The Argentine Republic: Its Development and Progress

The political isolation of Buenos Aires between 1852 and 1862, during the time when the first concessions were issued, made upon the railway system an impression that would not be effaced until twenty-five years afterwards. It was not until 1886 that Rosario was connected by rail with Buenos Aires. The line to Mendoza and Chile, begun in 1870 (F. C. Andino), joins the line from Rosario to Córdoba. It reached Mendoza at the foot of the Andes before going on to Buenos Aires; and it was in 1888 that the Pacific railway was completed between Buenos Aires and Villa Mercedes, and established direct communications between the capital and the province of Cuyo.

The line from Rosario to Córdoba is, therefore, the chief branch round which the Argentine system developed. It is remarkable that at the time of the original concession in 1855 a westward extension was contemplated, and that there was some idea of making it a stage in a trans-Andean. The first concessionaire, Wheelwright, had made the oldest railway in South America, from Caldera to Copiapo, in Chile in 1851. The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright to extend the Córdoba line westward and link it with the Copiapo line. When he opened the Córdoba station in 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be discouraged at the slowness with which the line had crossed the Pampa, still said that the goal was the Pacific, by way of Rioja, Copacabana and the San Francisco pass. This ambitious programme deserves to be recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former orientation of the trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward the Pacific, and as a proof of the importance, in the imagination of the men of that generation, of the old trans-Andean roads from north-western Argentina.

Even before the Rosario line had reached Córdoba, it had been continued northward as far as Tucumán. The work was pushed vigorously, and Tucumán was reached in 1875. The Córdoba-Tucumán line was the first to be constructed entirely in the region of the scrub, and quebracho sleepers were then used for the first time. The earliest lines of the Buenos Aires province and the Argentine had, on the model of the Indian railways, a gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the Central Córdoba, from Córdoba to Tucumán, had a narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods coming from Tucumán had to be transferred at Córdoba. At the same time (1875) the line from Concordia to Monte Caseros was opened, and this made it possible to avoid the rapids of the Uruguay, which was to be a source of supply to the whole Mesopotamian system. Its gauge was fifty-seven inches. Differences of gauge are, and will continue to be, one of the characteristics of the Argentine system.

During the period from 1875 to 1890 were constructed the main lines which took the place of the old roads from province to province. The Andean railway reached San Luis in 1882 and Mendoza and San Juan in 1885. Branches of the Central Córdoba reached Santiago del Estero in 1884 and Catamarca in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a new direct broad-gauge line from Rosario to Tucumán; and almost at the same time the narrow-gauge line of the Central Norte, from Santa Fé to Tucumán, was finished further north. The Tucumán line was continued northward to the foot of the Andes as far as Salta. In the province of Buenos Aires the Bahía Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900 the railways have pushed on to the frontiers and are linked in various directions with those of the adjoining countries. The Cumbre tunnel on the Mendoza trans-Andean was completed in 1910, and traffic with Chile by rail is now permanent. The Salta line was continued in 1908 to the Bolivian tableland. In Mesopotamia, in fine, the north-eastern line reached Posadas in 1911 and effected a junction with the Paraguay line.

These details, however, give a very imperfect idea of the history of the development of the Argentine railway system. It has not merely been superimposed upon the old roads, but has, on the other hand, helped to open up and develop new lands, which could not have been colonized without it. As early as 1883 Valiento Noailles, examining the general plan of the system, noticed the profound difference between the railways of Argentine and those of Europe. "In Europe," he said, "the railways are constructed to serve existing centres of production and consumption.... Our Argentine railways are to facilitate colonization." Corresponding to each occupation of a new area of the Pampean plain by the farmer or the breeder is the construction in that area of a new network of lines which are fed by its traffic and in turn help it to increase its production. The more productive the region is, the closer are the meshes of this network. They are wider in the pastoral than in the agricultural areas. The period of the development of the southern lines in the province of Buenos Aires corresponds with the expansion of breeding when the Pampa had been pacified. The railway reached Azul in 1876. The Ayacucho branch was opened in 1880, and continued as far as Tres Arroyos in 1887. The completion of the Bahía Blanca line, via Azul and Olavarria, in 1884, is itself merely one of the dates in this colonizing period. The great period of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé and the construction of the system of lines that serve it begin a little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (extension of the Central Argentine system, the railways of the province of Santa Fé, and the narrow-gauge railway from Rosario to Córdoba).

The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen in the present completion of the system which has developed freely on the even surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the port of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario and Bahía Blanca. What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the railway map will be found on closer examination to be less perfect; while the Atlantic coast between La Plata and Bahía Blanca has no ports, the Paraná has quite a number of suitable places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and Villa Constitución are served by lines which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos Aires. This complexity of the system west of the Paraná continues to the north of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa Fé cut across all the lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the southern frontier of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea, etc.) have, unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the Paraná, all their traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanco the crops of the districts they cross. They are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not rival lines.

When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized and covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy of colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos Mejia has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since the beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction of the Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines penetrating the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia and Formosa, and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add the line from Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a Government subvention.113 These lines, serving districts with little population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time make any profit.114

Hence railway construction must be regarded in modern Argentina as one of the aspects of the problem of developing the soil. The railway companies have been compelled to intervene directly in the work of colonization. In 1863 the Central Argentine received from the Government a strip of land three miles wide on each side of the line it was making, between Rosario and Córdoba, on condition that it colonized the land. The company had its own immigration agents and its colonizing staff, and it opened its first colonies west of Rosario between 1870 and 1872. This kind of concession is exceptional in Argentina. On the other hand, the irrigation law of 1909 obliges the railway companies to undertake, on behalf of the Government, the work that is necessary to develop irrigation in the areas they serve, such work being immediately reflected in an increase of population and traffic. In compliance with this law the Southern railway is constructing a canal which will water the whole valley of the Rio Negro below the confluence of the Neuquen. The Central Argentine and the Pacific also have undertaken to construct dams on the Rio Tercero and Rio Quinto, in the provinces of Córdoba and San Luis.

As it is the essential function of a railway to convey the produce of the area it serves to the exporting port, the problem of the relations between the administration of railways and the administration of ports is of primary importance. The chief ports served by different companies, such as Rosario and Buenos Aires, may maintain their independence, but a secondary port will be at the mercy of the single line which conveys goods to it. In such circumstances the ports have become, in many cases, mere dependencies of the railways. The port of Colastiné belongs to the railways of the Santa Fé province. The port of Bahía Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports constructed by the different railway companies, and run by them. Each of them ships the goods which it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which belongs to the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, immediately after the opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca. Puerto Galvan belongs to the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port of the line from Rosario to Bahía Blanca. At Buenos Aires the Southern Railway Company has acquired control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock Company. At La Plata it manages the docks.

The spread of agricultural colonization was at first hampered by the cost of freightage which cereals could bear over an area with a radius of about 200 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by Girola in the Investigación Agricola of 1904. The period 1895-1905 saw the birth of a series of plans for making canals in the Pampean region for the purpose of transporting grain in the area which the railway did not seem able to serve economically. Not one of them was carried out, but the railways quickly enlarged their sphere of influence in the interior. There is, however, a reminiscence of this pause in colonization in what Argentinians call "the parabolic tariffs." The Argentine railways practically, apart from cases of competition with rival lines, use proportional tariffs up to a distance of 218 miles, and degressive tariffs beyond that limit. In this way the railways have helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs have certainly played a part in the spread of colonization during the years antecedent to 1912. They have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land to the better land in the east.115

The rise in the value of land and the advance of colonization led, at each of those crises of development which characterize the recent history of Argentina, to a multiplication of railway concessions granted by the national Government and the various provincial authorities. These have to be bought up by the leading companies, as each of them wanted to keep exclusive control of the region in which it had established itself. This concentration could not be accomplished in a perfectly methodical way, and the various systems now overlap, which is not to the interest of the companies. Thus Villa Maria, on the Central Argentine line from Rosario to Córdoba, is also served by a line belonging to the Santa Fé railways and by a line of the Pacific Company which puts it in communication with Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the Central Argentine penetrates to the very heart of the area of the Pacific at Junin.

However, competition between the various companies has had the effect of dividing the Pampean plain into three great spheres of influence. The first, in the north, is that of the Central Argentine and the Buenos Aires y Rosario line. In 1908 the Argentine Government officially sanctioned the fusion of the two companies, though it had really been accomplished a few years before. The second sphere, in the south, is that of the Pacific, the attraction of which was the line from Buenos Aires to Villa Mercedes, and which in 1907 bought the line from Villa Mercedes to Mendoza and the Trans-Andean, a natural continuation of its system. Moreover, in 1904 the Pacific absorbed the line from Bahía Blanca to the north-west, which has been linked up once more with its original system at Villa Mercedes. It thus has two outlets, to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca, and completely encloses the third sphere with its branches. The third sphere, which comprises the centre and south of the Pampean plain, is the domain of the Southern and Western Companies. In 1912 these two companies asked the Argentine Government to authorize them to amalgamate. Although they withdrew their proposal in 1914, in face of the conditions imposed upon them, they are still closely associated. Part of the traffic of the western lines of the Western passes over Southern lines at Carbuë, and is shipped at the port Ingeniero White. At Buenos Aires also, and at La Plata, part of the Western Company's traffic in cereals and cattle uses the premises of the Southern Company. The Western and the Southern, jointly, bought in 1908, before it was finished, the narrow-gauge Midland of Buenos Aires line at Carbuë, which was to cross their sphere of influence. It was opened in 1911.

The importance of the transport of cereals in the life of the leading Argentine systems will be seen from the following figures. In percentages of the total of goods carried, both from the interior to the ports and vice versa, the tonnage of exported cereals was:—

The figures are rather less for the Southern, which covers an area that has remained chiefly pastoral and, by means of its Rio Negro line, serves for part of the transport of cattle from Patagonia (cattle-transport on the Southern, average for the years 1913, 1914 and 1916: 17.2 per cent. of the total tonnage, 19 per cent. of total receipts; 1.4 per cent. of tonnage and 6.5 per cent. of receipts). They are higher for the Western, the only system that lies entirely in the Pampean region and has no continuations beyond it, as the Pacific has to Mendoza and the Central to Tucumán.

The share of each company in the total traffic varies from year to year according to the harvest. Of the four to ten million tons of cereals carried every year, the greater part—about a third—falls to the Central Argentine, and one-sixth to the Southern. The Central Argentine carries the greater part of the maize and flax, the maize alone representing 26 per cent. of the total tonnage carried by the line, and the flax 5.6 per cent. Of the other lines the Western alone carries any appreciable quantity of maize, which comes from the Junin district (19 per cent. of its tonnage, but only 12 per cent. of its receipts, because of the slight distances the stuff is carried). The transport of wheat is about equally divided amongst the four leading lines, but the proportion of it to total traffic is highest in the case of the Western (34.4 per cent. of total traffic). The Southern is the chief carrier of oats (9.8 per cent. of the total tonnage). The tonnage carried annually is particularly irregular in the case of the Central, on account of the irregularity of the maize crops, and the Pacific, because its lines north-west of Buenos Aires serve a wheat-area that is exposed to drought (wheat carried by the Pacific in 1913, 15.9 per cent. of the total tonnage; in 1914, 27.2 per cent.).

The clearing of the cereals gives the Argentine railways a delicate problem in the organization of traffic. The crops of flax, wheat and oats must be cleared in the four to six months following the harvest (December-January). The maize harvest, which is later, is also much slower; it lasts the whole of the autumn. Hence the removal of the maize is spread over a long period, and sometimes the work of one year runs into that of the next. This gives the Central an advantage over the other lines. The wool also must, on account of its great value, be transferred to the ports speedily after the shearing; but this is only a matter of about a hundred thousand tons.116

Export, however, is by no means the one source of traffic on the Argentine railways. Transport of goods for home consumption is chiefly a question of a large part of the wheat crop. Building materials also—bricks, lime and stone—are an important item on the various lines which link Buenos Aires with the Sierra de Córdoba and the Sierra de Tandil. In 1913 the Southern line carried 1,134,000 tons of minerals, including 997,000 tons of stone and 101,000 tons of lime from the Sierra de Tandil and 34,000 tons of salt from the salt-mines of Lavalle, between Bahía Blanca and the Colorado. In the same year, the Pacific, Central Argentine, Central Córdoba and State railway carried 880,000 tons of minerals (half being lime) from the Sierra de Córdoba.117 All the timber carried on the lines of northern Argentina, except the quebracho from the banks of the Paraná, is for home use: sleepers, fence-posts, firewood and charcoal are the chief items on most of the lines in the scrub. The war has checked railway construction and reduced the use of sleepers, but it has also deprived Argentina of combustible minerals and increased the transport of firewood. Even on railways like the Pacific and Central Argentine, which have very few of their lines on the scrub, the tonnage of wood carried is 6 per cent. of the whole (average for 1913, 1914 and 1916), and the proportion rises to 30 per cent. of the total tonnage on the Central Córdoba. For several companies the sugars of Tucumán and the wines of Mendoza are an important element of their receipts, not so much on account of the tonnage as the high cost of freightage and the great distance to the centres of consumption in the Pampean region. The carriage of wine and casks brings the Pacific 38.3 per cent. of its receipts (1913-14-16). The transport of sugar on the Central Argentine in a normal year amounts to 5 per cent. of its receipts. On the Central Córdoba the tonnage of sugar-cane and sugar carried amounted in 1914, a year of exceptional harvest, to 42 per cent. of the total tonnage, and was still 20 per cent. in 1916, a year of very poor crop. The supplying of meat to the market of Buenos Aires and the Pampean area, with its dense population, means a good deal of long-distance traffic in cattle; the refrigerators taking the better cattle of the adjoining region for the foreign market, and the slaughter houses of Buenos Aires being forced to content themselves with inferior beasts reared in the provinces and the adjoining districts.

The importance of these currents of internal traffic has made itself felt in the organization of the Argentine system. It has made it necessary for each system to have not only an outlet to an exporting town, but a direct connection with the chief centre of home consumption, Buenos Aires. The narrow-gauge system, which until the end of the nineteenth century had been restricted to the northern half of Argentine territory, north of the latitude of Rosario, developed in the province of Buenos Aires after 1900, and ventured to compete in the carriage of cereals with the broad-gauge system (Company of the Province of Buenos Aires and Provincial railway of La Plata). This system connected with the narrow-gauge lines of the north. The Central Córdoba, which had reached Rosario in 1912 and so had escaped the need to transfer its export-traffic at Córdoba to the broad-gauge, began immediately afterwards to effect a direct communication with Buenos Aires (Central Córdoba, extension to Buenos Aires, opened in 1913). The line from Rosario to Buenos Aires of the Province of Buenos Aires Company also serves to carry trains of the Province of Santa Fé Company, which is closely associated with it. The medium-gauge lines of Mesopotamia also have effected a communication with Buenos Aires by means of a ferry-boat that plies on the Paraná between Ibicuy and Zarate, and by using a section of the Buenos Aires Central.

The concentration of narrow-gauge and medium-gauge lines seemed to be issuing in a complete fusion of their interests in 1913. The Argentine Railway Company got control of the lines of Entre Rios, Corrientes and the Paraguay. It promoted the development and extension of the Central Córdoba, and it also had large interests in the French companies of the Buenos Aires and Santa Fé provinces. All the narrow-gauge lines would have concentrated in its hands if it had been able to get the State railway. The broad-gauge line from Rosario to Puerto Belgrano had, as its interest conflicted with those of the great broad-gauge English systems, joined the narrow-gauge group engineered by the Argentine railway. But the amalgamation attempted by the Argentine railways did not succeed, and, after its failure, the companies it had temporarily brought together resumed their independence.

The river-route of the Paraná has sometimes been an auxiliary, at other times a rival, of the railways.

Until the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was opened in 1886, the navigation of the Paraná was the only link between the system of northern Argentina and that of the Buenos Aires province. Before the line was completed, the company had established a service of boats on the Paraná, and in this way it kept up a traffic in goods consigned to stations on the Central Argentine, to be transferred at Rosario. These combinations of railway and river service disappeared when the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was finished.

In regard to export traffic the railways have not attempted to compete with the river anywhere where it is open to maritime navigation; they have merely been concerned to connect with it. On the other hand, the railway and the river are rivals for the home traffic and the traffic of the upper districts which sea-going boats do not reach. Before the time of the railways the river had taken all the goods traffic, but had tolerated on its left bank a post-road between Santa Fé, Corrientes and Asunción. The railway still has the advantage over the river in regard to speed (in carrying passengers between Rosario and Buenos Aires, and live cattle from the Chaco and the Paraguay for Buenos Aires or the salting works of the lower Uruguay). Even in regard to certain kinds of heavy goods—quebracho timber—the river has not secured a monopoly, and there is a good deal of transport by rail.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVER-ROUTES

The problem of the use of the river-routes of the Paraná and the Paraguay is not of interest to Argentina alone. It affects the whole history of colonization in South America. The very name of the Rio de la Plata is a reminiscence of the anxieties of the early navigators who landed there, chiefly in search of a route to the mineral districts of the Andes [Plata = silver]. It is remarkable that the Amazon, which opens a more direct and better route to the Andes, was never used for reaching Peru. It was at the most, and only occasionally, used as a return-route, whereas expeditions to the Cordillera were organized on the banks of the Paraná during the whole of the sixteenth century. The routes linking the Paraná and the Paraguay with the tableland furrow the whole plain of the Pampa and the Chaco, from the latitude of the estuary to about 16° S. lat. (expedition of Ñuflo de Chavez in 1557). An especially close network starts from the river between 18° and 22° S. lat. and ends at Santa Cruz, the most northern centre established by the Spaniards on the plain, at the foot of the Andes, as a consequence of the use of the Paraná.118

Spanish colonization, however, did not succeed in making permanent settlements on the Chaco. The Indians, who were masters of it, disputed their passage, and the only practicable route was the southernmost of the roads to the tableland, south of the Rio Salado, which ends at the estuary. From this time onward the prosperity of Buenos Aires eclipsed that of Asunción. The river ceased to be a great continental route.

The division of the Paraná between the Spanish and the Portuguese was a check upon the full development of the river-route. The Portuguese held the upper part of its basin, which now belongs to Brazil. They expelled the Spanish missionaries from the upper Paraná about the middle of the seventeenth century, and made themselves masters of the Paraguay north of 20° S. lat. Their forts at Coimbre and Albuquerque prevented any from ascending. D'Azara insists that it would have been Spain's interest to disarm these forts; it would have enabled them to go up the river as far as the Spanish missions to the Mojos and the Chiquitos. On their side, the Portuguese only used the upper section of the river, where it is joined by the Paulist road north of the Coimbre, as a means of access to the gold mines of the Matto Grosso. Even now, although the Paraná is open to every flag, the development of the river-route is not independent of political conditions. In making the railway from Saint Paul to Corumba, and so creating on its own territory a means of direct communication with the upper Paraguay, Brazil diverts from the lower districts part of the traffic which ought normally to go there. Again, the ports of southern Brazil and the lines which go to them try to attract to the Atlantic the produce of the basins of the Uruguay and the upper Paraná, which would have followed the thread of the river to foster the trade of Buenos Aires if the frontiers had been fixed otherwise.

Before the Revolution the river-trade was confined to exchanges between the Misiones and Paraguay on the one hand, and Buenos Aires and the Andean provinces on the other. After the extinction of the missions Paraguay was the chief centre of traffic on the river. At the close of the eighteenth century it had a fairly large population. According to D'Azara, it amounted to 97,000, and 47,000 for the area of the former Missions (Misiones), while Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Entre Rios and Corrientes had not more than 103,000 inhabitants collectively. Paraguay exported tobacco, maté and timber by the river. The Buenos Aires Estano received 800 tons of tobacco a year. The exports of maté from Paraguay to Peru, Chile and the interior provinces amounted to 1,725 tons, and 2,250 tons went to Buenos Aires. The timber came mostly from the Tebicuary, where the angadas (loads of timber) were formed. The chief constructive sheds also were on the Tebicuary. Boats of twenty to 200 tons were launched there; and they had armed boats, when they went down the river, to detect ambushes of the Indians, who were masters of the right bank north of Santa Fé.

The development of navigation on the Paraná during the first half of the nineteenth century was checked by the disturbances and wars of the period of the emancipation and unification of Argentina. The river was blockaded several times and traffic interrupted. Only a few smuggling schooners succeeded in getting through the side branches, which the ships stationed in the river could not watch. Robertson escaped the Spanish vessels in this way. The picture which D'Orbigny has given us of the life of the river belongs to the year 1827. At that time the estuary was blockaded by the Brazilian fleet in the whole area of the delta as far as San Pedro. Piracy was so rife, and the insecurity so great, on the Uruguay and the Paraná, that few ventured as far as Buenos Aires, the ships being linked in convoys. Up stream, Corrientes was the limit of navigation. The dictator Francis closed the Paraguay, and even the small boats no longer sailed on the upper Paraná, along the frontier of Paraguay. The Correntinos, who spoke Guarani, could merely get permission at rare intervals to send a few boats up river. Armed boats convoyed these as far as Neembucu, and they returned with hides and maté. Corrientes thus became the market-centre of the upper river and replaced Asunción in the trade. The flotilla on the Paraná included flat-bottomed barges, which were only used in coming down, and strong keeled ships—schooners, sloops and brigs—with their ropes made of leather. Down stream there was a little more diversity in the traffic. The island sent cargoes of firewood and charcoal to Santa Fé and Buenos Aires. The orchards of the delta provided Buenos Aires with oranges and peaches. Hides for export were shipped at Goya and Santa Fé. But the chief freight was lime from La Bajada, which was burned in the kilns on the Barranca, at the outcrops of the beds of conchiferous limestone.

The navigation was fairly easy, the journey from Corrientes to Buenos Aires (675 miles) lasting, as a rule, from fifteen to twenty days. Going up, the time was more irregular. They had to stop when there was no south wind, or a little progress was made by hauling (silgar). D'Orbigny took a month to travel up.119 In 1822, before the war with Brazil, there were 651 boats entered at Buenos Aires for coasting trade on the rivers and 1,035 at San Fernando or on the Tigre, the advance port of Buenos Aires. In 1833 Isabelle put at one thousand the number of vessels at work on the Paraná and the Uruguay.

In 1841 Rosas forbade navigation on the river. There was then a double blockade checking the trade of Argentina. The Franco-British fleet closed the Rio de la Plata and blockaded Buenos Aires, where the Government of Rosas was established. In addition, Rosas's troops on the barranca of the right bank prevented any from going up the Paraná, and cut off the interior provinces from the rest of the world. The injury then done to interests which were already fully self-conscious may be gathered from the agitation provoked by the decision of France and England in 1845 to break the blockade of the river. A convoy was at once organized at Montevideo, consisting of no less than ninety-eight ships, of 6,900 tons in all (MacKann). It went up the Paraná under the protection of war-ships, which removed the chains slung across it by Rosas. The convoy dispersed up river as soon as it was out of range of Rosas. But it had needed so great an effort that the attempt could not be made again before the fall of Rosas.

The closing of the Paraná compelled a diversion of the trade of Paraguay toward the south-east. It crossed the isthmus of Misiones, between the Paraná and the Uruguay, and passed down the Uruguay. At this time the whole commercial activity of Paraguay was concentrated at Itapua, on the upper Paraná. The prosperity of the Uruguay was some compensation for the misery that reigned on the Paraná. The populations of Paysandu and Montevideo greatly increased.

In 1852, at the fall of Rosas, the modern period began for the Paraná. The river-population changed rapidly. It ceased to be exclusively creole. Basques, and later Italians, had settled upon the Uruguay ten years before, and they now spread along the Paraná. In 1850 MacKann found fifty vessels, of 20 to 100 tons, belonging to Italians at Santa Fé. This wave of immigration coincided with the development of relations between the Paraná and the port of Montevideo. From 1852 to 1860 Buenos Aires was isolated, and it remained outside the economic life of Argentina. Montevideo took its place. Urquiza's administration sought, in addition, to establish direct maritime communication between over-seas ports and the ports on the river: Gualeguy in Entre Rios, and Rosario in Santa Fé. Under a system of preferential duties (1857-59), which reduced the burden on goods carried by the river, Rosario grew rapidly, and between 1853 and 1858 increased its population from 4,000 to 22,700. The period from 1852 to 1860 was also the time when steam-navigation was developing, and this doubled the value of the river-route. From 1860 onward Buenos Aires was connected by regular services of steamboats with Rosario, Santa Fé, Corrientes, Asunción and Cuyaba. On the upper Paraná goods (timber, tobacco and oranges) were still carried by sailing boats between Corrientes and Apipé, where they stopped at the commencement of the rapids. Steamboats did not sail up the rapids of Apipé until 1868.120 From 1850 to 1860 there were repeated explorations of the Salado and the Bermejo, as the interior provinces hoped to be able to find a connection with the vivifying artery of the Paraná (voyage of Page on the Salado from Salta in 1855, and of Lavarello on the Bermejo in 1855 and 1863).

In 1860 the entry of Buenos Aires into the Confederation re-established the normal condition of free competition between Buenos Aires and Rosario. From that time the life of the river reflects the advance of colonization in the Pampean region. The Paraná became the highway for the export of cereals.

The two rivers, of which the Rio de la Plata forms the common estuary, differ considerably in their features. The Uruguay has irregular floods, especially in autumn (May) and at the end of the winter (August-October). Low water is in summer (January-February). Its basin belongs to the temperate zone, and does not extend northward as far as the area of tropical summer-rain. The Uruguay also differs from the Paraná in its low capacity for transport and alluvial deposit. While the Paraná has built up a vast deltaic plain, the Uruguay ends in an ordinary estuary, with rocky or sandy bed and clear water. The estuary of the Uruguay is 130 miles long and five or six miles wide. The eastern shore is rocky and broken. The Argentine shore is low. It is formed in the south by the deposits of the delta of the Paraná, while further north, from Gualeguacha to Concepción, the hills of Entre Rios are hidden behind a screen of flat islands covered with palms, formed by the stuff brought by the streams of Entre Rios. The river-floods are lost in the great sheet of the estuary. The tide in the estuary or a flood in the Paraná is enough to turn the current.

Maritime navigation goes beyond the estuary and beyond Paysandu, as far as the rapids which prevent further advance at Salto. The twin towns of Concordia (right bank) and Salta (left bank) mark the limit of navigation on the inner course of the river. It begins again above the falls, at Monte Caseros, from which the river-boats go to San Tomé and occasionally to Concepción. Small ships go higher, as far as Salto Grande in Misiones (27° 20′ S. lat.).121

The navigable system of the Paraná is four times as large. The first survey of the river was made about the middle of the nineteenth century by the British Navy. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Argentine Government took up the study of the bed and the peculiarities of the Paraná, and the Ministry of Public Works published a map, on the scale 1:100,000, of the course of the river between Posadas and San Pedro, at the beginning of the delta. A precise survey was made, and twenty-six fluvio-metrical scales were established, the zero of which represents mean low-water.122 Transverse soundings were taken at equal distances of 670 and 1,000 feet, the distance being reduced to 160 and even 80 feet at critical points. Thanks to this work, the Paraná is now, no doubt, the best known of all rivers of that size.

Its output is estimated at 6,000 cubic metres a second at mean low-water, in the latitude of Rosario, and 25,000 to 30,000 cubic metres a second during flood at a height of six metres above low-water.123 Its features bear the mark of its tropical origin. The tropical character is typical on the Paraguay, which is, by its situation in the central South-American plain, the real continuation of the lower Paraná. The slightness of the fall of the Paraguay, however, and the extent of the marshes over which it spreads in Brazil and Paraguay, have the effect of regulating and retarding the flood, which only attains its maximum at Asunción in May. The flood of the Paraguay extends the period of high water on the lower Paraná until the end of autumn. The upper Paraná has most of its basin in the tropical zone of summer rain. But its behaviour is also influenced by the spring or autumn rains of the southern part of the Brazilian tableland. Its floods are sudden and violent. They reach a height of sixty or seventy feet in the region of the confluence of the Yguassu. They sweep rapidly down stream, and reach the lower Paraná before the flood of the Paraguay, which they hold back.

From Posadas the flood-waves reach Corrientes in five days (235 miles). From Corrientes they reach Paraná in eight days (380 miles), travelling about two miles an hour. That is one-third the speed of the current, as the flood is retarded, and more or less absorbed, by the ramifications of the broader bed in which it moves.

At Bajada Grande the lowest water is in September. The flood appears in December or January, though sometimes in October or November. The maximum is in March or April. The rise is rapid at first, but it gradually moderates, and the level of the water is raised about one metre per month during three months. It then sinks in corresponding order. The ebb is often interrupted in June, and sometimes as late as August, by a sudden leap upward of the curve, representing an ascensional movement of the water three times as rapid as that of the main flood (one metre in ten days). The level reached in this late flood is sometimes higher than that of the normal flood in April or May. The range of the ordinary flood-movements is from ten to sixteen feet. Exceptional floods rise to a height of twenty-three feet above the low-water mark.

The curves established for the years 1908 to 1910 by the Argentine hydrographical service enable us to analyse the mechanism of the flood with a good deal of confidence. The beginning of the flood at Bajada Grande in October corresponds to the first flood of the upper Paraná. During this first phase the curve of the Bajada is parallel (thirteen days later) to that of Posadas. There is the same parallelism in November, December and January. If the summer rains are light on the upper Paraná, the flood is late on the lower Paraná, and the water is still low there in December (0.20 below the low-water mark on December 31, 1910). At the beginning of March, before the maximum of the flood, the curve of Bajada Grande differs from the curve of Posadas. It is the time when the flood of the lower river is caused by the rise of the Paraguay. The secondary floods of June and July again have their origin in the upper Paraná, but, as they are added to the flood of the Paraguay on the lower river, they reach a higher level there than at Posadas; the difference gradually disappears as the flood of the Paraguay subsides. It is the addition of the late floods of the upper Paraná to the flood of the Paraguay that causes on the lower river the abnormal floods that occur there at irregular intervals (in 1825, 1833, 1858, 1878, 1905 and 1917).

Below the Bajada the height of the floods progressively declines. On the estuary they are no longer perceptible; variations of level are due entirely to the tides. In the channels of the delta of the Paraná the tide does not reverse the current as it does in the estuary of the Uruguay, but it causes a slight rise of the water; and this has been observed sometimes, at very low water, as far as Rosario.

It is near Corpus, about forty miles above Posadas, that the upper Paraná escapes from the restraint of the Brazilian tableland, which imprisons its valley, from the falls of the Guayra, in a deep fissure between lofty basalt cliffs. Below Posadas the river leaves the region of hills and red earth. Below Corrientes it flows everywhere over its own alluvia. Even above Corrientes its form has surprising characteristics of youth. The precise survey done on its banks has brought to light a very distinct break of its fall above Villa Urquiza, about 400 miles from Buenos Aires. The fall, which from Corrientes onward remains between sixty and forty millimetres per kilometre, sinks suddenly to thirteen over a stretch of twenty-five miles, and then rises again to thirty to forty-five millimetres.124 Below Rosario the mean descent is twelve millimetres to the kilometre, below San Pedro only six.

Above Corrientes the width of the main arm of the Paraná varies, as a rule, from 2,600 to 6,500 feet. The width of the river-plain over which the floods spread is still more irregular. Between Santa Fé and Paraná, where it is especially narrow, it is still ten miles wide. Lower down it gradually broadens to a width of sixty-five miles at the head of the estuary. The scenery is not the same in all sections of it. The vegetation on the islands is richer and more varied up river, and tropical essences (laurel-timbo) are found below the Bajada, forming clumps of trees covered with creepers.