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

by Sir Woodbine Parish

San Julian's was so far an exception, that at high tide the largest ships might enter and lay safely at anchor within the bar off its mouth. A constant supply of water, too, was found three or four miles inland, proceeding from some springs in the hills, about which there was good pasturage, and enough of it to have induced a considerable tribe of Indians to fix upon it as their ordinary dwelling-place. There, also, Viedma proposed to plant a little colony; and, the Viceroy approving the plan, the people were removed from Port Desire in the month of November, and commenced building their habitations in the vicinity of the springs above mentioned, about a league from the coast. They received the materials, and a variety of necessary supplies, from Buenos Ayres, not the least useful of which were some carts and about twenty draught-horses, which enabled them afterwards to keep up a constant communication between the shore and their little settlement.

They found the Indians extremely well disposed, and ready to render them every assistance in their power, in return for the trifling presents they made them. Altogether there might be about 400 of them, and about half as many more were encamped upon the Santa Cruz River further south. These were apparently the only inhabitants of those regions. They said that in their journeys northward they fell in with no other toldos or encampments till they came to a river twenty-five days off; there were some more two days beyond again upon a second river, and thence it was twenty days further to the toldos of the Indians of Tuca-malal, on the river called by Villariño the Encarnacion, which falls into the great River Negro; altogether, according to their computation, something less than fifty days' travel from San Julian's[20]. To those parts they were in the habit of occasionally repairing in order to buy fresh horses from the tribes there resident, who they said had plenty of them, and exchanged them for the guanaco skins which they took from the more southern part of the country. They caught those animals with their bolas and lassoes, and often supplied the colonists with fresh meat when they had no means of their own of obtaining it.

This assistance was of the greater value to them, as the winter set in with a severity, against which they were very indifferently prepared. The months of June, July, and August were piercingly cold, much snow fell, and the people, unused to such a climate, became very sickly, and many of them died. Viedma himself was so ill as to be some time confined to his bed; nor was it till the return of spring that the survivors began to recover their strength, and were able to go on with the works. They got through the subsequent winter better, after their houses were completed, and they were able to collect some necessary comforts about them. The vegetables they planted throve well, and in the second February they gathered in their first harvest, which yielded a fair crop in proportion to the corn sown. The brushwood in the surrounding country was sufficient to supply them with fuel, but there was no timber fit for building, of which they were daily in want; and in quest of this Viedma was induced to make an excursion into the interior by the Indians, who asserted that an abundance was to be had near the source of the Santa Cruz river, which they said was a great lake at the foot of the Cordillera, whither they offered to guide him.

On this expedition he left San Julian's early in November (1782), with some of his own people, and a party of the Indians under their cacique. Proceeding westward, and inclining to the south, over hills and dales, at a distance of about twenty-five leagues they reached the Rio Chico, or little river, which the Indians said fell into the harbour of Santa Cruz. There was at that time no difficulty in fording it, the water not being much above their saddle-girths, and its width not above fifty yards, though, from the appearance of its steep and water-worn banks, it was evidently a much more considerable stream during the season of the floods. The Indians said it was the drain of a lake far in the north-west, formed by the melting of the snows in the Cordillera.

So far, wherever they halted, they had found no lack of pasturage for their horses, or water, or brushwood for fuel; but after crossing the Chico the country became more rocky and barren: fourteen leagues beyond the Chico they came to a much more considerable river, called the Chalia by the Indians, who described it as issuing from another lake in the mountains, between the sources of the Rio Chico and those of the great river of Santa Cruz, which it joined, they said, further on. They found it too deep to cross where they first reached it, and were obliged in consequence to follow its course upwards for eight leagues, over a stony, rugged country, which lamed all their horses, and the desolate appearance of which was increased by the visitation of a flight of locusts which had devoured all the vegetation for three leagues. They crossed it, at last, at a place called Quesanexes by their Indian guides, from a remarkable rock standing out like a tower from the rocky, rugged cliffs which there bounded the bed of the river (some basaltic formation probably).

On looking at the sketch, in the seventh volume of the "Journal of the Geographical Society," of Captain FitzRoy's Survey of the river Santa Cruz, it appears probable that the Chalia is the stream which runs into it from basalt glen, and which, though a very inconsiderable one at the season he passed by it, was manifestly one of much more importance at other times.

Eight leagues after crossing the Chalia they came to the great lake under the Cordillera, which the Indians had talked of as the origin of the Santa Cruz River.

Viedma describes it as of great extent, situated in a sort of bay, or vast amphitheatre of the mountains, from the steep ravines of which ran down the many streams which filled it, chiefly derived from the melting of the snows in the north-west: he skirted it for twelve leagues to its extremity in that direction, and estimated its extreme length at about fourteen; its width, he says, might be from four to five leagues. Some dark patches amongst the snow on the distant heights indicated the clumps of trees of which the Indians had spoken; but the few which Viedma was able to examine were not what he had been led to expect; he speaks of them as resembling a wild cherry, with a fruit in appearance not unlike it, though of a more orange colour, and without a stone and very tasteless; the wood stunted, and so crooked as to be entirely unfit for anything but burning. May it not have been the crab-apple? We know there are plenty of apples further north in the same range.

Describing the appearance of the Cordillera from the head of the lake, he says, towards the north it looked like a vast table-land stretching from east to west; but it had a different appearance in the south, breaking into steep and broken peaks, for the most part covered with snow. The Indians said that neither to the north nor south was the main chain passable by man or beast for a very long distance. They all concurred in stating that a large river issued from the south-east angle of the lake, which they believed to be the great river of Santa Cruz[21]; Viedma, unfortunately, was not able to examine it, as he wished, in consequence of the apparent swelling of the mountain-torrents, which alarmed the Indians lest they should so increase the rivers as to prevent their recrossing them on their return; nor were they very wrong, for, by the time they got back to the Chico, they found it a wide and rapid stream no longer fordable.

It was proposed that some of the Indians who could swim should tow Viedma across on a balsa, which they set to work to construct of hides and sticks, but when completed, it looked so frail and dangerous a ferry, that the Spaniards preferred running the risk of swimming their horses over. This they accomplished without accident, and reached San Julian's in safety again on the 3rd of December, after nearly a month's absence, during which they were much indebted to the Indians for their friendly aid, and knowledge of the country through which they passed.