134 SURVEY OF PATAGONIA. PART II. the Asiento ships, bound on a slaving voyage, eventually to Buenos Ayres: there he was induced to enter the order of Jesuits, in which, as a missionary, he afterwards made himself conspicuous for the zeal with which he devoted himself to the conversion of the Indian inhabitants of the unexplored regions of that part of the world. Forty years he passed amongst them, and, but for the expulsion of his order from South America, would probably have ended his days there. On his return to England he wrote his book, to this day the only authentic account we have of the manners and customs of the Indians of the Pampas, whilst the map it contains, compiled partly from his own observations and partly from Indian accounts, has furnished the principal, if not the sole data for all those which have hitherto been published of the interior of their country. One of his principal objects was to point out how vulnerable by any hostile naval power were the Spanish possessions in those parts; and hardly had the book appeared when the Spanish Government, taking alarm lest his suggestions should be listened to in England, sent secret orders to the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres to have the whole coast of Patagonia carefully surveyed, with a view "to the formation of such new settlements upon it as might secure the King of Spain's rights, and forestall the English in their supposed intention of appropriating to themselves the valuable fisheries on the southern part of the coast." Competent officers were sent out from Spain for the purpose, and no expense was spared to execute the survey as completely as possible. The command was intrusted to Don Juan de la Piedra, who sailed from Monte Video on this service on the 15th December, 1778. Running down the coast, on the 7th January he entered the great bay, then called Bahia Sin-fondo or San Matthias' Bay, but now more generally known under the name of San Antonio, at the bottom of which, in latitude 42° 13', he discovered the entrance of a noble harbour, which he named San Joseph's. Piedra passed three months in examining the shores of this great gulf and the peninsula which bounds it, and so impressed was he with its capabilities that, without proceeding further, he left an officer and part of his men to build a fort there, and returned himself to the river Plate to give an account of his discovery. According to his report, indeed, it appeared on many grounds to offer a most eligible site for a new settlement. The port itself was said to be deep and commodious, affording anchorage for ships of any size, whilst its situation seemed particularly convenient not only for facilitating the further exploration of the great rivers Negro and Colorado, which empty themselves a little to the northward of it, but for securing more or less the entrance of those rivers against any sudden surprise by the enemies of Spain, a point to which great importance was attached in the instructions of the surveying officers, in consequence of the statements made by Falkner as to the possibility of passing up them into the very heart of the Spanish possessions. The vast number of whales and seals which were seen in its neighbourhood, moreover, held out the promise of its becoming a station whence to carry on those fisheries which the Spanish Government of the day were so anxious to establish; whilst the extensive salt-deposits which were met with promised an inexhaustible supply of an article of the first necessity in Buenos Ayres in curing the hides and beef. The main drawback to the situation was a scarcity of fresh water, which, in the first instance, the Spaniards had great difficulty in finding, though subsequently a sufficiency was obtained at some distance from the coast; it was always, however, more or less brackish, and eventually caused much sickness and suffering to the settlers. Bahia Nueva, on the other side of the peninsula, would have been a much better situation for the settlement, there being plenty of small wood fit for fuel, and permanent ponds of fresh water in the vicinity, to which wild cattle are in the habit of resorting. A still more favourable locality is the River Chupat, which falls into the sea * In a subsequent Report of Viedma's, he says that, when the first accounts of San Joseph's were brought to Monte Video, a merchant of that place, Don Francisco de Medina, fitted out a vessel to go whaling there, the crew of which, in the first month, harpooned no less than fifty fish within the port. 136 THE RIVER CHUPAT. PART II. about 40 miles further south, and which has been recently described by our own surveying officers. After stating the river to be free from obstacles, the banks firm and level, and that boats may be tracked up it by men or horses to a great distance, they say "about 18 miles up (by the very serpentine course of the stream) is a place admirably adapted for a settlement. It is a rising ground from 20 to 30 feet high close to the banks of the river, commanding a view of five leagues to the north and west, and an uninterrupted prospect to the eastward: throughout this extent the country is fertile in the extreme; the soil is of a dark colour and very rich; excellent grass covers it in every direction; numerous herds of wild cattle graze in the plains. There are several lakes on the south side literally covered with wild fowl; a sort of willow (the red sauce) grows on the banks of the river in great abundance, some of the trees 3 feet round and 20 feet high." How such a situation could have escaped the notice of the Spanish officers seems very surprising. It appears to have been totally unknown to them. The name of the Chupat does not even appear in any of their maps, although reports of it may probably have given rise to the idea of the Rio Camerones, which has no real existence, but which in the old maps figures as a considerable river running into the sea about a degree further south. The course of the Chupat is as yet unexplored, but it is probable that it resembles that of the supposed Camerones, and originates in the eastern slopes of the Andes. The quantity of drift wood and light volcanic scoriæ found about its mouth induced our surveying officers to infer that they had been brought down by the stream from the Cordillera.* The Viceroy was dissatisfied with Piedra for returning, and superseded him, when it devolved upon Don Francisco and Antonio Viedma (the officers next in command of those sent out from Spain) to carry into execution the intentions of their Government. These brothers were long employed upon various parts of the coast of Pata * See Sailing Instructions published by the Admiralty, 1850. gonia, and collected much valuable information respecting that terra incognita. In April, 1779, Don Francisco sailed from San Joseph's, to form a settlement on the river Negro, in favour of which he was fortunate enough to propitiate the Viceroy, who supplied him with men and stores, and all things necessary for the purpose. Don Antonio was left in charge at San Joseph's; but, the scurvy breaking out amongst the people to a great extent, they became so dissatisfied that he was under the necessity in the course of the summer of returning with the greater part of them to Monte Video. He was not, however, permitted to be long idle; and in the January following (1780) was again despatched to carry out the original plan, and to survey the whole of the southern part of the coast of Patagonia. In furtherance of these orders he examined the several ports of St. Helena, San Gregorio, the northern shores of the great Bay of San George, Port Desire, and San Julian's; which occupied him till the end of May, when, the cold weather setting in, he hutted his people for the winter at Port Desire, and despatched one of his vessels to Buenos Ayres with an account of his proceedings. Of all the places he had visited, San Julian's appeared to offer the best, if not the only suitable, site for any permanent establishment. Everywhere else the coast presented the aspect of sandy, sterile dunes, intermixed with stones and gravel, fit only, to all appearance, for the occupation of the wild guanacoes and ostriches, which wandered over them in quest of the scanty coarse grass which constituted their only herbage. No wood was to be seen bigger than a small species of thorny shrub, fit only for the purposes of fuel; and as to water, it was everywhere scarce, and the little to be found was generally brackish and bad. The ports, too, were most of them difficult and dangerous of access, affording little or no security for vessels above the size of a brig. San Julian's was so far an exception, that at high tide the largest ships might enter and anchor in safety within the bar off its mouth. A constant supply of water, too, 138 FRIENDLY INDIANS. PART II. was found three or four miles inland, proceeding from some springs in the hills, about which there was good pasturage, and enough of it to have induced a numerous tribe of Indians to fix upon it as their ordinary dwelling-place. There, also, Viedma proposed to plant a Spanish colony; and, the Viceroy approving the plan, the people were removed from Port Desire in the month of November, and commenced building their habitations in the vicinity of the springs above-mentioned, about a league from the coast. They received the materials, and a variety of necessary supplies, from Buenos Ayres, not the least useful of which were some carts and draught-horses, which enabled them afterwards to keep up a constant communication between the shore and their little settlement. They found the Indians located in the vicinity extremely well disposed, and ready to render them every assistance in their power, in return for the trifling presents they made them. Altogether there might be about 400 of them, and about half as many more were encamped upon the Santa Cruz River further south. These were apparently the only inhabitants of those regions. They said that in their journeys northward they fell in with no other toldos or encampments till they came to a river twenty-five days off; there were some more two days beyond again upon a second river, whence it was twenty days further to the toldos of the Indians of Tucamalal, on the river called by Villarino the Encarnacion, which falls into the great River Negro; according to their computation, something less than fifty days' travel from San Julian's.* To those parts they were in the habit of occasionally repairing in order to buy fresh horses from the tribes there resident, who, they said, had plenty of them, and exchanged them for the skins of the guanacoes, which they caught with their bolas and lassoes, and with which they often supplied the colonists with fresh meat when they had no means of their own of obtaining it. This assistance was of the greater value to the Spaniards as the winter set in with a severity against which they were very indifferently prepared. The months of * Their day's journey is usually about four leagues when on a long march. |