THEY WERE TRAVELING TO BUENOS AIRES

Relais de poste de Baranquitas (sic). Corral et voiture de voyage (Provinces unies du Rio de la Plata). Lith. de Benard et Frey. 

Lithograph, measures 34.5 x 51.5 cm. Printed in the lower margin: “Bichebois lith. d'aprés E. B. de la Touanne”, “Fig. by V. Adam”. “Lith. de Bernard et Frey” and above “Pl. 28”.

The scene shows us the Barranquitas post, in the province of San Luis; In the foreground, a rider on horseback and another on foot are conversing. The construction shows a belfry with two bells and crowned with an iron cross. To the left, the wooden corrals - the heads of the horses appear above them - and two countrymen surely talking by the hearth; smoke rising. To the right of the post, the moulting of the horses that pull the stagecoach can be seen, a task carried out by two postilions. At his side, apparently two passengers, are talking animatedly.

The view was included in the Atlas of the “Journal de la Navigation autour du Globe de la Frégate la Thétis et de la Corvette l'Espérancependant les années 1824, 1825 et 1826", as plate number 28. It is one of the four plates refer to the Argentine territory, the rest are Puente del Inca, Hacienda (Metaire) in the surroundings of Mendoza and Mendoza public square.

Like all great expeditions, this voyage carried out a mission of enormous strategic value (it was one of the most important of the 19th century) under the command of the Baron de Bougainville -exactly, Hyacinthe de Bougainville, son of Louis Antoine, the sailor who raised the first colony of European settlers in the Falkland Islands - naturalists and draftsmen embarked, and after completing the circumnavigation voyage, the ships returned to France with a rich material that included collections of specimens, a detailed cartography and views of the sites visited, more the story of the expedition. Finally, this report saw the light in 1837, in a work of two volumes of text and his atlas. The two frigates advanced first through Asia, Oceania and after crossing the Pacific, they arrived in Valparaíso, where Count Edmond B. de la Touanne, ship's lieutenant, disembarked to cross the Andes, visit the city of Mendoza and continue an extensive tour land, until meeting again with the expedition in Rio de Janeiro. The image shows us a stop along the way, already in the territory of San Luis, on the way to Buenos Aires. The great Parisian lithographer Louis Pierre Alphonse Bichebois (1801 - 1851), of great reputation as a landscape painter, took her to the lithographic stone.