No. 5.
Mr. Osborn
to Mr. Fish.
Buenos Ayres, November 19, 1876. (Received Jan. 23, 1877.)
Sir: After the adjournment of the Argentine Congress, the President,, his cabinet, and the diplomatic corps, with about three hundred guests, left Buenos Ayres, October 25th, and proceeded to Tucuman, the capital of the Province of Tucuman, to inaugurate the railroad just completed from Cordova to Tucuman, a distance of about five hundred miles. This road is but a continuation of the railroad constructed from Rosaria to Córdova some years ago by a Mr. William Wheelright, an American citizen of Massachusetts, and known here as the “railroad pioneer” in South America.
The city of Tucuman (now connected with Buenos Ayres by water and rail) is about nine hundred miles from here, a city of about twenty-two thousand souls, situated at the foot of the lower range of the Andes-Mountains, and about four hundred miles from the Pacific coast.
The province of Tucuman is called by Argentines the “garden-spot” of the republic. It certainly is in a higher state of cultivation than any province I have visited. Soon after crossing the state line we found beautiful rivers, fine farms, and good rich soil.
The people of the province, heretofore with no communication with the outer world, except by diligence and bullock-cart, principally live on what they produce. They raise their own wheat and corn, grow their own sugar-cane and coffee, and make their own wine and cheese, &c, all of which we found to be of very excellent quality.
Tucuman is the native city of President Avellaneda, and his reception by all his old friends and townsmen was warm and enthusiastic. At the railroad station he was called on for a speech; after bowing his thanks, he said, “No; wait till I reach the plaza, and I will address you from the spot where stood the post upon which was placed my father’s head after it was separated from his body by the order of the tyrant Bosas.”
At the plaza the President began his address by saying, “Sixteen years ago I left this city with a few books under my arm in a bullock-cart; I return to-day for the first time since that period in the carriage of steam as your Chief Magistrate.”
The President’s wife and family accompanied him and his party to Tucuman. It is a peculiar coincidence in the history of the two families, that soon after the assassination of the President’s father, then governor of Tucuman, Mrs. Avellaneda’s father was assassinated at Barracas, a few miles below this city, by the order of Rosas.
[Page 6]After a stay of some nine days at Tucuman we returned to this city, after an absence of three weeks.
Much relief has been experienced within the last month and a half, both by the government and the people, by reason of the loan of ten millions to the national government by the Provincial Bank of Buenos Ayres. For many months the army and the employés of the government, including the members of Congress, had not been paid. The President refused to draw his salary. The pressure produced much discontent, especially in the army, and it was thought a revolution would be the result; but since the loan, and as the wool-crop is now coming into market, gold has fallen from thirty-six and forty to fourteen and sixteen; money is easier. The prospects for the future are better, and no revolutionary trouble to the government or the administration of President Avellaneda is anticipated.
I am, &c,