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

by Sir Woodbine Parish

The people of this tribe, who had never seen a Spaniard before, Viedma describes as of large stature, generally above six feet high, and very stout and fleshy; their faces broad, but of good expression, and their complexion rather sunburnt than naturally dark. Their skin cloaks, worn very long, and reaching when on foot to their heels, gave them an appearance of greater height than the reality. Their habits and customs, according to his account, seem to differ little from those of the Pampa tribes, of which I shall elsewhere have to speak. The men employed themselves in hunting guanacoes and other animals for their skins, and for meat to eat, whilst the women performed all the domestic offices and drudgery of the household, such as it was; but the good disposition uniformly shown by them gave Viedma a most favourable opinion of them, forming, as it did, a striking contrast with the character of the tribes further north.

Shortly after this excursion (in April, 1783) Don Antonio, considering his little colony as fairly planted, proceeded to Buenos Ayres for the recovery of his health. There the mortification awaited him of learning that all his labour had been thrown away, and that the Government of Spain had resolved to break up the Patagonian settlements. The fact was, that the great trouble and expense already incurred, from the necessity of supplying all their first wants from Buenos Ayres; the grumbling and complaints of the settlers themselves, of the hardships they had to go through, and of the inclemency of a climate to which they were unaccustomed (which, joined to the bad quality of their salt provisions, had certainly produced scurvy amongst them to a frightful extent), had all tended to create so unfavourable an impression upon the Viceroy, that he had been led to express a strong opinion to his Government as to their worse than uselessness. The consequence was, that after three or four years, in which upwards of a million of hard dollars was spent upon them, orders were sent out to abandon them all, except the settlement upon the Rio Negro, after setting up at San Joseph's, Port Desire, and San Julian's, signals of possession, as the English had done at Port Egmont, for evidence in case of need, of his Catholic Majesty's rights[22].

Don Antonio Viedma, who took a lively interest in the settlement he had formed at San Julian's, in vain raised his voice against this determination, and endeavoured to show that the grievances of the settlers were but the natural difficulties to be expected in the infancy of all new colonies; that they knew the worst of them, and many of their remedies; that a further experience of the seasons had shown that the lands, so far from being unfit for cultivation, as amongst other things was alleged, were quite sufficiently productive to support them in after-years without further aid from Buenos Ayres; and as to the expenses, the heaviest were already incurred; whilst the fisheries alone promised sources of wealth and revenue to the mother country, as well as to the neighbouring viceroyalty. But these arguments met with little attention, and came too late to alter the determination of the higher powers.

The same jealous policy which led the Spanish Government to cause the coast of Patagonia to be surveyed, equally influenced them in withholding from publication the results, which remained carefully hid from all inspection in the archives of the Viceroyalty, though I cannot but think, had the reports even of Viedma himself been given to the world, they would have been the best possible security to his Catholic Majesty against the curiosity or encroachments of foreign nations. Not only did they all tend to show that the coast itself was full of dangers, but they also proved that the interior of the land was, throughout, a steril and desolate waste, scarce of water and vegetation: a region fit enough for the wild beasts which had possession of it, but very little adapted for the supply of any of the wants of man. I cannot conceive what temptations such possessions could possibly have offered to any European power whatever, nor can it, I think, create surprise that Spain herself abandoned them.

With respect to the fisheries, had there been any real spirit of enterprise in the people of Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, they might have monopolized them; but no such spirit existed, and they were suffered to fall into the hands of the more adventurous sailors of England, North America, and France. They equally neglected the importation of salt, though a more necessary article to them, perhaps, could hardly have been placed within their reach; and after Viedma's voyage it was well known that any quantity of it, of an excellent quality, could be obtained either at San Joseph's, Port Desire, or San Julian's. All that was necessary was to collect it at the proper season, in the months of January, February, and March, when it is hard and dry, and consequently in the fittest state for shipping.

Dean Funes, the historian of Buenos Ayres, writing on this subject, cannot suppress his indignation at the apathy of his countrymen, though he attempts, at the same time, to find an excuse for it in an observation of Humboldt's with a simplicity quite worth quoting. He says—"Who doubts that the Spaniards of South America might have carried on these fisheries at infinitely less cost than the English and North Americans, when their own coasts of Patagonia and round Cape Horn are known to abound in whales, even in the harbours, by all accounts? But it was not the cost, neither was it the want of hands, which caused this important object to remain neglected. It was the natural indolence of the people and indifference of the Government. How, indeed, was it possible," he adds, "to find men to follow the hard profession of the sea, amongst a people who prefer a hunch of beef to all the comforts of life? 'The hope of gain,' Baron Humboldt observes, 'is too weak a stimulus in a climate where bounteous nature offers man a thousand ways of obtaining a comfortable subsistence without the necessity of leaving his native home to go to fight with the monsters of the deep.'"

The Dean was a wise old man, who knew the character of his countrymen thoroughly. Nor are his observations confined to the Spaniards of South America. Speaking of the ill-success of a company in Spain to which the king, in 1790, had conceded extraordinary privileges, as an encouragement to carry on these fisheries, he says—"Its continual losses, up to the period of its final failure, lead us to the conclusion, that projects depending upon intelligence, economy, and activity, are not made for a people notoriously behindhand in information, and habitually extravagant and lazy."

Whilst Don Antonio was occupied at San Julian's, his brother, Don Francisco, was with no less zeal laying the foundations of the settlement upon the Rio Negro, the only one, as it appeared, of these new establishments which was destined to be maintained.

It certainly possessed many advantages over the more southern parts of the coast which had been explored. It was not, like San Julian's, a thousand miles distant from the governing authorities. Succours in case of need could be sent to it by land as well as by sea from Buenos Ayres; and this consideration alone obviated the strongest objections made by the poorer classes to settling themselves permanently on other parts of the coast. The river itself was not only a safeguard against the Indians, but fertilized the adjoining lands, and insured to the colonists a never-failing supply of fresh water, the want of which had caused perhaps the greatest part of their sufferings at the other places.

There were also other motives which operated more powerfully than these in determining the Spanish Government to maintain a settlement upon the River Negro.