THE COLONIZATION OF THE SOUTH
It was natural that after the first occupation of the New World the tendency of the explorers should have been to turn their attention to the south and to the still undiscovered lands. At the first glimpse the aspect of the Atlantic coast to the south of Brazil gave little promise of the wealth—that is to say, of the gold—sought by the pioneers, since its shores were low, marshy, and alluvial.
In 1515 Juan de Solis sailed to the mouth of the River Plate, and landed on the coast of Uruguay. His party were immediately attacked by Charrúa Indians, and the bodies of De Solis himself and of a number of his crew were stretched dead on the sands. This ended the expedition, for the survivors left the place in haste and returned to Spain.
In 1526 Sebastian Cabot explored the River Plate, and, sailing up-stream, investigated the Paraná, and discovered the waters of the Paraguay River itself. In these inland waterways his fleet was met by that of another pioneer, Diego Garcia. This latter, doubtless from chivalrous motives, gave the pas to Cabot, and turned the bows of his vessels down-stream. It was Cabot's intention to establish himself permanently on the shores of this great river system. Near the present site of the town of Rosario he built the fort of Sancti Spiritus. Seeing, however, that his appeals to Spain for assistance remained unanswered, he eventually abandoned his attempt. There seems little doubt that he withdrew practically all his forces from the River Plate; but there are legends of some survivors who remained in the district after the main expedition had left. Some old historians allege that these underwent strange experiences and hardships, but the veracity of such narratives is more than doubtful.
It was in 1535, the year when Valdivia marched southward from Peru to conquer Chile, that the conquest and actual colonization of the River Plate was first seriously undertaken. Pedro de Mendoza, a soldier of fortune, ventured on the attempt. Mendoza's career as a mercenary soldier had proved quite unusually profitable even for those days, and he had acquired a large fortune at the sack of Rome alone. His purse provided a really formidable expedition.
The voyage to the mouth of the River Plate on this occasion was more productive of incident than was usual, even in those days of adventurous pioneers. The halts at Teneriffe and at Rio de Janeiro had resulted in some dissensions among Mendoza's men, and the execution by the orders of the Chief of one of his most popular leaders had all but caused open mutiny at the latter place. Nevertheless, when his forces landed at the site of the present town of Buenos Aires, they constituted a formidable company of men, admirably equipped with everything that the science of the age could devise for the purpose of conquest and colonization, particularly the former.
Having founded his settlement, Mendoza set himself to deal with the Indians and to bring them into subjection. In a very short while he found out that it was a very different tribe of aborigines with which he had to deal to the peace-loving inhabitants of Peru and the north-west. The agile, hardy, and fierce Pampa Indians, having once fallen foul of the invaders, allowed them no respite. Attacked by day and night, deprived of all supplies of food, Mendoza's troops began to suffer from exhaustion and hunger, to say nothing of the wounds inflicted by their enemies.
In the end, the leaders had to admit to themselves that the place was no longer tenable. Nevertheless, neither Mendoza nor his men had any intention of abandoning permanently these fertile plains through which ran the great rivers. The scarcity of minerals in these districts had now become sufficiently obvious to them; yet even to men in quest of little beyond gold the extraordinary fertility of the alluvial soil was not altogether lost. With a courage and pertinacity which does the adventurers every credit, they determined, instead of abandoning the river and putting out to sea, to sail far up-stream into the unknown, and to seek their fortune inland.
Mendoza's expedition first of all established itself for a while on the site of Sancti Spiritus, Cabot's old abandoned fort, which they now rechristened Corpus Christi. Shortly after their arrival at the place, Mendoza himself, who had doubtless suffered many disillusions concerning the gold and precious stones of these districts, and whose health had given way beneath the stress of the hardships and of the numerous precarious situations in which he had found himself, set sail for Spain. It was to be his fate never to return to his native land, since he died on his way home.