The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

446 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA.
Even at present, despite the artificial port, basins, breakwaters, and ottGa-
recently completed harbour works, Buenos Aj'res is scarcely distinguished from
the uniform contour line of the horizon ; masts, funnels, towers, all appear, seen
from the estuary, as if rising above a floating island. Without hills, or any
broken ground rising more than 60 feet above the surface, Buenos Ayres can
present no imposing or conspicuous object to visitors arriving from any point of
the compass. The streets, laid out in the monotonous chessboard fashion of so
many American cities, stretch away in interminable straight lines, unbroken by
any natural obstacle causing a change of direction. Towards the south alone the
regularity of the geometrical plan is somewhat interrupted by the scarps of a
terrace, which fall abruptly towards the Riachuelo, the " Brook," as the neighbour-
ing rivulet is called. A little variety in the quadrilateral blocks of houses has also
been introduced by the railway lines and stations, and some other structures.
Although its site was one of the first to be chosen for a Spanish settlement,
Buenos Ayres is not the oldest city in the Republic. In 1-53.J, that is, eight years
after the erection of the fortress of Espiritu Santo, near the mouth of the
Carcaraiia, Diego de Mendoza penetrated into the Riachuelo, and erected a few
huts on the terrace dominating this streamlet. But being unable to maintain
friendly relations with the Querandi Indians, he soon found himself blocked
with his soldiers and settlers in his narrow camping-ground. Assaults and conflicts
followed with varying success ; but the little colony failing to shake ofi" the
enemy, Alvar Nunez broke up the settlement in 1542, when the district was
restored to the Indians.
Repulsed in this direction, the Spaniards turned their arms in the direction
of the Parana and Paraguay rivers, where the natives had submitted without
much show of resistance. But the progress of the whites in the interior
rendered all the more indispensable the foundation of a trading place on the
shores of the estuary. It seemed rash to attempt to gain a footing in the vicinity
of the warlike Charruas of the Banda Oriental, hence it was decided to recover
the position abandoned on the Riachuelo. In 1580 Juan de Garay, at the head of
sixty soldiers and a troop of Indian auxiliaries, resumed possession of the terrace
at Buenos Ayres. The Querandi natives had at the time withdrawn from the
district, and the leaders at once set about distributing the land.
The establishment of a commercial station at the entrance to the vast flu^-ial
basin of La Plata could not fail to affect the interests of the old trade routes.
The merchants of Cadiz and Seville, who enjoyed a monopoly of the traffic with
the New World by the New Grenada and Peruvian routes, exacted from the
Government the monstrous condition that European goods destined for La Plata
should be forwarded by the way of Peru and the Upper Paraguay.
Nevertheless, Buenos Ayres managed to secure a few concessions, while the
contraband trade was rapidly developed by the establishment of a Portuguese
colony at Sacramento on the opposite side of the estuary. But the place developed
ver}^ slowly, and in 1744, over a century and a half after its foundation, the
population still fell short of 20,000. It continued to languish till the year 177G,