SPANISH AMERICA. In a former Number we gave some account of New Granada and Peru; we shall now proceed to present our readers with an epitome of that portion of the New World which may be more strictly termed Spanish America, commencing with Buenos Ayres in South America, and concluding with Mexico in North America,-portions of the world now rendered particularly interesting, as affording a wide field for the display of British science and British enterprise. The Vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres is a very extensive country, forming, with the addition of the provinces of Charcos and Chiquitoes, (formerly appertaining to Peru,) a compact body of land, nearly square, stretching through 26 degrees of south latitude. Its aspect, generally speaking, is that of a level country, bounded by two immense chains of mountains, that on the side of Brazil forming its eastern, and that on the side of Peru forming its western boundary on the west, it is also divided from Chili and Peru by the lofty ridges of the Andes. Towards the north it is bounded by desert tracts of mountain-land, from whence issue many streams that flow in every direction, till they join the large rivers which traverse the country, and have their origin in regions but imperfectly known. Buenos Ayres is not unlike a vast amphitheatre, shut in, laterally, by the mountains of Brazil and Peru; on the north, by the lofty heights which disembogue their waters through the mouth of the Amazons and the Orinoco. On the south, by the widely-expanded Plata, and by a branch of the Cordillera of Chili, that runs across towards the Atlantic, bearing towards the southeast the immense opening of the Rio de la Plata, as a wide, stupendous, and magnificent portal, proportioned to the grandeur, the importance, and the extent of the regions to which it gives access. It is divided into five provinces, viz.: 1. Buenos Ayres, on Rio de la Plata, of which the principal towns are Buenos Ayres, 200 miles from the mouth of the Plata, containing between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants: Santa Fé, a small place, at the conflux of the Salado and the Paraguay: and Monte Viedo, 120 miles east-north-east of Buenos Ayres, containing about 20,000 inhabitants. 2. Paraguay, of which the chief town is Assumption, on the eastern bank of the great river Paraguay, eighteen miles above the junction of the first mouth of the Pilcarnago. It contains about 500 Spanish families, and several thousand Indians. 3. Tucuman, of which the chief towns are, Tucuman, 1170 miles in a direct line from Lima: San Jago del Estero, 650 miles north-north-west from Buenos Ayres, on the great road to Lima, containing about 2000 inhabitants: Cordeva, 468 miles northnorth-west from Buenos Ayres, and containing 1500 Spanish inhabitants, with about 4000 negroes: Xujuy, or Zujuy, in long. 66° 4' west, lat. 23° 5' south; Salta, or San Miguel de Salta, containing 400 houses, and situated long. 64° 130 west, lat. 24° 17′ south. 4. Los Charcos and Potosi, formerly part of Peru, and situated amidst the eastern ridges of the Andes, of which the chief towns are La Plata, or Chuquisaca, containing 14,000 inhabitants. Potosi at one time contained more than 100,000 inhabitants, but they have now declined to about one-third of that number. It is 1617 miles north-west of Buenos Ayres, and 1215 miles north-east of Lima. Santa Cruz de la Sierra, is rather a large and populous town in lat. 14° 20′ south: La Paz is 612 miles south-east of Lima. containing 20,000 inhabitants. Its great staple article of trade is Paraguay tea, for which about 200,000 piastres, or about 45,000l. sterling, are received annually. 5. Chiquito, or Cuzco, formerly part of Chili, of which the chief towns are Mendoza, in a plain at the foot of the Andes, with 6,000 inhabitants; and San Juan de la Frontera, ninety-four miles north by east of Mendoza. The magnificent Rio de la Plata, with all its tributary streams, such as the Paraguay, the Parana, the Uruguay, the Pilcanayo, the Vermejo, and the Salado, is the great drain by which the waters of this immense country are carried to the ocean. The country, with the exception of the western provinces of Los Charcos, Potosi, &c. presents a tract of land so level, as to prevent the progress of many of its principal rivers, which form, in consequence, large shallow lakes. Such, in fact, is the extreme flatness of the country, that according to trigonometrical observations, the great river Paraguay is found to fall not more than a foot within a space of 400 miles. This level condition of the country presents an insurmountable obstacle to the formation of canals or conduits, so that this grand and useful source of communication is entirely cut off, and the supply of water rendered sparing and troublesome. In Buenos Ayres, accordingly, and in other places, it is found necessary to resort to machinery in order to bring the water to the level of the houses. In consequence of the extreme flatness of the country many of the numerous streams which flow down the eastern declivity of the Andes, stagnate in the plains below, either expanding into lakes, or forming extensive marshes. In the flat plains of La Plata, the Los Xarages is formed by the collected waters of the torrents which flow during the rainy season from the mountains of Chiquitos; and the Paraguay, overflowing its banks at that period, inundates an expanse of country under the 17° of south lat. to an extent of more than 300 miles in length, and 120 in breadth. When the waters of the Paraguay subside, the lake becomes a marsh, infested with alligators. Its banks swarm with tigers, monkeys, stags, and other wild animals, and with multitudes of venomous reptiles and insects. In addition to this lake, there are others of very considerable magnitude; and several smaller ones, which are formed by the rivers, which cannot continue their course without inundating the land in the vicinity of their banks. It is one remarkable feature of this flat country, that it contains an immense tract of 600 or 700 miles in length, and 150 in breadth, the soil of which is saturated with fossil salt, and in which all the rivulets, lakes, and wells, are completely brackish. At the city of Assumption, a considerable quantity of salt is refined from the earth; and between Santa Fe and Cordova, as far as St. Jago del Estero, the whole ground is covered with a white incrustation of salt, even to the foot of the Cordilleras. The ground also appears white with salt-petre after a shower of rain, and the feet are chilled with it excessively. To the south-west of Buenos Ayres, from 400 to 450 miles, the country abounds with salt lakes, which produce very fine chrystalline salt. Journeys are frequently taken from Buenos Ayres to these salt lakes, and two or three carts are annually loaded with salt. The country, to the south of the great river of Patagonia, is also spread out into extensive plains, which extend in almost uninterrupted continuity. These immense levels are a most remarkable feature in the aspect of this extraordinary country. They present a vast expanse of waving grass, 900 miles in extent, and covered with a strong and luxuriant herbage. No hill rises in this immense flat to a greater elevation than 600 feet above the level of the plain, so that, when placed on one of these eminences, the eye wanders over a space resembling the ocean, uninterrupted save by the dark indefinite spots, formed here and there by herds of cattle, or by the travelling waggons and escorts. The nutritive herbage with which they are covered, affords pasture to those countless herds of cattle that rove, unvalued and unowned, over so large a portion of South America, and whose hides and tallow alone are considered worthy of being sought after by the Spanish hunters, and form a principal article of the trade of Buenos Ayres. This country is not inhabited either by the Indians or by the Spaniards, though it is occasionally traversed by both; in these trackless deserts, there are no land-marks or traces by which the road can be discovered, for many hundred miles the route, therefore, is pursued by the compass. From Buenos Ayres, the great road to Potosi and Lima passes through Tucuman. In 1748, regular stages were built all the way, post-houses were erected, and relays of horses and carriages provided. The method of travelling is in covered waggons, drawn by oxen or horses. In these the traveller may recline, and must necessarily exercise much Oriental Herald, Vol. 16. S patience; but the produce of the mines, as well as all kinds of merchandise, are conveyed along the road on the backs of mules. Its extent from Buenos Ayes to Potosi, is 1617, or, according to some accounts, 1873 miles, 400 of which pass over the elevated chains of the Andes, and are impassable for the waggons from Potosi to Lima. The road passes over the highest ridges of the Andes, and the traveller, who undertakes so hazardous a journey, is exposed to many perils and privations, not only from being subject to the utmost extremes of heat and cold, but from the exceeding ruggedness of the country through which he has to pass. About 500 miles from Buenos Ayres, in a north-west direction, the ground begins to rise considerably; and at double that distance, at the town of Salta, all the less elevated ridges terminate, when the traveller finds himself in a region so bold and romantic-so stupendous and awful—that his mind is almost bewildered with its grandeur and magnificence. In a few hours he is transported from the scorching heat of the unsheltered plains to the perpetual winter which reigns amid the snowy summit of the Andes; and the health of the most robust European is shaken by the effects of this violent transition. The road, as we have already said, continues among the Andes for 400 miles. The thick woods of Tucuman are then lost; and the swarms of locusts, crickets, ants, mosquitos, toads, frogs, serpents, and alligators, now disappear, the traveller having by this time entered the temperate region. The road then winds amidst abrupt and frightful precipices and chasms, and sometimes the path is so narrow, that even the mules dare scarcely move. It is, however, indented with deep holes, in which the animals place their legs, and thus prevent the danger of slipping over the precipices. At other places, where the road inclines at a great slope, these sagacious and highly useful creatures place themselves with their fore and hind feet close together, and, inelinding forward, as if about to lie down, they slide with inconceivable velocity to the bottom. These immense mountains, in some parts, are traversed at the bottom by narrow and perpendicular clefts, where, if the mule falls, his rider must inevitably be crushed to death. There is another difficulty, also, to encounter in journeying amidst this region of rocks and mountains; and this is, the passage of the numerous rivers and torrents which intersect them. To cross those which are shallow, very large and high horses are used, being trained for the purpose; over the deeper ones rope-bridges are thrown, and it is only in summer that this journey can be at all attempted, as the swelling of the rivers in the winter render them impassable. Even in summer, when the snow in the higher regions suddenly melts, the torrents are swollen to such a degree, and rush with such overwhelming force from the mountains, that many an unhappy traveller perishes. The country is here mountainous, cold, and barren; and the mountains are so high, as to be adverse to all vegetation. But these regions are rich in mineral treasures; they abound in silver, and, to a certain extent, in gold, which is sometimes procured by mining, sometimes gathered from the sands, or collected from the streams. It is in this secluded and almost inaccessible district that the celebrated mines of Potosi are situated. The city itself is built on a ridge of the Andes, in an elevated situa tion, where the climate is cold, and the environs bleak and barren. The mines are in the same mountain as that on which the city is built, They are composed of a yellow, very firm, argillaceous slate, full of veins of ferruginous quartz, in which silver ore, and, sometimes, brittle vitreous ore, are found interspersed. These crude ores were found, by Helms, the German mineralogist, (who visited these mines by order of the King of Spain,) to contain from six to eight ounces of silver in every caxon, or fifty hundred weight. There was also a solid silver ore, which yielded, for every fifty hundred weight, about twenty-four pounds of silver. Nothing, according to Helms, could equal the ignorance and carelessness which prevailed in the management of these mines. Many of them are overflowed with water, which proper machinery might very easily draw off. The methods adopted for this purpose were ill-directed, and, generally, ineffectual. M. Helms saw a drain, which, even at its mouth, was too high to be of any use, and which had been carried, at an incredible expense, more than two miles in extent. Still greater ignorance was, if possible, displayed in the smelting-houses and refiningworks at Potosi. By their clumsy method of amalgamation, they were scarcely able to obtain two-thirds of the silver contained in the ore; and for every marc, or eight ounces of pure ore, frequently two marcs of quicksilver were destroyed. All the operations necessary for the separation of the metal from the other substances with which it is found combined, were conducted in the most slovenly, wasteful, unscientific manner. In the Royal Mint, at Potosi, where the produce of the mines is coined, to the amount, annually, of about 4,800,000 ounces of silver, and about 16,000 ounces of gold, affairs are not better managed. Every hundred weight of refined copper, used for alloy in the gold and silver coin, costs 351., through the gross ignorance, of the overseers of the work, who spent a whole month in wasting and calcining it. These various evils, the German commissioners, sent over by the King of Spain to inspect the mines, endeavoured to remove. For this purpose, they contrived machinery for draining them of water; and they constructed a new laboratory, according to the most improved modes, by which the copper ores, used for alloy, could be refined in four hours and a half, and for one-twentieth part of the expense incurred by the former process. New amalgamation works were S 2 |