it was gravely asserted that the mortality amongst infants arose from their being baptized with cold water, and the authorities, concurring in the notion, actually issued a decree that none but warm water should be used for such purposes in the churches. I believe, however, that the deaths were not found to diminish, and that the priests are again permitted to use cold water as before, though I doubt the enactment to the contrary having ever been repealed; but why should these cases so generally terminate in lock-jaw[18]?

The dreadful ravages occasioned formerly by the small-pox have latterly been in a great measure arrested amongst the civilised portion of the inhabitants by the general use of vaccination: accidentally conveyed to Buenos Ayres in 1805 by the owner of a cargo of slaves, it was preserved by the patriotic zeal of an enlightened priest, Dr. Segurola, who, deeply impressed with its immense importance, voluntarily devoted himself to the task of propagating it amongst his countrymen, especially the poor, whose ignorant prejudices he had often to combat, and whom he was not unfrequently obliged to bribe to submit to the operation. For sixteen years he laboured incessantly in this vocation, at the expiration of which, he had the satisfaction of finding his single exertions no longer adequate to satisfy the general demand for it. The Government then (in 1822) relieved him of his charge, and instituted a proper establishment for the express purpose of propagating vaccination gratis, not only in the city of Buenos Ayres, but throughout the republic; others were afterwards added in the several country districts, from which the lymph is now distributed to all who apply for it, and has been sent into every province of the interior. The authorities make it compulsory, as far as they can, on parents to carry their children to these establishments; and the parochial priests are charged to see that they do so.

By a report published in 1829 upon this subject, it appeared that in the city alone, in the previous nine months, as many as 4160 children had been vaccinated; a large proportion to the births, which are estimated at little more than 6000 yearly. I was more than once applied to for it from Rio de Janeiro, whither it was always most readily forwarded by the Buenos Ayrean administrators.

But the destruction created by the small-pox amongst the Spaniards was nothing when compared to its dreadful consequences amongst the native Indians. Whole tribes have been swept away by it: I believe, nations—whose languages have been lost. The plague is not more a frightful scourge than this disorder, when it attacks the miserable inhabitants of the pampas: they themselves believe it to be incurable, a feeling which adds to its lamentable consequences, for no sooner does it appear than their tents are raised, and the whole tribe takes to flight, abandoning the unfortunate sufferers to the certainty of perishing of hunger and thirst, if the virulence of the disorder itself does not first carry them off.

An opportunity, however, offered during the time I was at Buenos Ayres of making known to these poor people, also, the effects of vaccination, under circumstances which it is to be hoped may eventually lead to its diffusion amongst them, as well as their more civilised neighbours.