218 ROADS AND RAILWAYS 



contractor for transport, organized caravans. In peace- 

 ful districts, where no military escort was required, 

 the convoys could be split up ; they consisted, as a 

 rule, of from fifteen to fifty wagons. Besides the six 

 oxen yoked to the wagon, there had to be others for 

 relief as well as horses for the staff. Usually they 

 allowed ten oxen to each wagon ; in exceptional 

 cases twenty. I The convoy to the salt-lakes in 1778 

 had no less than 12,000 oxen to 600 wagons. There 

 was a driver to each wagon, but there had also to 

 be drivers for the starting animals, and carpenters to 

 make repairs. The leader of the caravan, the capataz, 

 was generally a master-carpenter. He looked after 

 the interests of the tropero. There were about three 

 men to each wagon. The carreros were an original 

 type, nomadic, and very different in costume and 

 character from the gauchos (breeders) of the plain. 

 At the close of the eighteenth century Buenos Aires 

 had more than a thousand wagons employed in the 

 traffic to Mendoza and Tucuman (Borrero). 



The stages were rarely more than four or five leagues 

 of five kilometres each (thirteen to sixteen miles). At 

 this rate it took a convoy forty to fifty days to go 

 from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, thirty days from 

 Rosario to Tucuman, three months (with the necessary 

 rests) from Buenos Aires to Salta.^ When water ran 

 short, the journey might be greatly prolonged, as the 

 animals could do less work, or not work at all if the 



' According to the details given us by De Angelis (1837, Intro- 

 duction to the Diario del viaje al Rio Bermejo de Fray Francisco Moritto, 

 Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi) a convoy of fourteen wagons from Salta 

 to Tucum&n required three relays of oxen. The first, comprising a 

 hundred animals,, went from Salta to Tucum&n ; the second, of 130 

 animals, went from Tucumcin to the Buenos Aires frontier ; the third 

 (84 animals), went on to the capital. The first and last relays were 

 hired animals, the second alone being the property of the tropero. 



» Thirty days from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, and seventy days 

 from Buenos Aires to Jujuy, says Barrero (F. Barrero, Descripcion 

 de las Provincias del Rio de la Plata, end of the eighteenth century, 

 published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, iQ")- 



