THE URUGUAY

ERNEST WILLIAM WHITE

THE River Uruguay, a health-giving stream impregnated with sarsaparilla, and the lesser of the two affluents which swell into the mighty La Plata, possesses charms for the traveller, denied to the greater, the Paraná, at least in the lower part of its course; the water is clearer, the range not so vast, the scenery more varied and picturesque, whilst the traces of industry are more patent and the difficulties and dangers of its navigation add a piquancy unknown to the sister waters.

As its shores were to me as yet an unknown region, I determined to spend a fortnight in becoming familiar with their beauties, so on the morning of the 25th of December, in the midst of a glorious summer season, a friend joined me in taking return tickets from Buenos Ayres to Concordia, Entre Rios, which at the then state of the tide, was the furthest point upwards that a steamer could reach.

During breakfast we pretty well lose sight of the Argentine coast and have nothing before us but a broad freshwater ocean covered with innumerable blue-flowered camelotes, consisting chiefly of Pontederia, which spread their broad leaves as sails to speed them on their course; these nesine fragments descend the Paraná but are unknown on the bosom of the Uruguay. On our right side soon rises a long low ridge of sand indicating the Banda Oriental coast, terminating opposite the island of Martin Garcia, in cliffs resembling those of loved Albion. Calm as the Thames at London bridge is all this mighty estuary; it is not always so however, but on this holy day of peace

And it is only by sailing over it in the glare of daylight that any adequate impression of its vastness can be obtained. Whence comes all this overflowing tide? is a question readily answered by the rigid scientist, but with whose conclusions, the imagination rests not satisfied.

After leaving the outer roads of Buenos Ayres, but little shipping is met with, and the reflection immediately occurs, how different the case would be, were this magnificent water-highway in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race. On finding ourselves nearly abreast of Martin Garcia, the Argentine coast magically arose under a strong mirage, the trees appearing suspended in the air and completely separated from the shore line; whilst a shoal several miles in extent threatening our port bow, indicated the necessity of hugging the island, if we would avoid the fate of a fine bark which lay rotting only a few yards off.

The navigation is extremely perilous especially at low water and yet but a few buoys are visible, an unaccount-able omission, at least in times of peace. A boat containing the comandante sallies from the fort and we, in common with all other passing vessels, are obliged to lie to, in order to await its visit.

Martin Garcia, at once the Norfolk island and Gibraltar of the River Plate, is the key of the common entrance to both the Paraná and Uruguay, as their bifurcation occurs farther north; and the channel, whose character may be surmised from its name “Hell channel,” passes within easy reach of the guns of this sentinel of the rivers, which has been strongly fortified by the Argentine government. A barren looking granitic tract, whence are quarried the adoquines (paving stones) for the streets of the metropolis, with low sandy shores, rising in the interior to the height of two hundred feet and bristling with permanent fortifications and earthworks, it presents a standing menace to dispute with intruders entrance by water into the heart of the republic. On entering the River Uruguay, which has an embouchure of about thirteen miles, both banks are visible and very striking differences they present; the right or Entre-Riano shore is well-wooded and clothed with vegetation, whilst the left or Montevidean lies in all its naked barrenness. Further on, the Banda Oriental coast alters its character, being fringed with islands and less sandy; then jut out into the river a succession of bold bluffs, almost all with a bloody history, covered with a scanty verdure emerging from sand, presenting a close general resemblance to the southern shore of the Isle of Wight; and these promontories are usually dotted with estancias. Casting our eyes across the broad waters, we notice a change there likewise; long reefs of sand exchange verdure for sterility, and it is a remarkable circumstance throughout our whole progress up the Uruguay, that the two shores bear continually opposite or, so to speak, complimentary characters, not only physically and politically but botanically; when one is bold or fertile, the other is low or sterile. We now pass several wrecks, attesting the difficulties which beset our watery path.

Rounding a point, we suddenly come upon what looks uncommonly like an English fishing-village, with its craft quietly reposing in a snug bay; the church and cemetery topping our eminence, whilst the residence of the lord of the manor caps another, and learn that this is Nueva Palmira. The Oriental flag here boards us for the first time and the Easterns got rid of, the Saturno is again let loose on her orbit to hug the Montevidean coast, which now descends again to long reaches of low flat sands, with a broader stream, forming extensive sabulous, and in some cases well-wooded islands, which stretch leagues upon leagues along this left bank. A glorious moon, within two days of the full, succeeded one of the angriest yet finest of sunsets, and her rays, falling full upon the capacious bosom of the placid river transformed it into a lake of burnished silver. At about 9 P. M. we arrive off the mouth of the Rio Negro (Black River), called thus because the decaying sarsaparilla roots, with which its banks are lined, impregnate and discolour the waters and at the same time render them so highly medicinal as to attract great numbers of bathers to its shores.

As the rising sun’s disk was cut in twain by the horizon, I started upon deck to view the landscape. We were coursing through numberless islands, with a scenery on both banks exactly like that of the Suffolk river Orwell, but with an atmosphere O! how different! ours was as the balm of Eden, theirs, the nipping dry Eoic. The breadth of the stream is here about half a mile, and the moderately elevated banks are clothed with vivid green to the water’s edge; then as the river narrows again, we traverse a beautiful Ægean, whose innumerable islets are thickly wooded, principally with Espinillo (Acacia cavenia), Tala (Celtis Sellowiana), the willow of Humboldt, Ceibo (Erythrina cristagalli) and Laurel; but which, to my utter astonishment, presented scarcely any trace of animal life; hardly a dozen butterflies, a chimango or two, and a few weary-looking butcher-birds were its sole visible representatives. About 6 A. M., whilst passing through low jungle we sight our first city on the Argentine side, Concepcion del Uruguay, the capital of the province of Entre Rios; and entering a deep channel scarce a hundred yards broad, flanked by a double row of poplars, emerge in front of the splendid Saladero[4] of Santa Candida.

Ten miles above Paysandú, the river expands into a broad belt clear as a mirror, in which the sky, distant foliage and hills are brilliantly reflected, the air changes and bathed in tropical fragrance and balminess, the intensely vivid verdure springs up magically around us.

At the junction of the Queguay, an oriental affluent with the main stream, which at this point has a breadth of about half a mile are planted several Saladeros, apparently hard at work; but whether the palms are scared by the scent of blood or refuse to witness the daily holocaust, certain it is that they here suddenly vanish from the scene. Twenty miles above this rises a veritable Tarpeia in the shape of a very lofty, bold, perpendicular-faced mass jutting into the river from the Uruguay coast, and which, with a refinement of cruelty and a just appreciation of history, was actually used by a general in one of the periodic revolutions to which this unhappy country is so subject, wherefrom to hurl his prisoners. Two picturesque islands, circular, rising abruptly out of the water, apparently exactly equal in size and shape, and hence styled “Las dos hermanas” (the two sisters), stand as advanced guards to this precipitous promontory, and by their intensely green verdure to the river’s edge and smooth mathematical uniformity, offer a pleasing contrast to the rugged, battered and blackened face of the cliff.

We hold our breath as with a quick turn and dart through the seething flood, our clever steersman pilots us through dangers greater than ever Sylla and Charybdis offered, and leaves us at leisure to survey the prosperous cattle farms, which, on both banks, now line our approach to Concordia.

At length about 5 P. M., after a passage of thirty-one hours and at a distance of 300 miles from Buenos Ayres, we sight the town of Concordia on the right bank, and at almost the same moment Salto, on the left, which, rising tier upon tier, very much resembles Bath; these two occupy almost the same relative positions as Buda and Pesth on the Danube.

From its junction with the Paraná, the Uruguay is navigable at all states of the tide as far as Concordia, but some miles above that city occur the Falls of Salto-grande and numerous rapids which render it unnavigable to steamers from below, except in times of extraordinary freshets between which an interval of years sometimes elapses; whilst above these, although still sown with rapids, the river is navigable but to vessels of smaller draught.

From the marvellous accounts I had listened to, I expected to behold in these Falls another Niagara, but great was my disappointment on viewing them for the first time, for although very picturesque, they struck me as completely wanting in the grandeur with which my imagination had clothed them. Extending for about a mile longitudinally, they consist on the northern limit of a transverse bar of boulders which cause a perpendicular descent of about twenty-five feet; then a succession of rugged rocks, sometimes of very fantastic shape, pile Pelion on Ossa, amongst which the river surges and eddies. The reef spreads completely across the river, a distance of about a quarter of a mile, so that in some states of the tide, it is possible to pass on foot from Entre Rios to the Banda Oriental, at all times a difficult, nay dangerous, undertaking. An island formed of massive boulders occupies the centre, on which a few dwarfed trees struggle for an aquatic existence. Here are found splendid agates, blocks of rock crystal, amethysts and other precious stones; and there lie naked on the blistering rocks, those rusty and silent mementos of Garibaldi’s unsuccessful expedition in 1840 when, to cross the rapids, he was obliged to throw overboard ten eighteen-pounder iron guns.

By contemplating the scene, however, it grows in magnitude and sublimity.