British exploits in South America; a history of British activities in exploration, military adventure, diplomacy, science, and trade, in Latin American

Front matter

V J

CC

NYMEDE BR- .

Preface

Among such merits as I may claim for this work is a total lack of haste in its preparation. Written under the stress of no other pre-occupation save that caused by the deep shadow of the war, there has been no question here of a rapid gathering together of material; but rather that of a lengthy process of selection. To pick out the most salient features from the vast field of British enter¬ prise in South America is not an easy task.

This book having been written in the comparative soli¬ tude of the country, and its sources of information largely derived from my own library, I have taxed the good na¬ ture of a smaller number than usual of the various ex¬ perts. It is, nevertheless, impossible for me to pass by the names of three gentlemen without a special note of thanks.

The first of these is his Excellency Senor Don Agustin Edwards, that most notable Chilean Minister Plenipoten¬ tiary in London, whose kindness in obtaining information concerning the early British in Chile must be gratefully acknowledged. To Mr. Herbert Gibson I am deeply in¬ debted for similar good offices in regard to Argentina and to the British writers on that country. I have, more¬ over, to express my obligation to Mr. Francis Edwards, who has not only placed at my disposal his wide knowl¬ edge of South American bibliography but has most courte¬ ously taken the trouble to send me down for purposes of reference those particular books which I lacked for this work.

The subjoined letter, which I found myself under the necessity of sending to the editor of a minor London pub-

vii vm

PREFACE lication, will explain itself. It is true that it was written in the heat of an indignation which appeared justifiable to me; but, on mature consideration, the special nature of this present book, written at this period, seems to de¬ mand its inclusion, sincerely reluctant though I am to introduce any personal matter of the kind. I include it in full, moreover, although some lines have no bearing on the subject. But this is preferable to the employ¬ ment of the asterisk — than which there is surely no instru¬ ment of the pen which lends itself more readily to the un¬ fair practices of a juggling mind.

It is unnecessary to give the name of the publication to which the following was directed :

Sir : — In this secluded spot most things, including periodicals, are belated. It is for this reason that I have only now been enabled to read your review, published on the thirtieth of Novem¬ ber, of my book, The South Americans. I have, up to now, man¬ aged to deliver myself of eighteen books without sparring with a reviewer — possibly because there has seemed no reason! But there are two points in this review of yours that cannot be passed over in silence.

The first is a personal one. According to your reviewer: “The name of our author leads one to suppose that he knows a good deal more than he tells of the unceasing efforts of Germany for supremacy — not commercial supremacy alone — in some of the states, especially in parts of Brazil; as a matter of fact he dismisses this subject airily in twenty lines.”

Now this, leaping from the flat body of a review, is startling, and imbues one with the sensations of a sitter on a needle-point concealed in a cushion ! If the words have any meaning at all, sir, they surely convey the gravest slur on the loyalty of one who has never willingly missed an opportunity of pointing out the German peril, not only in South America, but elsewhere. Those who are familiar with my work — and I am fortunate in that, though clearly lacking your reviewer, their number is not small — know that I have laboured this very point with persistence for the last ten years. They, I am sure, will not need from me any comment on this imputation. The others (I suppose, sir, that it would savour too much of egotism to class them as the “remainder”?) will, I hope, accept my unqualified denial that

PREFACE

IX there is the faintest ground for this queer insinuation concern¬ ing some dark and mysterious knowledge which I am jealously guarding from the British public.

As regards the precise degree of taste in interpolating such matter, on such evidence, in a review— well, I do not think that I have any peculiar reason to be sensitive on this point. As one whose father held a commission from Queen Victoria, and as one who at the outbreak of the war alone out of five brothers — the number is no longer intact — did not hold a commission in the regular forces, I cannot produce a blush of shame even to gratify your reviewer! Moreover, that I am still a civilian is the fault, not of four years on the shady side of the slacker’s haven (forty) but of a slightly sprung heart. So much for a personal outpouring rendered unavoidable by our critic.

The second point I can turn to with some relief, since it is not of an intimate nature, and since it seems to me to come within the reviewer’s legitimate province. In any case it strengthens my theory that I have the misfortune not to count your reviewer among my readers. According to him, again: “Mr. Koebel cannot know much of Pernambuco or its surroundings, or he could not have failed to observe the copious and interesting Dutch remains still to be seen in that part of the continent.”

I freely admit that an ambiguous sentence which the reviewer has picked out might produce this supposition — in the mind of one who has not read on and arrived at the description of these very Dutch remains at Pernambuco (p. 265).

Accept my apologies for the length of this letter, which is primarily due to the fact that it is not only men having the advantage of homely names who pride themselves on being Eng¬ lish. There are others, such as,

Yours very truly,

W. H. Koebel.

Castle Combe,

Combe Martin,

N. Devon.

These latter apologies must be repeated here to the present reader. May his breast be free from that justi¬ fied resentment which one who has paid to enter a place of public entertainment must experience when he finds himself buttonholed and drawn into a corner for an in¬ timate and heart-to-heart talk with a performer whose

X

PREFACE rightful place is on the stage, and whose private affairs are a mere matter of boredom to others! Nevertheless, it is preferable to run this risk than to permit the re¬ motest doubt of the loyalty with which the affairs of the British in South America are regarded in these pages.

Contents

CHAPTER

I

J V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV XV

XVI

XVII

Part I The Navigators

PAGE

I he Romantic Period in South America ... 3

The First English Mariners to Sail the Spanish

Main . 15

The Beginnings op British Trade with South

America . 46

The Buccaneers . 80

Part II The British In Colonial South America

Early British Adventures in Spanish America . 101 Some Eighteenth-Century British Voyages to

South America . 116

The British Expedition to the River Plate . . 141

British Guiana and the Falkland Islands . . 156

British Fighters in the Cause of South Ameri¬ can Independence (I) . 163

British Fighters in the Cause op South Ameri¬ can Independence (II) . . . 188

British Fighters in the Cause op South Ameri¬ can Independence (III) . 214

Part III South America In The Early Part Op The Nineteenth Century

The First British Relations with the New

Republics . 235

Early Travelers and Traders in the Republics . 255

The British in Brazil (I) . 281

The British in Brazil (II) . 295

The British in Brazil (III) . 311

The British in Brazil (IV) . 327

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV XXV

XXVI

The British in Brazil (V) .

The British in Brazil (VI) .

The British in the South American Internal Wars .

Part IV Scientific And Literary Observers

Some British Naturalists in South America

South America in English Print .

Century (I) .

Century (II) .

Century (III) .

To-day and To-morrow in South America .

Appendix .

Bibliography of Modern Works .

British Arrivals in the River Plate at the Be¬ ginning of the XIXth Century .

Index .

PAGE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A South American Home . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Sir John Hawkins . 20

Sir Francis Drake . 20

The Santos River in Brazil . 48

Old Fort at Mouth of Santos River, Brazil . 48

Island of Juan Fernandez . 88=

Valdivia, Chile (1836) . 102

Conference of President 0 ’Higgins with the Indians . . 112

Ambrose O’Higgins . 124

Sir Home Riggs Popham . 144

Lieutenant-General Whitelocke . 144

General San Martin . 168

General Bolivar . 184

An Early View of Valparaiso, Chile . 190

Plaza de la Independeneia, Santiago, Chile (early XIXth

century) . 206

Araucanian Witch Doctors at Work . 218

An Early Raid by Araucanian Indians, Chile . 228

A British South American on His Rancho . 244

British South Americans . 244

Crossing the Andes . 262

South American Indian Encampment . 276

Rio de Janeiro (1809) . 300

Landing Stage, Rio de Janeiro (early XIXth century) . . 332

Public Gardens (1835) . 332

Sugar Loaf Mountain, Rio de Janeiro . 372

Garibaldi . 380

General Rosas . 380

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

South American Indians . 412

South American Cattle . 432

South American Oxen . 432

Early View of Valparaiso, Chile . 456

Plaza San Martin, Mendoza, Argentina . 472

Cattle Market at Montevideo . 488

Plaza Constitucion Station, Buenos Aires . 496

Avenue de Mayo, Buenos Aires . 496

South American Indians . 508

Old Print of the Llama and Indians . 508

A Modern British South American Ship . 516

Early Type of Royal Mail Steam Packet Company Ship . . 516

Railroad Construction in South America . 520

Forest Clearing in South America . 520

Viaduct Construction in South America . 532

Bridge Construction in South America . 532

Avenue Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro . 548

Street Scene in Rio de Janeiro . 548

The publishers acknowledge with thanks the courtesy of The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in supplying several of the above illustrations.

Chapter I The Romantic Period In South America

Tlie charm of the Americas — Iberian navigators — Prince Henry of Portu¬ gal and his seamen — Some famous captains — Columbus — Manner in which the English were attracted to the new lands — The English crusaders as comrades of the Portuguese — Ramifications of friend¬ ship which succeeded the first alliance — The interchange of Portuguese wines and English cloth — The alliance consolidated in battle against the Spaniards — The treaty of Windsor — The marriage of John of Portugal to Philippa of England — Prince Henry, the navigator of English blood on his mother’s side — Some ethics of the slave trade — Effect of the discoveries of the new lands upon the English in Portu¬ gal — The return of the galleons — Awakening of the navigating spirit in the West of England — The story of Robert Machin — Romance which is alleged to have led to the discovery of Madeira by the English — Death of Machin and Anna d’Arset — Links connecting the tale with the accepted discovery of the island by Joao Gongalves Zarco — Se¬ bastian Cabot — His South American discoveries made in the Spanish service — Condition of South America when William Hawkins, father of Sir John, set sail for that continent in 1530 — Achievements already effected by the navigators and conquistadores — Iberian colonization — Extent of the continent occupied — Questions of Indian and Negro labor — Doctrine of Las Casas — The early English navigators unwit¬ tingly act as the avenging spirits of the slaughtered Indians — Mis¬ taken policy of the Spanish Empire.

THE rich flavor of such names as the Spanish Main and the South Seas has retained its charm almost unimpaired from the dawn of the New World to the present day. For four centuries the promise of the new and rich lands has drawn adventurers from the North to compete with each other and with the descendants of those Iberian conquistador es who first set foot on the neck of a wondering continent.

The tale of the early Iberian navigators is clear enough, from the brave band of Portuguese voyagers, fathered by Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, to Columbus and his comrades. It was the Portuguese who first drove boldly into the Western Ocean. Their seniority as dis¬ coverers is not to be questioned. It was some three quarters of a century before Columbus set sail for the West when their two seamen, Bartholomeu Perestrello and Joan Gongalves Zarco, discovered the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira respectively in 1419 and 1420: But after this the more famous of the Portuguese navi¬ gators, such as Nuno Tristao, Vasco da Gama, and Pedro Alvarez Cabral (although this last was at a later period responsible for the discovery of Brazil), forsook the west¬ ern course for the southern, and, fringing the African coast, turned to the east, and sought India and China by way of the Cape of Good Hope.

The significance of the voyages of Columbus and of the other navigators in the service of the neighboring king¬ dom of Spain is perhaps even more generally understood. The manner in which one of these great events followed on the heels of another has been made abundantly clear. But what of the English? How did these Northern islanders come to put their spoke into these new wheels of land and water from which their home was so remotely situated? What was it that first set on the track of the tropical seas the bearers of such charmed names as Haw¬ kins, Drake, Raleigh, Cavendish, and Dampier? For a sufficiently comprehensive answer to all this it is neces¬ sary to hark back to a precolonial age, almost three cen¬ turies before the discovery of Madeira.

It was as early as 1147 that a number of English cru¬ saders, on their way to the Holy Land, halted on the banks of the Tagus, and assisted the Portuguese to cap¬ ture the city of Lisbon from the Moors. The men of the oak and the men of the olive found that, however much they might differ in complexion, they had at least much sympathy in common. Thus was begun the alliance be¬ tween England and Portugal.

The relations between the two countries rapidly be¬ came consolidated. The following year, 1148, we find an Englishman, Gilbert of Hastings, as Bishop of Lisbon. In 1217 another fillip was given to this international friendship by the arrival of a second, and more formid¬ able, army of English crusaders, by whose assistance a Moorish army of fifty-five thousand men was completely defeated.

Nearly twenty years after the falling through of a proposed matrimonial alliance between the English and Portuguese royal houses, the earls of Lancaster and Arundel arrived in Portugal in 1344, charged with an important mission of friendship, and three years after this some further matrimonial schemes were drawn up, but these, too, proved abortive. These delicate failures seemed to have no ill effect on the relations between the two countries. Commercial bonds had now entered into the field to strengthen the military friendship. Through the instrumentality of a young Portuguese wine mer¬ chant, sent on a mission to London, many special agree¬ ments and clauses were arrived at between the English and Portuguese merchants. As a result, the red wines of the Douro Mountains and the Collares and Algarve slopes began a northward journey in ships, which they have continued practically without intermission from that day to this, while the first consignments of an equally lengthy and unbroken procession of English clothes began to come rolling southwards across the Bay of Biscay.

It is certainly curious that in those days of small and cranky ships we should have established our most inti mate relations with a people dwelling just the wrong side of the dreaded Bay of Biscay ! The bay whose entrance is guarded by the jagged and equally menacing rocks of Usliant! But so it was. At the beginning of the four¬ teenth century English merchants were already familiar with Portuguese soil, while in 1381 two thousand fresh English men-at-arms set sail for the Tagus. Four years later these were followed by five hundred English arch¬ ers, who fought side by side with the Portuguese among the vines and olives, and whose long-bows twanged to some purpose on the field of Aljubarrota, where the Cas¬ tilian knights went down before them.

In 1386, the following year, the treaty of Windsor con¬ firmed the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, and this friend¬ ship — no new thing even at the time of the compact — has lasted, practically unbroken, from that day to this. Surely this must constitute the oldest-standing known treaty in the history of the world !

The following year John of Gaunt triumphantly en¬ tered Portugal at the head of an English army of two thousand lances and three thousand archers, and on the second of February, 1387, his daughter Philippa, by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, was married to King John of the then solid realm of Portugal.

Ttiose who have taken the trouble to wonder what these at airs of crusaders, cloth, and port wine have to do v, ith the English in South America will now begin to obtain some inkling. For one of the issue of this mar¬ riage was Prince Henry the Navigator, the first and greatest patron of deep-sea voyagers, who devoted him¬ self heart and soul to the science of discovery. It was he who called astronomers and mathematicians to his aid, and who, zealously studying the problems of the ocean in his austere Sagre Castle on the southern Portu¬ guese coast by Cape St. Vincent — the nearest point in all Europe to tropical America! — directed the voy¬ ages of those famous mariners who sailed into the un¬ known.

Thus the friend and patron of the Portuguese sea captains — the leading navigators of their day — was of Eng¬ lish blood on his mother’s side. It was under his au¬ spices that central and southern Africa, India, and Brazil were discovered, and that Lisbon became the western gate of Europe, while decaying Venice bewailed the loss of her monopoly of the overland trade route to In¬ dia.

From the modern point of view it can scarcely fail to militate against Prince Henry’s repute that he should have been the founder of the Negro slave-trade. But, according to the morality of the fifteenth century, the procedure was not only excusable; it was sound policy. For centuries the Portuguese had become accustomed to the enslaving of prisoners in the hands of the Moors, and they themselves — in common with all the European na¬ tions of the Mediterranean coast line — had retaliated in similar fashion, until that degraded condition had grown to be regarded as a part of ordinary life. The war-worn and depopulated lands of Southern Portugal were sorely in need of tillers. It must be the business of his captains, the Navigator decided, to supply this need. A point of interest in connection with this is that it was owir to their intimate association with the Portuguese, whose ex¬ ample they copied, that the English first approached the coasts of Spanish America as carriers of those slaves who were destined to labor in the mines and plantations of the conquistador es.

The noises of these great discoveries sounded but dully in the ears of most of the Northern Europeans, who had small means of grasping fully what was afoot. But the case was very different with those English who, encour¬ aged by the crown and welcomed by the inhabitants, found themselves in Portugal at that period. These saw with their own eyes the return of the deeply laden gal¬ leons, as their painted bows breasted the rapid tide of the broad Tagus. They watched the processions bear¬ ing treasure, spices, strange woods, and stranger aboriginal human beings from the landing place at Belem to the center of Lisbon.

They heard, moreover, with their own ears the barking of the cannon and the booming of the church bells that saluted the return of a rich armada from the Indies or Brazil. Many of them made overtures to the returned mariners, and, over deep cups of Lisbon wine, listened eagerly to the tales of the glittering South — tales of what the sailors had actually seen, as well as those vaporings of their vivid imaginings concerning what lay behind the mere fringe of the New World that they had so far ex¬ plored.

When these tales floated northwards from the blue skies to the gray, they were answered by a stir in the blood of the Englishmen, more especially in the West, the center of the chief intercourse with Portugal, where the bales of cloth slid down into the holds and the barrels of wine rumbled out on to the quays. We thus at length arrive in England, together with these amazing reports and rumors! Very soon the echoes of these began to be heard in Plymouth, where William Hawkins, a fine old sailor of King Henry the Eighth’s, was preparing to anfurl his sails for the first equatorial voyage ever made by an Englishman with an English crew.

But before we get into the stride of this — or into the wash of Hawkins’ wake, whichever you prefer — let us dispose of three remaining preliminary matters and thus clear the decks for consecutive action.

The first of these concerns the story of Robert Machin, almost certainly the first Englishman, mythical or phys¬ ical, to sail the Western Ocean. The legend runs that in the first half of the fourteenth century there lived in the southwest of England a man, Robert Machin, of a gentle but impoverished family. In an ill-starred moment he became enamored of a lady, Anna d’Arset, of a rank superior to his own. In addition to her noble birth, Anna d’Arset possessed rare beauty, large fortune, and stern relatives. These last, observing with sordid anger that the Lady Anna regarded Machin with favor, caused him to be flung into prison, and presently forced Anna d’Arset into a marriage with an abhorred but wealthy noble¬ man.

The marriage once celebrated, all futile romance was considered at an end. The detested husband bore his bride away to his castle near Bristol, and Machin, now considered a negligible factor, was released from his cell. But his persecutors had failed to reckon with the real ardor of the foiled lover. Machin, collecting a small band of tried friends, proceeded to Bristol, and opened his plan of campaign. He succeeded in communicating with the Lady Anna, whose conjugal ideas appear to have been in advance of her times, and eventually procured her es¬ cape from the castle. This once effected, the entire party fled from Bristol in a small vessel, hoping to reach France. But the elements showed no greater pity upon the lovers than had Anna d’Arset’s family. Assailed by tempestuous weather, the amateur sailors missed their desired port, and in great tribulation were tossed about for days on the broad, roaring ocean.

On the dawn of the fourteenth morning, the hapless wanderers discerned the loom of a dark mass across the waters. Full daylight revealed an island. They had ar¬ rived at a fair spot, Madeira. The storm had died away; all was peace and sunshine now. White and yellow birds flitted about the vessel, while for a background stood the fairylike island.

Here Machin landed, accompanied by his ladylove and some others of the party. But misfortune still dogged the pair. Lost in the rapture evoked by their surround¬ ings, the small company delayed the landing of such few necessary articles as they had brought with them. A sudden tempest arose and blew the vessel from its an¬ chorage out to sea. The next morning there was no trace of it, nor of the party that had remained on board. This final catastrophe marked the end of the beautiful Anna d’Arset, doubtless much weakened by her sufferings at sea. Neither the beauty of the spot nor the presence of Macliin sufficed to counteract the shock. She expired in the arms of her agonized lover, and he, for his part, sur¬ vived her but a few days.

Machin’s last request to his friends was that his re¬ mains should be placed in the same grave with those of his beloved. His wish v^as faithfully executed. Above the bodies of the ill-fated couple was erected an altar shaded by the branches of a stately tree. Upon the altar was inscribed the tragic history of Machin and Anna d’Arset, and a pious request that if Christians should ever come to settle in the island they should erect a church upon the spot.

A number of the earlier historians seem inclined to give full credence to this story. Gaspar Fructuoso, the sixteenth-century Portuguese chronicler, for one, en¬ deavors with some seeming success to pick up links con¬ necting the tales told by the survivors of Machin’s voy¬ age with the accepted discovery of the island by the one-eyed explorer, Joao Gongalves Zarco, in 1420.

Ev&n at the present day the very rare visitors to the lit¬ tle Madeirense town of Machico — the nomenclature is sig¬ nificant — are shown a very small and ancient chapel, which is said to be in part the original building which Zarco piously constructed over the bodies of the dead lovers.

But the features of the tale, if they ever existed in material life, are much obscured by the mist of ages. Perhaps at this stage of the book it may seem that I have dragged in Machin and the Lady Anna rather superflu¬ ously by their dead or mythical heels. I have merely in¬ troduced them to show the possibility that an Englishman made an excursion into the Western Ocean before any other European plowed it with his keel on his way to the Americas in search of the road to India.

The second matter may be tackled with considerably more assurance, since, concerning Sebastian Cabot, it rests at least on a secure historical basis. The memory of Cabot, great navigator and explorer though he was, suffers just a little from the variety of his interests, when living. The name of Columbus, though himself an Ital¬ ian, is an indissoluble part of the birthright of every Spaniard. There are other explorers, too, whose feats have made them part and parcel of a land which could not claim them by birth or descent.

But the case of Cabot is not on all fours with any of these. A Venetian by birth and an Englishman by choice, he served the Spanish Empire as well as the land of his adoption. On this account it is a little difficult to determine the neighborhood of his correct niche in his¬ tory. It is doubtless owing to this that some inevitable neglect has supervened, and that many of the more inti¬ mate details of his career are unknown. “He gave Eng¬ land a continent,” says an American author, “and no one knows his burial-place.”

Some side issues of the evil fate which has dogged this great man’s memory enter even into these pages, for, although Cabot, having two Englishmen in his company, sailed southwards to investigate Brazil and the river Plate in 1527, and thus formed one of the first flight of the explorers of the South American mainland, he achieved this not in the English service but as a high official of the Spanish marine. So, for the particular purposes of this book Cabot must remain unclaimed, and the first of the English keels to enter the Southern Ocean and our picture must be that of the first of the three most notable generations of navigating Hawkins’.

Before setting sail with him we must take a rapid sur¬ vey of South America as it was when the first flight of seamen from the North were preparing to invade its pri¬ vacy.

When William Hawkins set sail from Plymouth in

1530, the tide of Iberian colonization had not yet swollen to its full flood. Spain had succeeded in planting her foot firmly on the coast of what is now Venezuela and on the Isthmus of Panama, whence she was preparing to send her forces southwards to conquer the Pacific slope. But the great Empire of the Incas still lay intact among its gigantic mountain ranges, and Pizarro had not yet destroyed the Inca rule, nor slain the Emperor Atabualpa, nor plundered the heavy gold of the sacred cities near Lake Titicaca.

It was only on the eve of such mighty occurrences as these that William Hawkins sailed his ship out of Plym¬ outh. At that period, too, was still lacking the Span¬ ish colonizing stream which, headed by Pedro de Men¬ doza, was to set in from the southeast and embrace the countries of the river Plate and Paraguay.

The coast of Brazil had been explored by Cabral, Pinzon, and others, and the wonted stone pillars engraved with the arms of Portugal had been left at various points on the shore. Moreover, the Portuguese, following an¬ other custom of theirs, had marooned a few of their condemned criminals among various tribes of the coastal Indians — a procedure which had a double advantage in that it served to test the real sentiments of the Indians (for if the Portuguese were found alive in their midst by any subsequent expedition it might be taken for granted that the natives were friendly!), and to prepare, by this humble and somewhat maculate instrumentality, the mind of the aboriginal for the advent of the white man.