Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/506

 conversion law was adopted on the 31st of October 1899, which provided that the outstanding circulation should be redeemed at the rate of 44 centavos gold for each 100 centavos paper, the official rate for gold being 227.27. Provisions were also made for the creation of a special conversion fund in specie to guarantee the circulation, which fund reached a total of $100,000,000 in March 1906. These measures have served to give greater stability to the value of the circulating medium, and to prevent the ruinous losses caused by a constant fluctuation in value, but the rate established prevents the further appreciation of the currency. On the 18th of January 1906 the currency in circulation amounted to $502,420,485, which is more than $95 per capita.

The first Europeans who visited the river Plate were a party of Spanish explorers in search of a south-west passage to the East Indies. Their leader, Juan Diaz de Solis, landing incautiously in 1516 on the north coast with a few attendants to parley with a body of Charrua Indians, was suddenly attacked by them and was killed, together with a number of his followers. This untoward disaster led to the abandonment of the expedition, which forthwith returned to Spain, bringing with them the news of the discovery of a fresh-water sea. Four years later (1520) the Portuguese seaman, Ferdinand Magellan, entered the estuary in his celebrated voyage round the world, undertaken in the service of the king of Spain (Charles I., better known as the emperor Charles V.). Magellan, as soon as he had satisfied himself that there was no passage to the west, left the river without landing.

The first attempt to penetrate by way of the river Plate and its affluents inland, with a view to effecting settlements in the interior, was made in 1526 by Sebastian Cabot. This great navigator had already won renown in the service of Henry VII. of England by his voyage to the coast of North America in company with his father, Giovanni Caboto or Cabot (see ). Sebastian Cabot had in 1519 deserted England for Spain, and had received from King Charles the post of pilot-major formerly held by Juan de Solis. In 1526 he was sent out in command of an expedition fitted out for the purpose of determining by astronomical observations the exact line of demarcation, under the treaty of Tordesillas, between, the colonizing spheres of Spain and Portugal, and of conveying settlers to the Moluccas. Arrived in the river Plate in 1527, rumours reached Cabot of mineral wealth and a rich and civilized empire in the far interior, and he resolved to abandon surveying for exploration. He built a fort a short distance up the river Uruguay, and despatched one of his lieutenants, Juan Alvarez Ramón, with a separate party upon an expedition up stream. This expedition was assailed by the Charruas and forced to return on foot, their leader himself being killed. Cabot, with a large following, entered the Paraná and established a settlement just above the mouth of the river Carcarañal, to which he gave the name of San Espiritù, among the Timbú Indians, with whom he formed friendly relations. He continued the ascent of the Paraná as far as the rapids of Apipé, and finding his course barred in this direction, he afterwards explored the river Paraguay, which he mounted as far as the mouth of the affluent called by the Indians Lepeti, now the river Bermejo. His party was here fiercely attacked by the Agaces or Payaguá Indians, and suffered severely. Cabot in his voyage had seen many silver ornaments in the possession of the Timbú and Guarani Indians. Some specimens of these trinkets he sent back to Spain with a report of his discoveries. The arrival of these first-fruits of the mineral wealth of the southern continent gained for the estuary of the Paraná the name which it has since borne, that of Rio de la Plata, the silver river. As Cabot was descending the stream to his settlement of San Espiritù, he encountered an expedition which had been despatched from Spain for the express purpose of exploring the river discovered by Solis, under the command of Diego Garcia. Finding that he had been forestalled, Garcia resolved to return home. Cabot himself, after an absence of more than three years, came back in 1530, and applied to Charles V. for means to open up communications with Peru by way of the river Bermejo. The emperor’s resources were, however, absorbed by his struggle for European supremacy with Francis I. of France, and he was obliged to leave the enterprise of South American discoveries to his wealthy nobles. Cabot’s colony at San Espiritù did not long survive his departure; an attempt of the chief of the Timbús to gain possession of one of the Spanish ladies of the settlement led to a treacherous massacre of the garrison.

Two years after the return of Cabot, the news of Francisco Pizarro’s marvellous conquest of Peru reached Europe (1532), and stirred many an adventurous spirit to strive to emulate his good fortune. Among these was Pedro de Mendoza, a Basque nobleman. He obtained from Charles V. a grant (asiento) of two hundred leagues of the coast from the boundary of the Portuguese possessions southward towards the Straits of Magellan, and the inland country which lay behind it. Mendoza undertook to conquer and settle the territory at his own charges, certain profits being reserved to the crown. In August 1534 the adelantado, or governor, sailed from San Lucar, at the head of the largest and wealthiest expedition that had ever left Europe for the New World. In January 1535 he entered the river Plate, where he followed the northern shore to the island of San Gabriel, and then crossing over he landed by a little stream, still called Riachuelo. The name of Buenos Aires was given to the country by Sancho del Campo, brother-in-law of the adelantado, who first stepped ashore. Here, on the 2nd of February, Mendoza laid the foundations of a settlement which in honour of the day he named Santa Maria de Buenos Aires. Mendoza, after some fierce encounters with the Indians, now proceeded up the Paraná, and built a fort, which he called Corpus Christi, near the site of Cabot’s former settlement of San Espiritù. The expedition, which originally numbered 2500 men, was reduced by deaths at the hands of the Indians, by disease and privation, within a year to less than 500 men. From Corpus Christi, Mendoza sent out various bodies to explore the interior in the direction of Peru, but without much success, and at length, thoroughly discouraged and broken in health, he abandoned his enterprise, and returned to Spain in 1537.

A portion of one of the expeditions he despatched, under Juan de Ayolas, pushing up the Paraguay, is said to have reached the south-east districts of Peru, but while returning laden with booty, was attacked by the Payaguá Indians, and every man perished. The other portion, which had stayed behind as a reserve under Domingos Iralá, had better fortunes. Finding their comrades did not return, Iralá and his companions determined to descend the river, and on their downward journey opposite the mouth of the river Pilcomayo, finding a suitable site for colonizing, they founded (1536) what proved to be the first permanent Spanish settlement in the interior of South America, the future city of Asunción (15th August 1536).

In the meantime the colony at Buenos Aires had been dragging on a miserable existence, and after terrible sufferings from famine and from the ceaseless attacks of the Indians, the remaining settlers abandoned the place and made their way up the river first to Corpus Christi, then to Asunción. Here, by the emperor’s orders, the assembled Spaniards proceeded to the election of a captain-general, and their choice fell almost unanimously on Domingos Martinez de Iralá, who was proclaimed captain-general of the Rio de la Plata (August 1538). In 1542 the settlement of Buenos Aires was re-established by an expedition sent for the purpose from Spain, under a tried adelantado, Cabeza de Vaca. This able leader, eager to reach Asunción as quickly as possible, sent on his ships to the river Plate, but himself with a small following marched overland from Santa Catherina on the coast of Brazil to join Iralá. His doings at Asunción belong, however, not to the history of Argentina, but of Paraguay. Suffice it to say that differences with Iralá eventually led to his arrest, and to his being sent back to Spain to answer to the charges brought against him for maladministration. The second settlement made by his expedition at Buenos Aires was even less successful and