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

by Sir Woodbine Parish

The same metalliferous chain of the Andes extends, according to Gillies, with little interruption, from Chile to Peru, and contains the greater part of the gold and silver mines yet known on the eastern ranges of the great Cordillera, including, besides those of Uspallata, the mines of the province of San Juan, and further north those of Famatina in La Rioja. It is separated from the central ridge of the Andes by an extensive valley, or succession of valleys, running northwards from Uspallata, through which it is said that an ancient road of the Peruvians is to be traced at the present day nearly to Potosi; a point well worth the attention of the antiquarian, and of great interest, as connected with the state of civilization which the aborigines had attained before their conquest by the Spaniards.

The population of the province of Mendoza is calculated to be from 35,000 to 40,000 souls, about a third of which is resident in the city and its immediate vicinity. The executive power is vested in a Governor, periodically chosen, as in the other provinces, by the Junta, or Provincial Assembly.

A visible improvement has taken place in the condition of this people in the last twenty years; for, although at so vast a distance from the Capital, like Salta, its position as a frontier town has given it some special advantages: it has led to communications with foreigners, and to a traffic with Chile and with Buenos Ayres, which, by teaching them the value of their own resources, has roused a sort of commercial spirit amongst the inhabitants, and has stimulated them to more industrious habits. The government has taken pains to establish schools for the education, of all classes, and the setting up of a printing press, from which has issued an occasional newspaper, has been of great use, not only in opening the eyes of the people at large to the proceedings of their own rulers, but in furnishing them with some notion as to what is going on from time to time in other parts of the world.

They are, in general, a healthy and well-conditioned race: descended many of them from families originally sent from the Azores by the Portuguese government to colonise Colonia del Sacramento on the river Plate, and made prisoners and settled in those remote parts by Cevallos, during the war which preceded the peace of 1777. It is probably much owing to them that the cultivation of the vine has been so extensively introduced in this part of the Republic.

The city of Mendoza, which, according to Bauza, is in south latitude 32° 52´, west longitude 69° 6´; at an elevation of 4891 feet above the sea, and at the very foot of the Andes, is shut out from any view of the great Cordillera by a dusky range of lower hills which intervene. Its appearance is neat and cheerful: the houses, for the most part, built of sunburnt bricks, plastered and whitewashed; and the streets laid out at right angles, as usual in that part of the world. It boasts of an Alameda, or public walk, said to equal anything of the kind laid out, as yet, in South America:—it is nearly a mile long, neatly kept, and shaded by rows of magnificent poplars:—there are seats and pavilions at either end for the accommodation of the inhabitants, by whom it is much frequented as a lounge, especially of an evening.

The climate is delightful and salubrious, and is remarkably beneficial to persons suffering from pulmonary affections. The only ailment to which the people seem more liable here than in the interior is the goitre, which I suppose may be attributed to the same causes, whatever they are, which seem to produce it in almost all alpine districts.

SAN JUAN.

The province of San Juan, which adjoins that of Mendoza, occupies the space between the great Cordillera and the mountains of Cordova, as far north as the Llaños, or plains, of La Rioja. It is said to contain about 25,000 inhabitants, governed, at present, like those of Mendoza, and occupied very much in the same manner, in the cultivation of their vineyards and gardens, and in agricultural pursuits. Their exports of brandies and wines to the other provinces are little short of those from Mendoza, and the quantity of corn they annually grow has been estimated at from 100,000 to 120,000 English bushels. The same lands produce yearly crops under the process of artificial irrigation from waters highly charged with alluvial matter. The ordinary crops are 50 for 1, in better lands 80 to 100, and in some, as at Augaco, about five leagues to the north of the city of San Juan, they have been known to yield 200 and 240. The price in the province is from one and a half to two Spanish dollars for a fanega, equal there to about two and a half English bushels. The wages of a day labourer are from five to six dollars a month, besides his food, which may be worth a rial a day more.

In times of scarcity corn has been sent from San Juan to Buenos Ayres, a distance of upwards of a thousand miles; but this can never answer under ordinary circumstances, from the great expense attending the land carriage. It is different with the wines and brandies, which, after all charges, can be sold in most of the provinces of the interior, and even at Buenos Ayres, at a fair profit. They are in general demand amongst the lower orders, and, if pains were taken with them, might be very much improved. I have had samples of as many as eight or ten different qualities, all of them good, sound, strong-bodied wines, and only requiring more care in their preparation for market.