ACROSS THE PAMPAS AND THE ANDES.*
WE like Mr. Crawford's style none the less that he does not pretend, as too many travellers now-a-days with an eye to effect and the circulating libraries do pretend, to be a combination of the special correspondent and the landscape painter. It was an errand of business that took him across the Pampas and Andes; and on the whole, he tells his story in a business-like way. Sometimes, indeed, he takes to the stilts of the provincial lecturer, as when he describes a tipsy Indian as "a votary of Bacchus," and speaks of "the poison of that most insidious of moral diseases, the cacoethes scribendi." But we note that the book originated in a lecture delivered at Monte Video for the benefit of some schools, and this fact may account for certain departures from plain realism of narrative of the kind we have quoted. Messrs. Waring Brothers, of London, having entered into an agreement with the Government of Buenos Ayres to send out a staff of engineers to explore and survey the route for a proposed railway across the continent of South America from Buenos Ayres to Chili, to "connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by an iron link similar to that binding together New York and San Francisco, or the chain now being forged by our Canadian fellow-subjects farther north, to stretch from one coast to the other of their vast Dominion," Mr. Crawford was appointed engineer-in-chief of the expedition. With his colleagues, he sailed from Liverpool in March, 1871, for Monte Video. Arriving there, he found it in a state of siege, while Buenos Ayres, properly the first stage in his journey, was in no better case, having been attacked by . • Across the Pampas and the Ando.. By Robert Crawford, MA. With a Map and Illustrations. London Longman% Green, and Co.
yellow fever. Having organised with some difficulty an ex- ploring party at Chivikoy, about 100 miles to the west of Buenos Ayres, he struck across country, through Indian territory, and by frontier forts, to the Andes. With Mendoza for his headquarters, he spent some time among the Andes. Finally, he crossed them in rather circuitous fashion by the Planchon Pass, and entered Chili. At Valparaiso, he again took steamer, and passing through Magellan's Straits into the Atlantic, returned to Monte Video. Mr. Crawford seems to be a naturalist as well as an enthusiastic traveller and capable engineer, and he has in his narrative confined himself to describing what he saw, and precisely as he saw it.
Mr. Crawford deals very exhaustively, in one of his appen- dices, with the question of a trans-Andine railway. A line from Buenos to Santiago or to Valparaiso may cross the Andes, either through the Uspallata Pass, or by a detour through the Planchon Pass. The Uspallata route, the line of which may be gathered from a map which appears along with this volume, is much the shorter of the two. The distances from Buenos Ayres to Santiago and Valparaiso by it are 812 and 856 miles ; whereas by the Planchon Pass, which Mr. Crawford surveyed, the distances are 990 and 1104 miles. On the other hand, the travelling required on the Planchon route is a much less serious affair than that by the Uspallata. The summit tunnel in the latter is 10,568 feet above the level of the sea, while the highest point on the Planchon route is 8,225.
"The position of these two projects may," says Mr. Crawford, "be fairly stated in a few words as follows :—The Uspallata route is much shorter than its rival, and has the advantage of going by the established line of traffic and touching at Mendoza, where it would reap the benefit of the traffic from San Joan and the neighbouring provinces to the north. On the other hand, the line by the Planchon crosses the summit at a much lower level, and with less abrupt and shorter incline, and it would be less expensive to construct and work ; bat it traverses a country as yet unsettled."
It may be noted in connection with this matter that Messrs. Clark, an engineering firm of Valparaiso, obtained in 1874 a concession to carry a railway over the Andes by the Uspallata Pass, which is the route for the bulk of regular communications between Chili and La Plata, and which at its highest point is 12,795 feet above the sea-level.
That Mr. Crawford met with no startling adventures in the course of his journey from Buenos Ayres to the Andes must be regarded as a lucky accident rather than anything else. As soon as he reached the confines of the Argentine Republic he was in danger from Indians. Although he was fortunate enough to meet only with friendly tribes, a surveying party which was sent out after the one which he commanded, was, although protected by an escort of an officer and twenty-eight men, attacked by a band of fifty Indians. They drove off their assailants, indeed, and killed twelve of them ; but they never- theless lost some of their horses and cattle :—
" In El Eco de Cordoba of January 4th, 1872, there is a statistical summary of the Indian invasions during the year 1871 in one depart- ment of the frontier only, enumerating more than thirty of them, giving at the same time the date, place, and particulars of each. One of these was a very serious affair, where eighty Indians under the celebrated Blanco attacked Sarmiento,' an important fort upon the frontier (in which there was a garrison of 250 men when we passed by it), and plundered it, pursuing their course northwards as far as Chemeco,' devastating the country as they went along, killing in all sixty-five men, wounding seven others, and taking two prisoners, besides carrying off 223 horses and 76 mules from Fort Sarmiento, together with 36 horses and 7 males from Chemeco."
Mr. Crawford places great stress on the promotion of railway enterprise as a means of reducing to a minimum the danger of Indian incursions into Argentine territory over the Rio Negro, which at present constitutes the boundary-line. But he also puts some faith in just treatment. "It might be well," be says, "even on the lower grounds of expediency, to pay the Indians something for the territory wrested from them, and to guarantee that no further encroachment would be made south of the new limits, provided a treaty to that effect could be brought about. The experience of the results of the treatment of the North- American Indians in Canada would lead to the hope that such a coarse as that suggested might not be unsuccessful."
Mr. Crawford, although his mission in Argentine territory was not expressly that of a naturalist, is a careful observer, and gives a lively account of everything in animate and inanimate nature that attracted his attention. That was surely a novel idea which he gave effect to one night of collecting and confining fire- flies in a tumbler and utilising them as a night-light. Here is a fuller account of the Biscacha of Buenos Ayres than we remember to have come across before :—
"By far the most important animal in point of numbers to be met with in the province of Buenos Ayres, is the Biscacha (Lagostamus trichodactylus). It closely resembles both in appearance and habits the marmots or 'prairie-dogs' of North America. The body is about two feet long, and the tail, which measures from ten to twelve inches, ends with a tuft of coarse black hair. The fur is of an ashy-grey colour upon the back, and pure white on the throat, breast, and under- part of the body ; large, coarse, black bristling whiskers decorate each side of the mouth; the ears are short, and the eyes large and black. The toes of the hind-foot are three in number, while the fore- foot possesses one more. The Biscacha has four very sharp, curved, and bevel-edged, gnawing teeth in the front of the mouth, two above and two below; they are hollow at the base and firmly embedded in the jaw to a depth of one inch, while they project an inch and three- quarters above the socket, giving them a total length of two and three-quarter inches. There is a considerable space without any teeth, and then, near the back or hinge of the jaws, they are supplied with molars. These little animals are very numerous in the settled parts of the country, although not so abundant elsewhere. Their habits are nocturnal, or nearly so ; they sleep by day and make their appearance towards sunset. At first they sit for awhile at the months of their burrows looking sleepy and drowsy, but as the twi- light deepens they grow lively and active enough. They live together in families like rabbits, but in burrows of great size, and supplied with many chambers, and frequently on terms of strange intimacy with their lodgers, the little burrowing owls (Athens cunicularia), the one inhabiting the house by day and the other by night, after a some- what similar arrangement to that of Box and Cox in the play. Biscachas have a very singular habit of collecting all the old bones and miscellaneous articles they can find in their nightly rambles, and depositing them around the entrance to their burrows, probably with the desire of gradually raising them above the level of the ground alongside as a protection against inundations during heavy rains, an inconvenience they often suffer from in the level districts they most frequent. I recollect on one occasion mentioning this pecu- liarity of the Biscacha for collecting curiosities to a friend, a captain in the British Navy, with whom I was on a shoot- ing excursion in the south of the province of Buenos Ayres, by way of consoling him for the loss of a powder-flask which he had dropped just before nightfall, and suggesting that he would probably find it next morning at the month of one of the nearest 'Biscacheros,' as their homes are called, to where it was lost. At the time he was very incredulous, but next morning, following out my suggestion, he went in search of his missing property, and found it, as I had an- ticipated, at the mouth of a Biscacha hole, the owner of which no doubt had brought it home as part of the night's spoil. I have also known them to exhibit this propensity for acquiring strange objects, in a manner calculated to lead to some inconvenience, by drawing and carrying away a large number of the stakes driven into the ground to mark the centre line of a railway about to be constructed, and more than once I have been disturbed in my sleep, by their noisy endeavours to possess themselves of our tent-pegs. They are by no means timid animals, and will sometimes show considerable spirit if intercepted in their attempts to reach thair burrows. One that I treated so, left a deep indentation with its teeth in the barrels of my gun, which I had interposed to save my legs from its attack. And another I have seen, when its escape was similarly out off, turn upon a dog that was pursuing it, and seize him by the tail, nor relinquish its hold until it had been dragged for a considerable distance by its affrighted antagonist, retreating precipitously in dismay at the unusual caudal appendage."
The terrible catastrophe, which less than a quarter of a century ago befell the city of Mendoza, the last important stage on the way to the Andes, is not yet forgotten, and Mr. Crawford does somethiag more than repeat the sad story :—
"The 20th of March, 1861, had been a sultry and oppressive day, and, as the night apprcached, the half-suffocated inhabitants of Mendoza, issuing from their houses, went in search of cooler air, or sat at their open doors to catch each breath that passed, while the more devout among them assembled in the churches to offer up their evening prayer, when, without a note of warning, a terrible destruc- tion swept over the devoted place. The earth shook and opened in yawning chasms ; foundations tottered and houses fell, burying beneath them nearly the whole of the population. In less time than it has taken to describe all was over, and from 12,000 to 15,000 people had perished in the ruins, which still exist as records of the dire calamity, and tell, with a force that words could not express, how terribly complete it was. Scarcely was the earthquake over, when fires broke out in different places among the debris of fallen houses, and raged for many days before they could be extinguished. Nature had done almost her worst, but it was reserved for man to add the last touch of darkest shadow to a picture already fall of misery. With a cruelty and inhumanity scarcely to be credited, bands of plunderers from other places rushed to the scene, as vultures to a carcase, and occupied themselves with endeavouring to secure what spoil they could, instead of helping the few still surviving but im- prisoned sufferers to escape from their living tombs are the consuming flames had reached them. After the catastrophe the Government tried to induce the scanty remnant of the population to abandon the site of the ill-fated city, and begin the building of a new one at some distance from it; but associations proved stronger than the teachings of experience, and a new Mendoza has arisen alongside the ruins of her unfortunate predecessor, evolved from a state of chaos and con- fusion into one of beauty and prosperity. Fine public buildings, private dwellings that indicate comfort and convenience, gardens with their fruitful vines and fig-trees, walnut-trees, and poplars, both Lombardy and Carolina, grace the public streets and walks ; but above all, the pleasant promenade, more than half a mile in length, with its streams of running water flowing on both sides, beneath the
canopy of shade afforded by two double rows of well-grown trees. Add to this the mountain torrent which rolls past Mendoza along its bed of rounded stones and gravel, from the mighty Cordillera, whose slopes reach almost to the city. All these combined to make a lovely spot, but, in spite of this, it is impossible to divest the mind of the sad memories connected with the locality. Your host, while he entertains you, recounts the hairbreadth escape he had himself, while many members of his family perished. The coachman, driving through the town, tells similar dismal tales of friends be lost, and points to particular spots among the ruins where some exceptionally appalling incident occurred ; while the hairdresser, not to be outdone, as he cuts your hair, pauses at intervals to tell, with the garrulity of his calling, more horrors of that dreadful day. With such surround- ings, it is not surprising that numerous precautions should be taken to guard against the possible recurrence of a similar calamity. The new streets have been laid out much wider than the old ones were, and the walls of houses are generally composed of a timber frame- work, filled in with sun-dried bricks. The people, too, live in a state of continual apprehension, as may be seen from their using, instead of doors, heavy curtains drawn across the entrances to their bed- rooms, so that upon the first alarm of an earthquake, they may spring from their beds and rush into the open courtyard, with which each house is usually provided."
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