In the domestic dissensions, however, which succeeded the establishment of the Independent Government at Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé took an active part, and disputed the right of the newly-constituted authorities to interfere in the nomination of the provincial administrations. Under these circumstances, in 1818, Lopez, a military officer who had particularly distinguished himself in his resistance to the Central Government upon this point, obtained the command of the province, in which he has ever since been continued. Various circumstances have concurred to leave him not only in undisturbed possession of this local authority, but to render him in later times a personage of some importance in the political history of the Republic. The jurisdiction he lays claim to for the soi-disant province of Santa Fé extends as far south as the Arroyo del Medio, to the west to the lakes of Porongos, and to the north as far as the lands of the Indians of the Gran-chaco, or Great Desert, against whom he has enough to do to defend himself.
In old times Santa Fé under the protection of the Central Government, which spared no expense in constructing forts and maintaining the forces requisite to keep the Indians in check, was the central point of communication not only between Buenos Ayres and Paraguay, but between Paraguay and the provinces of Cuyo and Tucuman: the wines and dried fruits of Mendoza and St. Juan were brought there to be carried up to Corrientes and Paraguay, which in return supplied the people of those provinces, as well as those of Chile and Peru, through the same channel, with all the yerba-maté they required, of which the annual consumption in those provinces alone was calculated at from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 lbs.
The estancieros were amongst the richest in the Vice-Royalty; and their cattle-farms not only covered the territory of Santa Fé, but large tracts on the eastern shores of the river in the Entre Rios; from which they furnished by far the greater part of the 50,000 mules yearly sent to Salta for the service of Peru.
Their situation is now a very different one: the stoppage of the trade with Paraguay and Peru has reduced them to a wretched state of poverty; and their estrangement from the capital having left them without adequate means of defence, the savages have attacked them with impunity, laid waste the greater part of the province, and more than once threatened the town itself with annihilation.
The population has greatly diminished;—perhaps in the whole province there are not now more than 15,000 or 20,000 souls, a large proportion of which is of Guarani origin, the descendants of emigrants from the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, who abandoned them after the expulsion of their pastors in 1768.
This state of things is the more lamentable as Santa Fé might, under a different system, become one of the most important points of the Republic: once more under the decided protection of the Government of Buenos Ayres, not only might its own particular interests be vastly advanced, but the greatest benefits might result to the rest of the union.
Its situation offers striking facilities for carrying on a more active transit-trade between Buenos Ayres and the provinces north of Cordova. The river Salado, on which it stands, is known to be navigable for barges as high up as Matara, in the province of Santiago, and at no great distance from that city; if it were made use of there would be a saving of upwards of 250 leagues of land-carriage in conveying goods from Buenos Ayres to Santiago; but, even if this should turn out not to be so practicable as it is said to be, a direct road is open from Santa Fé which, passing by the lakes of Porongos, skirts the river Dulce, and falls into the high road from Cordova a few posts south of the city of Santiago; which, at the lowest computation, would still be 100 leagues short of the over-land route now used from the capital to the Upper Provinces by way of Cordova.
In any part of the world such a saving of land-carriage would be a considerable object; but in a country where the roads are just as nature has made them, and where the only means of transport for heavy goods are the most unwieldy of primitive waggons, drawn by oxen—the slowest of all conveyances,—not to speak of its expense, and the risks, independently of the wear and tear necessarily attending it, it becomes of the greatest importance. That it has not hitherto been available, is owing to the difficulties attending the navigation of a large river, not only against the current, but against a prevalence of contrary winds, which have rendered the passage of the Paranã up to Santa Fé even more tedious and expensive than the long over-land journey. But the introduction of steam-boats would at once obviate this, and enable the people of Buenos Ayres to send their heaviest goods to Santa Fé by water-carriage in less time than a horse can now gallop over the intervening country, for there is no reason in the world why the ordinary voyage thither should exceed at the utmost three days. I can hardly imagine a greater change in the prospects of a people than this would open to the Santa Fecinos.
There is, however, another point of view, of serious consequence to Buenos Ayres, in which for her own sake it concerns her to look to the advantages, if not to the necessity, of taking speedy measures to introduce steam-navigation upon the Paranã. Since the erection of the Banda Oriental into an independent state, the yearly imports into Monte Video have increased out of all ratio to the scanty population of that state:—it is very evident what becomes of the excess, and that not only the people on the eastern, but those on the western, shores of the Uruguay, are supplied through that channel. The government of Monte Video takes care so to regulate its duties as to make this a profitable trade:—whilst it cannot be denied that the inhabitants of Entre Rios and Santa Fé have quite as much right to traffic with their neighbours as those of Mendoza and Salta have to trade with Chile and Peru.