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

by Sir Woodbine Parish

is the frontier province of the republic to the north; and follows in geographical succession those of Tucuman and Catamarca, which bound it to the south and west. The river Vermejo and its tributary, the river of Tarija, constitute its limits to the east. It is divided into the four departments of Salta, Jujuy, Oran, and Tarija; the latter of which has been occupied by the Bolivians, apparently with a determination to maintain possession of it. Deducting the population of that department, the rest of the territory of Salta is estimated to contain nearly 60,000 souls. The city of Salta has between 8000 and 9000 inhabitants. It was founded in 1582, by Don Philip de Lerma, Governor of Tucuman, with a view to secure the communication between that province and Peru from being cut off by the hostile Indians. Its latitude is said to be 24° 30´. Upon the whole it has a neat appearance, and boasts of its cathedral and many churches. It is, however, badly situated in the bottom of a valley, through which flow the rivers Arias and Silleta, the latter of which has of late years abandoned its ancient bed, and seems to threaten at no distant period to burst over the low marshy grounds upon which the city stands. Shut in by the mountain ranges in the neighbourhood, the atmosphere is at certain seasons charged with miasma, giving rise to intermittent fevers and agues, which are very general at those periods amongst the inhabitants.

The form of government in this province, as in all the rest, is based upon the example of that of Buenos Ayres; consisting of a popular assembly, which has the power of electing the Governor. But though democratic in theory, it is far otherwise in practice: the lower orders have not the smallest notion of the real meaning of a representative form of government, and bow with submission to the dictates of a patriarchal coterie of influential families, which, alternately electing and elected, arrange the government amongst themselves very much as suits their own convenience and interests. If any appeal to the people is ever made, it is generally from the necessity of supporting by a demonstration of brute force the pretensions of some particular candidate for power.

Such are these governments in the infancy of society. One may serve as a sample of the rest, although local circumstances may have given rise to slight shades of difference in their appearance. Salta, as a frontier province, during the struggle for independence, was much exposed to the vicissitudes of the war; but this very circumstance roused the energies of the people, and excited in them a spirit of improvement which has placed them in advance of most of the Upper Provinces. The establishment of a printing-press, from which occasionally a newspaper is produced, and of schools, in which reading, writing, and the first rules of arithmetic are taught, are great steps compared with the state of things under the old regime. The clergy, too, either from conviction, or the force of circumstances, are daily becoming more tolerant, and opinions which in old times it would have been heresy to think of, are now as freely discussed as at Buenos Ayres, where religious toleration has become the law of the land.

From Buenos Ayres, Salta is distant 414 leagues, by the post road, and so far the journey may be gone the whole way in a four-wheel carriage; but beyond Salta this is no longer possible, and the traveller must mount his mule to traverse the regions of the Cordillera, which there may be said to begin in earnest, and the rugged and precipitous passes through which are quite impracticable by any other mode of conveyance.

The Salteños boast that within their own territory they possess every climate, from extreme heat to the most intense cold; and, consequently, that they can rear almost every production of nature; for although directly under the tropic, the mountain ranges rise in some places to the height of perpetual snow, counteracting the sun's influence more or less according to the elevation. Thus whilst in all the department of Oran, in the east of the province, the tropical sun has its full influence, under the same latitude in the west, in the mountain districts of Rosario and Rinconada, the cold is intense. In the intermediate valleys the climate is temperate and agreeable. It is in these valleys that the population is chiefly located: they are for the most part highly fertile, being watered by many small rivers and streams, which, running eastward from the mountainous districts, fall into the Salado and Vermejo, which have already been described as the principal aqueducts of these Upper Provinces. Indeed it is in this province that both these noble rivers may be said to have their origin, of which I shall venture to give the following account, chiefly from data published by Colonel Arenales, son of the late Governor of Salta, and now at the head of the topographical department of Buenos Ayres.

As a general observation it may be stated that the tributaries of the Salado all run south, whilst those of the Vermejo will be found to the north of the city of Salta, as may be seen on reference to the map.

The sources of the Salado may be traced to the snowy ranges of Acay, where the river Cachi rises, about fifty leagues' journey westward of Salta, running nearly due south, for more than thirty leagues, through the valleys, successively named Cachi, Calchaqui, Siclantas, and San Carlos; during this course it is joined by three smaller rivers from the west. Six or seven leagues from San Carlos, the river Santa Maria falls into it from the south. This river rises in the province of Catamarca, forty leagues off, running from south to north with little variation. The road from Salta to Catamarca and La Rioja follows its course. At the junction of the Santa Maria the Cachi changes its direction from south-east to north-east, and takes the name of Guachipas, from the town so called, by which it afterwards passes. A little beyond that place the Silleta falls into it, about sixteen leagues to the south of Salta. This river rises near the lake del Toro, to the north-west of Salta, and is augmented by the Arias, from that city, and by two or three other minor streams. Thence the Guachipas turns again south, and, ten leagues below its junction with the Silleta, crosses the high road from Buenos Ayres, where it is called "El Pasage." In the summer season, when the waters are low, its breadth may be here about 100 yards, and not being then more than three or four feet deep, it may be safely forded; but at other seasons when the waters rise, it becomes a very wide and formidable river, the passage of which is rendered extremely dangerous, even to those best acquainted with it, not only from its increased depth and rapidity, but from the many large boulders and trunks of trees which are hurried down by the stream with irresistible violence, and which carry everything before them.

At those times couriers occasionally pass it swimming, or holding by the tails of their horses, which they drive before them. All carriage intercourse is for the time impossible, and the ordinary traffic between Salta and the lower provinces is therefore as matter of course suspended during the rainy season. To obviate so serious an inconvenience, in the time of the Old Spaniards, a survey was made of this part of the river, and a plan was proposed to the government for throwing a bridge over a rocky pass, which, if executed, would have enabled carts as well as passengers to cross it high and dry at any season. The materials were at hand, and the estimate of the whole expense so small that it was difficult to find an objection to it; on the contrary, it was unanimously approved; but, as nothing is done in a hurry in these countries, it was, like many other most notable projects, postponed, "hasta mejor oportunidad," till better times, which, unfortunately for the people of Salta, have never yet arrived.

Ten or twelve leagues below the pass, the river De las Piedras, the last affluent of any consequence, falls in; thence the course of the river is easterly inclining south, as far as Pitos, the frontier fort of Salta in that direction. In the flat saline country through which it afterwards runs, its waters imbibe a brackish taste, from which it takes the name of the Salado, or the salt river, which it preserves the whole way to its junction with the Paranã, near Santa Fé. I have before stated that this river is believed to be navigable as high as Matara, in the latitude of Santiago del Estero.

The Vermejo, the most important of all the affluents of the Paraguay, is formed by two considerable streams, which may be generally called the rivers of Jujuy and Tarija, from those two departments which they respectively drain. At their sources they are at no great distance from each other, but descending from opposite sides of a snow-capped range, the buttresses of which branch out far and wide to the south and east, they are soon hurried away in totally different directions; each, however, finally sweeping round the base of the stupendous platform above, describes, after a long course, the segment of a circle, which is rendered all but complete by the junction of their waters at a point about sixteen leagues below Oran, whence they flow together south in one mighty and navigable stream the whole way to the Paranã. The name of Vermejo, or the red river, is derived from the occasional discoloration of the waters by the red alluvial soil which is washed into them during the periodical floods.