Cursory Retrospect of South American Discoveries.—Their difficulties then, how to be estimated at present.—Their interest to this age as compared with ancient conquests.—Cruelties of the early invaders.—Retributive visitations.—Columbus and his cotemporaries.—Cortez and the conquest of Mexico.—Subsequent position of the country.—Santa Anna, his antecedents and prospects.—Pizarro in Peru, and his Lieutenant, Almagro, in Chili.—Condition of those Republics since and now: their past gold and present guano.—Modern commanders in those countries.—Predominance of the Irish element in the fray.—The O’Learys and O’Higginses in the Andes.—San Martin and his aid-de-camp, O’Brien, and his auxiliary, M’Cabe.—The Portuguese discoverers.—Magellan and his Straits, and Peacock’s steaming to the Pacific three hundred years afterwards.—Cabra, and Brazil.—De Gama and the Cape, and Camoens’ celebration of the achievement.—Enrichment of the Iberian Peninsula from these causes—Subsequent impoverishment of mother countries and colonies.—Exceptional position of Brazil in this respect, and reason thereof.—Different results in North America, and why.—Imperfect knowledge in Europe of South America.—Works thereon.—Characteristics of the several authorities: Prescott, Southey, Koster, Gardner, Humboldt, Dr. Dundas, Woodbine Parish, M’Cann, Edwards, Maury, and others.—Want of information still on Paraguay and the region of the Amazon.—Object of this Volume to supply that void.—Aim of the Author not Political, but Commercial.

Nearly four centuries have rolled past since the great discoveries of Columbus and his followers led to the establishment of Spanish and Portuguese dominion over the vast continent of South America, and were succeeded somewhat later by the still more important settlement of the Anglo-Saxon race on the northern portion of the New World.[3] These events, marvellous in themselves and in their accessories, and momentous from the way in which they have affected the destinies of the human race, present a study singularly and enduringly interesting, differing so strongly as they do from the characteristics of ancient history. The latter are necessarily contemplated by the reader as types and symbols of the past, on which he has only the privilege of reflecting; whilst in the former case, in perusing the story of these comparatively modern discoveries of hitherto unknown continents, he feels himself almost a sharer in the adventures of those extraordinary men by whose deeds his own present destiny is so essentially influenced. He cannot desire to be a Lycurgus or a Phocion, a CÆsar or a Cato; but it is no tax on the imagination, no repulse to the feeling, to picture himself a Columbus in embryo, and his soul and being is wrapt up in the narrative of that great voyager. The English are proverbially a nautical people, nursed and cradled in the lap of that ocean with whose element their earliest sympathies are enlisted and identified. In these days it is a light matter indeed, with the facilities of progression abounding on all sides, and the great ministrant of celerity, steam, at our command in every form, to ramble from one extremity of the earth to the other; but the slightest retrospection suffices to demonstrate how very different a state of things prevailed at the close of the fifteenth century. The mere existence of a western continent was a phantasy of dream-land, when the mysteries of that mighty waste of waters which separated the then known world from all beyond, was shrouded in obscurity as unfathomable as its deepest depths; when only frail barks and mariners who dreaded to lose sight of the land could be found to attempt the seemingly-desperate fate of exploring an unknown sea in search of what at best existed but in the imagination of those who were regarded as visionaries, and whose presumptuous rashness the very winds themselves seemed to rebuke by blowing with unprecedented constancy in the one direction, as if to proclaim the impossibility of return.[4] Taking these circumstances into our consideration, a most thrilling interest is attached to this recital that will endure to the latest posterity; and school-boys for generations to come will ponder over the amazing achievements of these wondrous knights-errant of the main with the same eager curiosity as the grown men of to-day.

On the other hand, it must be as readily conceded that there is something painfully oppressive in the records of ancient history, with its never-ending conflict between nations for the aggrandisement of a few ambitious monarchs or republican leaders, in which the destruction of cities, towns, and countries, as well as of the lives of their inhabitants, is the theme perpetually dwelt upon, as if the annihilation of his kind were the only achievement entitling man to the admiration of humanity. War in all its horrors, and the military extirpation of our species, is the delight of the classic chroniclers, whether in poetry or prose; and its accompaniments of battles, sieges, pillage, murder, and atrocities such as nature revolts at, are depicted with a species of barbaric satisfaction, calculated (as it no doubt often did) to evoke the vengeance of the Deity against enormities perpetrated in the mere wantonness of licentious ferocity, and too frequently lacking the miserable palliative of provocation. Infinitely is it to be deplored that this sanguinary animus was carried, in a large degree, by the Spaniards and Portuguese, but probably still more by the Dutch (with whom, however, we are not now concerned), into their conquests in the New World; but it brought with it its own retributive punishment; and finally, under Providence, became the most potent instrument that caused war to be looked upon as an enormous evil, and a curse upon any country unrighteously practising it.

To the discovery of the New World we may fairly trace the benign effects of that wholesome correction of a most pernicious estimate of human merit. This, gradually softening the minds of men, instilled the principle of commercial intercourse amongst nations; demonstrating how much more conducive to true greatness and human happiness is the cultivation of amicable relations than even the most successful aggression and devastation, and the acquisition of wealth by iniquitous appliances.

It was in the year 1492 that Columbus landed on one of the West India islands. (See ante, page 8.) Subsequently, what is now termed the Spanish Main was crossed in rapid succession by various Peninsular adventurers, one and all of whom were distinguished by bravery the most exalted and selfishness the most abased, each attribute being inflamed by a fanaticism that sought to honour God and appease His anger towards their iniquities, by incredible offences in the name of religion against the unoffending aborigines. PreËminent, perhaps, among these bold bad captains, on the score of political prescience, military skill, and administrative civil ability, as well as from the magnitude of his acquisitions, was Hernan Cortez, who, in 1521, conquered the table land of Mexico, its coasts being discovered some three years before.[5] The immensity and enormity of his massacres, and the perfidy that distinguished them—the ingenuity of his multitudinous outrages upon the Emperor Montezuma and scores of thousands of his subjects—have rendered his name indelibly detestable, though there were many traits of true heroism about him, beyond what their biographers have been able to preserve of his invading cotemporary destroyers on the same scene. As was the case, too, with so many of them, his fruit in the end proved but bitterness and ashes; for though the vast enrichment of the revenues of Spain, through his means, extorted from an ungrateful sovereign a marquisate, and the grant of a portion of the territories he had conquered, he died at home, the object of courtly suspicion and distrust; stung to death by mortification, that all his achievements had been productive of coldness and neglect; where he had most expected to meet with eulogium and honour, he found, like Columbus, (says the eloquent historian of his conquests) that it was possible to deserve too greatly.[6]

Passing next to him before whose golden sun the star of Cortez waned, we find that the ruthless valour and iron perseverance of Pizarro subjugated Peru[7] in 1531; while one of his followers, who most resembled him in the cruelty of his life, as he did in the untimeliness of his death (caused by a quarrel with his old master about the spoil), after the seeming consummation of his ambition—Diego Almagro—having committed horrors till then almost unheard of, over-ran Chili[8] in 1535. He exterminated the family of Atahualpa, the last of the Incas, in a mode which only the most hardened familiars of the Inquisition, in the mother country, could read of without emotion; and to this day the records of such revolting transactions constitute probably the foulest blot on the Columbian escutcheon of the country of Du Guesclin and the Cid. But the sins of these men may be said to have been avenged by heaven in the noon of their iniquities. Pizarro, having defeated Almagro at Cuzco, and put many of his officers to death, in cold blood, had his old comrade strangled and then beheaded in Lima, where the despot himself was assassinated by young Almagro, who, in his turn, being defeated in battle, also at Cuzco, by Vaca de Castro, was likewise put to death by decapitation.

Passing next to the Portuguese discoveries, that of Brazil was effected by Alvarez de Cabral, he having landed, by accident, through stress of weather, at Porto Seguro, on the 24th of April, 1500, calling the country Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) in gratitude for his delivery from shipwreck; but the appellation was afterwards altered to that which it at present bears, signifying redwood, the well-known substance familiar to us as Brazil wood; yet it was the subsequent exploration of this coast, some four years afterwards, that enabled Amerigo Vespucci to eternise his own name as the accepted discoverer of the continent itself.

Another instance of the vagaries and mutations of geographical nomenclature, in this region of the world, occurs in connection with the great achievement that next solicits our notice, viz., the doubling of the Cape, and consequent opening-up of an oceanic highway to India. This was second in importance only to the discovery of the New World itself, and, indeed, well nigh placed Portugal on a par with Spain in honorary maritime status. Vasco de Gama, whose exploits inspired the muse of Camoens in the Lusiad,[10] which noble poem is in a great measure only a rythmetical narrative of the perils of the navigator, ‘made the Cape’ November 20th, 1497; and, with the expressiveness of all the earlier mariners, named it the ‘Cape of Tempests,’[11] and it was afterwards known as the ‘Lion of the Sea,’ and the ‘Head of Africa.’ These designations were different indeed to that it has long rejoiced in—the ‘Cape of Good Hope’—so called by John the Second of Portugal, who drew a favourable augury of future discoveries thence, because of his adventurous subject, Diaz, having reached the extremity of Africa, at that point, though in doing so, he perished there in 1500, having divided with Gama the honour of being its original discoverer, and supposed by some to have preceded him by nearly ten years. Previous, however, to this latter occurrence, even if we accept the earliest date claimed for Diaz, mankind was amazed by reports of the circumnavigation of the globe—a feat, which, like those already named, has been a fruitful source of controversy as to the just recipient of the meed of priority. Sebastian de Elcano is, perhaps, the most generally accepted by foreign writers. Goralva and Alvalradi, both Spaniards, performed the task—astounding, indeed, when we think of the fragile craft employed, and the unknown courses ventured upon—in one and the same year, 1537, without concert with each other. Mendana, another Spaniard, repeated it in 1567—preceding our own immortal sovereign of the seas, Drake, by ten years. But long anterior to all these, was the Portuguese Magellan, who, in 1519, being in the service of Spain, determined the sphericity of the earth by keeping a westerly course through the straits bearing his name, across the Pacific, and returning to the spot he set out from, or rather the ship did, for he was killed at the Philippines, on his passage back, the whole voyage occupying three years and twenty-nine days.[12] These, and a series of marvels, only subordinate in wonder because inferior in importance, kept the western world in unflagging excitement for a long succession of years, during which Europe tingled with the tidings of vast countries being discovered, assailed, and captured, by mere handfuls of obscure fortune-hunters, and yielding up such exhaustless treasures as rendered the Spanish and Portuguese peninsula, for a prolonged season, the richest kingdoms in the world—the veritable ‘envy and admiration of surrounding nations.’ To all this we may add that momentum given to commerce and navigation which has gone rolling on, until fleets of all nations cover the seas; and, so far as we are aware at present, not an island now unknown, of any importance, remains to reward the search of him[13] who has been last commissioned to find one if he can, even in the comparatively little frequented Polynesian group, for the penal purposes of England.

I will not dwell on the different results that have attended different courses of action with reference to the conquered territories of North and South America; nor attempt to trace the decline of one power at the expense of another. Spain and Portugal, unfortunately for themselves, dealt with their gifts on purely selfish principles; and the consequence of such a system was, not only the loss of the greater part of their colonies, but an almost total estrangement between the parent and child, never afterwards thoroughly healed. We attempted the same game in North America, and the giant-like progress of the United States has followed; only that, wiser in our generation, more forgiving, and actuated by true commercial principles, we have cultivated, to the utmost extent, relations of amity and good-will with the new power, and both countries are largely gainers thereby, and will continue to be so while the same feelings of mutual concession and respect actuate both.

Whilst, therefore, North America has made such astonishing progress, and completely outstrips the Old World in rapidity of thought and execution, carrying her commerce and people to the limits of the habitable globe, the states to the southward have had many severe ordeals to go through—arising, in the first place, from the cause just mentioned, viz., that the mother countries considered their colonies as mere appanages, and prevented communication, in some cases even intercourse, with other nations. Secondly, from the disseverment of the link which united them to Europe, having an entirely new phase to pass through, new forms of government to establish, and fresh relations to cultivate; whilst another immediate effect of the revolution was to drive away most of the wealthy inhabitants who, being Spanish and Portuguese citizens, were not a little vain of their superiority in that respect to their colonial-born brethren. This fruitful source of dissent and violence in nearly all the disturbances by which the several states were torn is by no means wholly obliterated to this day, any more than in some of the transmarine possessions of Great Britain, in either hemisphere. Then came intestine divisions among the American-born colonists themselves, raging between the upstart leaders of mushroom parties, whose very names it taxed the memory of men at the time to remember; and, as a matter of course, there followed all the thousand drawbacks resulting from a state of anarchic confusion. Hence, as is obvious must have been the case under such circumstances, material progress has been slow, and political progress for a long time almost imperceptible, if not frequently retrogressive, if one may use a phrase so seemingly contradictory. Moreover, until of late years very little was known of the internal resources of South America, with the exception of the Brazils—a country to which a variety of circumstances conspired to impart an impetus along the groove of civilization and consequent advancement. Paramount amongst those aids was undoubtedly the establishment there, in 1806, of the old Portuguese monarchy, consequent upon the European troubles of the house of Braganza. The inappreciable advantage of this regular form of government, arising out of local monarchic institutions, that country has retained, though under a new sovereign and with a liberalized system of administration, ever since, with every guarantee for continuously rapid but enduring improvement. Still, even Brazil was, to Europeans, comparatively speaking, an unknown region, to which, in incongruous confusion, attached associations of the soft and the savage, of barbarism and luxury, of the majestic and the feeble, in the minds of all nearly whose reading about her was not corrected by personal familiarity with the country itself. But ignorance so arising is being happily fast dissipated; and it shall not be the author’s fault if its departure be not further expedited on some points to which it still adheres.

Both the Spaniards and Portuguese possess works of rare merit, far exceeding in magnitude and minuteness any we can boast of, illustrating the achievements of their early navigators, and the rise and progress of their former colonial possessions. But few of these works have been rendered familiar to the British public, and are very imperfectly known, even to those writers who profess to treat of the same or similar subjects. Of course we except Prescott, the appreciation of whose invaluable volumes on the Conquest of Peru, the Conquest of Mexico, and the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, is testified by the exhaustion of six large and expensive editions, and one cheaper edition, in this country, besides the incorporation of the fruits of his extraordinary research in a thousand publications that have since been issued on either side of the Atlantic. Previously, however, to Prescott, and in nearly as large a degree, in respect to the territory described, were we indebted to Southey, for his History of Brazil;[14] to Koster for valuable details of his travels in the northern provinces of the same empire; and to Gardner, for a most elaborate research into its botanical treasures, as also a graphic description of the interior of the empire, which he traversed from north to south.[15] The hygiene of the same region has been thoroughly investigated, and its rationale expounded with consummate ability and simplicity of style, by my learned and accomplished fellow-townsman, Dr. Dundas, than whom no man was more competent for the task; and I rejoice to see that, though the subject is necessarily of a very circumscribed range, comparatively speaking, and one not very likely to command public attention, its treatment was so masterly, that nearly all the professional journals in the kingdom received it as an important contribution to medical literature.[16] Its perusal, however, may be also recommended to the general reader as containing notices of Brazilian life and manners and scenery nowhere else to be met with, and which the peculiar facilities enjoyed by the author enabled him to describe with a life-like minuteness whose truthfulness at once stamps its accuracy both on the stranger at a distance and on the most experienced Brazilian resident or native. In speaking thus, I am merely echoing well-recognized facts; my opinion, which would of course be utterly valueless in a medical sense, being in no degree warped by the personal obligation Dr. Dundas has placed me under from the circumstance of his having kindly consented to enrich this volume with a special chapter on a theme analogous to that which his ‘Sketches’ are devoted to.

It is, however, the now patriarchal, or, as he calls himself, ‘Antediluvian’ Humboldt, who has showered upon European understanding the light of scientific knowledge concerning the vast South American continent, and his inimitable descriptions of the country and its natural resources have scarcely been appreciated amongst us as they deserve. It is only when confronted with the great fact, so long regarded as the sentimental aspiration of utopiaists, that South America is actually becoming an additional field for our industry and enterprise—when its magnificent fluvial highways are about being traversed by an endless succession of steamers, and its plains by railways—that we really discover how infinitesimal is our knowledge of those resources or capabilities to whose development these means can alone effectually conduce. As a medium of forming an estimate of the material position, as well as of the natural features of the countries described by him, Humboldt cannot be too highly commended, as the author, of all others, whose flowing narrative, profundity of reflection, and copiousness of illustration—commensurate with the greatness of the subject itself—will amply repay all ordinary curiosity; apart from that superabounding erudition and scientific affluence which pervade the whole works of the great living father of historical philosophers, though singularly freed, like the treatises of our own Herschel, from technicalities that repel the uninitiated. As relates to the Rio Plata and its immense tributaries, we have had, in the course of the preceding year, Sir W. Parish’s elaborate and excellent volume,[17] whose only, though it is undoubtedly a great drawback, is, that having been written obviously from inspiration of Rosas, and through the sources that personage opened to him for the purpose at Buenos Ayres, events are recorded in a light entirely in conformity with the views of the Dictator, whose whole past policy is upheld, and his intended plans prospectively eulogised in a manner to which subsequent events, and the judgment pronounced upon them, furnish a significant commentary. In harmony with Rosas’s principle of representing Buenos Ayres as virtually constituting the whole Argentine Confederation, and himself as the exponent of public opinion and the embodiment of actual power therein, Sir Woodbine almost altogether ignores the existence of Monte Video, and scarcely alludes to such a state as the Banda Oriental. Hence, as regards the latter province and its capital, and all pertaining to them, Sir Woodbine’s book is a blank, or something worse—a deficiency which it is one of the objects of the present volume, in some degree, to supply. Of the condition of some of the interior provinces, likewise, Sir Woodbine, being obliged to take his information, not only at second hand, but through a channel in which every thing was conductive to the one end, that of exalting Rosas, or depreciating his opponents, gives us particulars not merely inaccurate, but leading to conclusions the very reverse of what a true state of the case would warrant. On this head, especially as regards by far the most important of all the interior states—Paraguay—it is hoped that the present volume will be found to contain much new and reliable information. For this, the writer is mainly indebted to notes of observations made on the route to, and during a residence in, Assumption, by parties personally cognizant of the late most successful and important mission sent out by Lord Malmesbury, whose prescience, in foreseeing the right moment—and in selecting the right agent, Sir C. Hotham, for urging negociations towards that object—the author had the satisfaction of hearing emphatically panegyrized in all commercial circles—whether native, British, or foreign—in the course of his late visit to South America.

Lastly, Mr. M’Cann,[18] whose previous work on the Plate had evinced great knowledge of the subject, has recorded his later experience of some of the Riverine provinces in a very agreeable and instructive work, partly formed on the model of Sir F. Bond Head’s fascinating Rough Rides on the Pampas, and embracing a review of mercantile matters and prospects in those countries. Written with that knowledge of trade which only a mercantile man can be expected to possess, its spirit is so dispassionate as to be quite unique in a critic, on topics which would seem to impart their partizan atmosphere to all who endeavour to detail their position to those at a distance. Neither must I, by any means, omit to mention the labours of another of my townsmen, Mr. Thomas Baines, who, with that mastery of detail and facility of statistic exposition which seem to be an heir-loom in the family of the late estimable member for Leeds, placed in a very lucid light, some years ago, a subject to which it was difficult at the time to draw general attention, and a popular elucidation of which could only be expected from a pen so qualified.

But of all portions of South America, there is one perhaps concerning which our knowledge is most imperfect, and with which it is most essential that it should be extended, because of the rapid extension of both native and European enterprise in that quarter. We especially allude to that district of the vast region watered by the Amazon of which ParÁ (city) may be considered the entrepot. Fortunately, two very admirable volumes have recently been directed to supplying our deficiency on this head.[19] The obligations due to these sources will be found amply acknowledged in the chapter devoted to a consideration of the subject. Our own text is enriched with matter drawn from original authorities, long resident on the spot, and in every way calculated to supply trustworthy intelligence. From these the reader will draw his own deductions, as our informants, not encumbering their data with disquisition, have left their facts to speak for themselves.

Notwithstanding the number of publications enumerated as being lately issued upon South America, and not taking into account others published in the United States, still there is a field of immense extent, as yet comparatively unexplored and hidden, which requires to be opened up to view, in order to enable us to form a sufficiently accurate judgment of the character and capabilities of such countries as Brazil and the republics bordering on the river Plate and its affluents. The main design, therefore, towards this end on the part of the writer in revisiting the scenes of his early youth, is to endeavour to present some fresh sources of information; partly derived from his own actual observation, and partly from the experience of others, who, possessing the best opportunities, have converted them to the best use in furtherance of the purpose now sought to be attained—viz., the elimination of what shall serve for a compact but comprehensive precis of the general condition of the countries named in the title page, and particularly their commercial status and prospective indications of a mercantile complexion. To refresh the memory on such analogous subjects as may prove interesting in connection with these matters, there is appended what it is hoped will prove a mass of desirable information, in the shape of a collection of notes, bringing down incidents to the latest practicable period antecedent to publication. In order to interfere as little as possible with the current of the narrative, in which it has been deemed expedient to convey the accompanying observations, the writer intends offering his memoranda in the shape of a record of his voyage, taking in all points touched upon as they naturally arose in connection with it; and incidentally referring to those authors who have exhibited the greatest acquaintance with the topics embraced.