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

by Sir Woodbine Parish

The cactus, bearing the cochineal insect, and the aloe are found in every direction:—from the macerated fibres of the latter, the Indians of the Chaco make yarn and ropes, which are found less liable to rot in water than hemp:—their fishing-nets are made of this material, and a variety of bags and pouches, for which there is always a demand amongst their more civilised neighbours: these articles are variously dyed in indelible colours, prepared also by the Indians. There is no doubt that this plant, which grows as commonly in most parts of South America as the thistle with us, might be turned, here as elsewhere, to very considerable account for many useful purposes. I have seen not only beautiful rope, but very good coarse cloth manufactured from it; indeed I have now in my possession some paintings done in Peru upon a canvass made from it, which could not be distinguished from any coarse linen of European make.[65]

At Buenos Ayres, where the hedgerows are generally formed of the common aloe, I had an opportunity of trying various experiments with it, and had some cordage made from it of beautiful texture and whiteness by some sailors from one of his Majesty's ships. I also tried my hand at making pulqué, after seeing Mr. Ward's account of the manner in which it is made in Mexico; but, though we obtained an abundance of the liquor, following the process described by him of taking out the stem as soon as it began to shoot, and collecting the sap as it accumulated in the socket or basin beneath, it was never sufficiently palatable to our tastes to be drinkable; but this probably was from our want of experience in the mode of preparing it: however, I have no doubt that consumers enough might be found of this or any other such beverage amongst a people who can drink so filthy a preparation as the chicha, the liquor in common use amongst the natives of the united provinces,—one of the ingredients of which is said to be maize chewed by old Indian women.[66]

In some of those saline and arid districts, where no other fresh water is to be found, there grows a species of the aloe, well known to the natives, from which, on being tapped by an incision made in one of the thickest leaves, a clear stream will spurt out sufficient to allay the traveller's thirst.

In many parts of Oran is found the celebrated cuca, or coca, plant (Erythroxylon Peruviana), sometimes called El Arbol del hambre y de la sed,—"The tree of hunger and thirst;" to the natives more necessary than bread. Hungry or weary, with some leaves of coca to chew, mixed with a little lime or alkali of his own preparation, the Peruvian Indian seems to care for no other sustenance:—he never swallows it, but is perpetually chewing it, as the Asiatics do the beetle-nut: give him but his bag full of this, and at most a little dried maize besides, and he will undertake the hardest labour in the mines, and, as a courier, perform the most astonishing journeys on foot, frequently travelling a hundred leagues across the snowy and desolate regions of the Cordillera.

In surveying countries like these, still in their natural state, it is impossible not to be struck at every step with the infinite and wonderful variety of the works of the Almighty, and with the manifest evidences they uniformly display of an unceasing and beneficent provision for all the wants of His creatures, in every clime and under all circumstances.

In the valleys watered by the Jujuy and its tributaries, as in many other parts of the republic, the indigo grows wild, and the sugar-cane and tobacco are extensively cultivated, the two latter being produced in sufficient quantity not only for the consumption of the whole of the province of Salta, but for exportation to the rest of the upper provinces, and occasionally to Chile. Cotton, also, is grown there in considerable quantities, and of a quality which would be prized in the markets of Europe,—as indeed would be nearly all the valuable productions of this highly-favoured region.

Although in this, as in every other part of the republic, the want of population may be considered as the great drawback to the full development of its natural resources, the Salteños, and especially those in the eastern districts of the province, obtain assistance to a considerable extent in the cultivation of their lands from the Indians of the Mataco nation, who live upon the shores of the Vermejo, below the junction of the Jujuy. These Indians, now an independent people, acknowledging no other authority than that of their own Caciques, were in former times reduced, in a certain degree, to civilised habits by the Jesuits, the fruits of whose influence are still perceptible in their occasional intercourse with their Christian neighbours, amongst whom they repair at the seasons of sowing and harvest to barter their service in labour in exchange for articles of clothing, and beads and baubles for their women. They are very industrious, and in the allotment of work will undertake double the daily task of the Creoles:—the payment they receive for a month's work is from ten to fifteen yards of very coarse cloth or baize, the cost of which at Salta may be about a quarter of a Spanish dollar, or about a shilling a yard:—with this and their food they are perfectly content, and, at a similar rate, any number of them might be induced to leave their own haunts periodically to work in the sugar and tobacco plantations of the Spaniards. I was told by an Englishman, long resident at Oran, that many hundreds of them are yearly engaged at the rate above stated to get in the crops in the vicinity of that place.

When to this low rate at which productive labour may be obtained, we add the existence, now indisputably established, of an uninterrupted navigation the whole way from Oran to the Paranã, and thence to Buenos Ayres, it is impossible not to be struck with the very great natural advantages possessed by this province, and with the very small degree of energy apparently requisite on the part of the natives to turn them to the fullest account. It is their own fault alone if the sugars and tobacco, the cotton, the indigo, and cochineal of Oran, do not vie with those of Brazil and Columbia in the markets of Europe. Let the people of these countries open their eyes to the importance of their own resources, and let them not imagine that they themselves are incapable of calling them into action:—unfortunately, such a feeling is one of those curses to the country engendered by the old colonial system of Spain, and which has the effect, to a lamentable extent, of counteracting that spirit of self-confidence and exertion which, on every account, is called for on the part of the inhabitants of these countries under their new political condition. It is this feeling which has led them to turn their eyes to the formation of companies in Europe as the best mode of bringing their fertile lands into notice and cultivation,—an erroneous notion which cannot too soon be set right. I do not say that in the temperate climate of Buenos Ayres European labourers may not be employed to advantage; but when it becomes a question of sending them into the tropical regions in the heart of the continent, whether as agricultural labourers or miners, I am satisfied that the experiment would only end in utter disappointment to all parties. In the first place, it should be borne in mind that, to ensure in Europe any sale for the productions of so remote a country, the cost of their cultivation must be extremely low, as it appears to be at present; but what labourer from Europe would be satisfied with anything like even double the ordinary remuneration for daily labour in that part of the world? Supposing him, however, to be conveyed thither, and to be contented, for a time, with the abundance of the necessaries of life around him, what does he know of the culture of tropical productions, the chances being that he never saw a sugar-cane or a cotton plant in the whole course of his life? But, what is of more consequence, how long will his physical powers last in a climate, the heat of which will be almost insufferable to him, and in which the very indulgence of his own ordinary habits will soon undermine his constitution and destroy all his energies? Of the hundreds of Beresford's and Whitelock's men, who remained in the country after the evacuation of Buenos Ayres by the British forces, how very few were afterwards to be met with who were not sunk to the lowest scale of misery and moral degradation!

In tropical climates I am satisfied that Europeans will never be able to compete in amount of daily labour with the natives: on the contrary, wherever the trial has been made, the Indian labourer has been found capable of enduring an infinitely greater degree of bodily exertion than the most robust European. It is hardly credible, indeed, what these people will go through. In the mines especially, where the amount of their daily work, and the loads they are capable of sustaining, have excited the astonishment of every one who has paid the slightest attention to the subject. The stoutest of the Cornish miners who accompanied Captain Head in his visit to the mine of San Pedro Nolasco, was scarcely able to walk with a load of ore which one of the natives had with apparent ease brought out of the mine upon his shoulders, whilst two others of the party who attempted to lift it were altogether unable to do so, and exclaimed that it would break their backs.