In a commercial point of view we have only to look at the map to be satisfied of the great importance of the geographical position of Buenos Ayres. From the Amazons along a line of coast upwards of 2000 miles in extent, the River Plate affords the only means of communicating with all those vast regions in the interior of the continent comprised between the Andes and the mountainous districts which bound Brazil to the west. Not only the provinces of the Argentine Republic and of Paraguay, but the now independent states of Bolivia and Peru, are as yet only accessible from the Atlantic through the Rio de La Plata.
If there is but little intercourse between these states at present, it must be ascribed to political causes alone, and to such confined and restrictive notions as are, perhaps, to be expected from governments in their infancy.
The people of Bolivia and the eastern districts of Peru, whose wants from Europe were formerly supplied through Buenos Ayres, are now under separate governments of their own, which seem anxious to display their commercial as well as political independence of their old connexions by endeavouring to force the trade through other channels more immediately under their own control; but, however desirous those governments may be, under present circumstances, to establish a direct intercourse with Europe through their own ports in the Pacific, and however well adapted those ports may be for the supply of the provinces upon the west coast of America, there can be no doubt, so far as regards all those which lie to the eastward of the Cordillera, that, whenever the intermediate rivers shall be navigated by steam, for which they are so admirably calculated, the people of those vast countries will be much more easily supplied with all they want from Europe by inland water-carriage direct from Buenos Ayres than by the present circuitous route round Cape Horn, and the subsequent expensive conveyance by mules across the sandy deserts of Atacama, and the precipitous passages of the Andes.
As these young states acquire some practical knowledge of their real interests, and advance in the science of political economy, it may be expected that they will naturally make such arrangements amongst themselves for an interchange of commercial advantages as cannot but prove to their mutual benefit. And what could be of more importance, either to Buenos Ayres or Bolivia, or the back provinces of Brazil, than the establishment of an internal communication with each other by means of steam-navigation?