"Yesterday we had another of those awful dust-storms which you have previously witnessed; it came on about a quarter past twelve o'clock. The rapidity of its approach, and awful opacity, alarmed the whole population; in an instant, as it were, there was a transition from the glaring ray of the meridian to the most intense darkness. Immense flocks, or rather one immense flight of birds, immediately preceded it, and, in fact, however incredible it may appear, commenced the obscurity by their numbers.
"The whole time of its duration was eleven minutes and a half, the total darkness eight minutes and a half, by watch, observed by Dr. S. and myself by candlelight; it was accompanied by loud claps of thunder, but not a ray of lightning was visible, although the thunder was by no means distant. After eleven minutes and a half the rain began to fall in very large black drops, which had the effect upon the white walls of making them appear, when the sun again showed itself, as if they had been stained or sprinkled with ink. I never witnessed a more majestic or awful phenomenon. The consternation was general; every one rushing into the nearest house, and all struggling to shut their doors on their neighbours. I have heard as yet of no accidents, although doubtless there must have been many; the wind, of course from S.S.W."
[18] Horses are very liable to the same affection, and are continually lost from it.
CHAPTER VII.
HISTORY OF THE SPANISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE COAST OF PATAGONIA.
Little known of Patagonia till the appearance of Falkner's work in 1774. It stimulates the Spanish Government to send out an expedition under Piedra in 1778, to form settlements upon the coast. He discovers the Bay of San Joseph's. Francisco Viedma forms a settlement on the River Negro. Antonio, his brother, explores the southern part of the coast, and forms another at San Julian's. His account of the Indians he found there. The New Settlements abandoned in 1783, with the exception of that on the River Negro. Villariño ascends that river, as far as the Cordillera opposite Valdivia. A dispute with the Araucanian Indians prevents his communication with the Spaniards of Chile, and obliges him to return. Piedra succeeds Viedma, attacks the Pampa Tribes, and is defeated. Don Ortiz de Rosas, father of the present Governor of Buenos Ayres, is taken prisoner by them, and succeeds in bringing about a general pacification. Subsequent neglect of the settlement on the Rio Negro. Its population in 1825, and coasting-trade with Buenos Ayres.
Before they became independent of Spain, and whilst the people of Buenos Ayres possessed in the Banda Oriental more waste lands than they wanted, safe from any incursions of the Indians, and better adapted perhaps than any other in South America for the rearing of cattle, at that time their only object, they had no particular inducement to extend their possessions further than the River Salado; all beyond was left to the Indians, and little or nothing was known of their country, except what they chose to communicate, until Falkner published his account of Patagonia in a country town in England in 1774. The appearance of that book produced results which the author perhaps little anticipated, for it stimulated the Spanish Government to make a general survey of the coast of Patagonia, and to form settlements upon it, the history of which to this day has never yet been made public. It is of those measures, and the information derived from them, that I purpose to give some account in this chapter.
Father Falkner, the author above alluded to, was an Englishman, who, from a very early age, seems to have had a passion for travelling. Brought up to the medical profession, he went in the capacity of a surgeon on board a trading-vessel to Cadiz, where he embarked in one of the Assiento ships, bound on a slaving voyage, eventually to Buenos Ayres: there he was induced to enter the order of Jesuits, in which, as a missionary, he afterwards made himself conspicuous for the zeal with which he devoted himself to the conversion of the Indian inhabitants of the unexplored regions of that part of the world. Forty years he passed amongst them, and, but for the expulsion of his order from South America, he would probably have ended his days there. On his return to England, he wrote his book, to this day the only authentic account we have of the manners and customs of the Indians of the pampas, whilst the map it contains, compiled partly from his own observations, and partly from Indian accounts, has furnished the principal, if not the sole data for all those which have since been published of the interior of their country.
One of his principal objects avowedly was to point out how vulnerable by any hostile naval power were the Spanish possessions in those parts; and hardly had the book appeared when the Spanish Government, taking alarm lest his suggestions should be listened to in England, sent secret orders to the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres to have the whole coast of Patagonia carefully surveyed, with a view "to the formation of such new settlements upon it as might secure the King of Spain's rights, and forestall the English in their supposed intention of appropriating to themselves the valuable fisheries on the southern part of the coast."
Competent officers were sent out from Spain for the purpose, and no expense was spared to execute the survey as completely as possible. The command was intrusted to Don Juan de la Piedra, who sailed from Monte Video on this service on the 15th December, 1778.