Robert Grant Watson - Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 1

The following account of the Colonies from which sprang the States of South America owes its origin to the want of such a work felt by myself some years ago. In 1866 I received the appointment of second Secretary to Her Majesty’s Legation in the Argentine Republic and Paraguay . My previous experience having been in quite another part of the world, I had all to learn respecting the regions which I was about to visit. The only book which had been recommended to me was Sir Woodbine Parish’s work on Buenos Ayres . On reaching my destination, however, I found that this work was already out of date; I also found that there was a considerable amount of literature respecting South America. But this literature being partly in English, French, German, Dutch, Latin, or Italian, and partly in Spanish or Portuguese, was only accessible to persons possessing a reading knowledge of the above-named languages.

Of two years in South America I passed one as Secretary at Buenos Ayres , and the other in a similar capacity at Rio de Janeiro . During the first year I was sent up the Uruguay and to the Province of Santa Fè ; then to the Welsh colony on the Chupat river in Patagonia ; and, lastly, to the then seat of war in Paraguay : in the second year I went on a mission to the Province of Minas Geraes in Brazil . I had thus opportunities of seeing different parts of the continent, and of becoming more impressed with the want of a work giving anything like a complete account of them.

On my return to Europe I was employed in several countries for a number of years in succession, and have only recently found the necessary leisure to compose a work of the kind mentioned. The materials at my disposal are voluminous; but my effort has been to make this Review as concise as is consistent with clearness. In offering it to the Public I by no means desire it to take the place of the more elaborate and original works referred to in it, but rather to serve as an Index to the contents of these various works.

The History of South America may contain much of general interest; it possesses, moreover, a special interest for merchants, settlers, sailors, and travellers, who may have passed, or may be likely to pass, a portion of their lives on the continent in question; nor should some knowledge of an important portion of the globe be excluded from the sphere of inquiry of any educated person.

That the merest elementary acquaintance with South American geography and politics may be conspicuously absent even in educated English circles, may be gathered from the following circumstances within my own experience:—On my return to England in 1868, I happened to be present on the annual speech-day at Harrow. At luncheon there I sat next to a gentleman whose remarks on the unusual heat of the weather led to his learning that I had recently come from Rio de Janeiro . His interest being excited, he asked me to tell him, one by one, the several stages by which one arrived there from England, viz.—Southampton, Lisbon, St. Vincent , Pernambuco , Bahia , and Rio . When I had named the last point he repeated the inquiry, “and then?” to which I replied that then one was at one’s destination.—“But,” he asked, “I thought Rio was up a river?” I suggested that he was perhaps misled by the name “ Rio de Janeiro ,” the River of January, but said that the town was situated on an arm of the sea, which the first European explorers had mistaken for a stream, naming it after the month of the year on which it was discovered. But this explanation did not satisfy him. He was thinking of some other river: would I name one or two? I suggested “ The Amazons ,” which he said was the stream he meant, until I informed him that it lay about two thousand miles to the north of Rio de Janeiro ! On this he remarked that there was surely another great stream in that quarter, and that he must have mistaken the name. I suggested the river Plate , to which he answered “Yes, yes, of course;” but his speculations collapsed when I informed him that the river Plate was about a thousand and fifty miles to the south of the Brazilian capital.

About the same time I met at a dinner-party a well-known Member of Parliament, who, on learning the quarter of the world from which I had recently arrived, professed himself as being most anxious to hear something about the Paraguayan War, then much talked of, and the progress of which he said he had followed with close attention. I began with a statement of the contending parties—namely, Paraguay on the one hand, and Brazil , the Argentine Republic , and the Republic of Uruguay on the other. “But stop,” he said “You have omitted to mention Corrientes .” I answered that to quote Corrientes as being one of the parties to the war would be the same as to mention Yorkshire as having been one of the principals of the Crimean War—since Corrientes was merely a province of the Argentine Republic . This was a new light to him; the name had so taken hold of his memory that he was at first inclined to argue with me as to the correctness of my statement.

Lest this gentleman should appear exceptionally uninformed, I may mention that, as I had subsequent opportunities of ascertaining, even some men holding high office in the Royal Geographical Society—who were familiar with the latest discoveries near the North Pole and in the interior of Africa, with Central Asia, and with Australia—had somehow in their range of study overlooked South America.

In writing history, one man necessarily builds upon another man’s foundation. It was my first intention to compose a wholly original work, comprising the history of the several states of South America from the discovery of that Continent to the present day; but reflection convinced me that the execution of such a plan would require the labour of many years, even were all circumstances favourable. Various writers have formed schemes, the labour entailed by the magnitude of which has led to their collapse. As one example amongst many may be mentioned the scholar Muñoz, who employed nearly fifty years in amassing materials for a history of Spanish discovery and conquest in America, but who had scarcely finished the first volume when he died.

Even were one to attempt to produce an entirely original history of the early Portuguese South America, it would necessarily prove defective in comparison with Southey’s “History of Brazil .” In the preface to his work, that author says of it, under date of 1810, “For the greater part of the last century printed documents almost entirely fail. A collection of manuscripts not less extensive than curious, and which is not to be equalled in England, enables me to supply this chasm in history. The collection was formed during a residence of more than thirty years in Portugal, by a relative. Without the assistance which I have received from him, it would have been hopeless to undertake, and impossible to complete it.” With the above instances before me, I have felt it necessary to content myself with writing a historical Review respecting the several Spanish and Portuguese Colonies from which sprang the various countries which collectively form political South America.