las-Corrlentes, having performed a distance of three hundred and eighty-two leagues without encountering the smallest obstacle.
When a more perfect knowledge of this navigation shall have been practically acquired, a saving may be made of nearly, the one half of the time occupied by the present attempt, which must necessarily have been attended by a variety of short delays, although there was neither impediment nor risk, in any part of the passage.[1] In the interim, this discovery affords great advantages to the commercial intercourse of Paraguay with the provinces of Tucuman and Peru, the productions having been hitherto transported on the back, of mules, with great delays, and at a heavy expence.
If our Mercury should have the good fortune to find access among the cultivated nations of Europe, and should survive the lapse of the present age, it will be proud to have transmitted to the world, and to posterity, the name and elevated conceptions of the illustrious protectress of this undertaking. To an august female[2] America was first indebted for her exploration: to another, not of so elevated a rank, but equally
- ↑ To be more fully persuaded, that, in practising this navigation, not any embarrassment is to be found, the map of the missions, published by father Joseph Quiroga, in 1749, may be consulted. It should be observed, that the river of las Conchas, the port at which the merchandizes sent from Paraguay to Buenos-Ayres arrive, is distant from that city five or six leagues; and that, from the spot where the river Bermejo empties itself into the Paraguay, there is but an inconsiderable distance to the city of Assumption, the capital of the province.
- ↑ Queen Isabel.
