In these observations I allude of course to the labouring class,—I speak of hands not heads, for I fully agree in the necessity of introducing improvements in the cultivation of the native products,—which improvements will assuredly be best introduced by foreigners qualified by experience in other countries to superintend and direct those processes, both of cultivation and after preparation, which may be requisite to ensure their immediate sale in the foreign markets for which they are destined. Such persons, perhaps, would be best sought for in the East or West Indies or Brazil; and, no doubt, they would not only benefit themselves but their employers by introducing into these new countries the results of their practical experience elsewhere. It is to foreigners, also, that the natives must look to instruct them in the use of steam-vessels, upon which, after all, the future advancement of these remote countries in wealth and civilisation will so mainly depend.
I will only add to the observations which I have already made upon this subject, my conviction that if the governments of Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, and Corrientes would but unite in a sincere determination to give a fair trial to the experiment, men would be found at Buenos Ayres who would desire no better than to be employed on such a service:—as to any opposition Dr. Francia might offer to it, it is not worth a moment's consideration.[67] Give an English midshipman, of sufficient experience, an armed steamer and a picked crew, either of his own countrymen or North Americans, to whom he might add some of the excellent sailors of Paraguay, and I am quite sure he would carry a cargo from Buenos Ayres up the Vermejo in perfect safety to Oran, despite of Dr. Francia or any such bugbear. This, however, is an object which must have the cordial support and co-operation of the ruling powers. If they shut their eyes to the importance of its success, it would be labour thrown away for any individual to volunteer the attempt.
The government of Buenos Ayres, as the authorities charged with the general interests of the Republic, from their habitual intercourse with the people of other countries, ought to be fully able to appreciate the immense benefits which steam-navigation has produced elsewhere, and how greatly it has tended to promote the prosperity and civilisation of other nations. It is in their power to extend those blessings to their own countrymen in the heart of the South American continent, and to produce a really United Confederation of the Provinces, instead of that which is now little more than nominal, from the vast distances which intervene, and operate as a bar to almost any intercourse between them.
With the establishment of steam-navigation, distance will cease to be distance, and the upper provinces will find a cheap and ready vent for an abundance of productions which are now not worth the heavy expenses of sending down by land-carriage to Buenos Ayres.
It is a grave question, deserving the most serious attention of those to whom the government of these countries is at present intrusted, and in the early solution of which, perhaps, their future political destinies are involved to an extent far beyond the comprehension of any casual observer.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] This latitude is the mean of four observations taken by M. de Souillac (in 1784) one of the astronomers attached to the commission for determining the boundary.
[60] Since this was written I have met with a gentleman who had seen the original drawings of three masses, with their respective measurements; which drawings, he understood, were made by the persons sent in quest of this iron by the government of Buenos Ayres when my specimen was brought down.
[61] Luccock, in his Travels in Brazil, speaks of a very singular metallic formation which he met with in the province of Minas Geraes, not far from Villarica. He says (page 490), "A hill on our left now presented a wonderful object; it was one entire mass of iron, so perfectly free from any mixture of common soil as to produce no vegetation whatever, but was covered with a complete coating of rust or oxide of iron. The hill is so lofty and steep that its top was not accessible; but from its more elevated parts nodules of corroded metal had rolled down, and greatly embarrassed the road: at the foot of the mountain the soil is red clay mixed with ponderous brown dust. As we advanced the metal seemed to become less pure, until, after an extant of two leagues and a-half, it altogether vanished, and was succeeded by the common clayey land, &c. I had often heard of this immense mass of metal, but none of the reports had presented any adequate picture of it to the imagination. The very core of the hill, as far as we could judge, appeared to consist of vast blocks of iron, in tables; and it is so free from alloy as to produce when smelted ninety-five per cent. of pure metal."