Richard Francis Burton

“ It is a popular error to suppose that all Paraguay was occupied by the Jesuits ; their theocracy extended over but a small portion of the modern Republic ; on the other hand their influence flew far and wide. In the west and about Asuncion was the civil government, one of pure immobility as regards progress, and occupied only by contemptible wars, civil and foreign. The clergy was in the last stage of corruption and ignorance, except when its own interests were concerned. New Spain alone numbered 15,000 priests. ”

“ He sits opposite his library, deeply concentrated in the presence of his books, with a look of penetration and intelligence, and that painful, distrusting, care-worn expression which belongs to men whom hope deferred has made sick, and who have risen to the height of their ambition only when Siren life has lost many of her charms. ”

“ The so-called public property supported about 300,000 head of cattle, and thus the army was easily rationed ; it also bred poor horses for the cavalry, the Paraguayan being an equestrian race, but not so notably as the Guacho of the Pampas, the Centaur of the south. An absolute Government, a supreme authority, buys from its subjects at the price which best suits it; sells the produce, and employs means to maintain a certain level of fortunes ”

“ Of these vast areas, only 2500 square leagues are supposed to be inhabited, cultivated, or used for cattle breeding.
We may concisely lay down the limits of Paraguay thus : the river of that name and the Gran Chaco limit the west, the Parana bounds the east and south, separating her from the Argentine Confederation; and northwards begins the Brazilian Empire. The parallelogram admits of two great divisions : the northern is a mountainous mass averaging, as far as is known, 1200 metres above sea level ; the southern is a delta or doab, in places lower than the two rivers which form it. ”

“ The Presidentess and her daughters dressed in the usual imitation Parisian; they were fond of society, and they never neglected to make a little money. The Presidential salary was only $4000 per annum.
President Lopez had no light task before him. The Dictatorship had left only ruins : he had to create ; he was to be the organizer as Francia had been the founder of Paraguay; he was to assume the relation of Brigham Young to Joseph Smith. He wished to break the chains which his predecessor had forged, to draw Paraguay from her shell. ”

“ The early Spaniards had attempted to make it a high road to Peru and to the Cobija port on the Pacific, but the inordinate difficulties which it presented diverted the current of trade to the western lines, via Tucuman and Mendoza. It still preserved much of the ecclesiastical system, so adverse to moral dignity and mental independence, and so fatal to development and progress. In fact, at the date when the revolution broke out, the Paraguayans were the people least prepared for independence. ”

“ It is not easy to treat of the topography and geography of Paraguay. Some portions, — for instance, the Paraguay river and the Parana to the parallel of Villa Rica, and even to the rapids of La Guayra — have for three centuries been travelled over and surveyed. ”

“ In 1839-40, the census of Paraguay, ordered by Dr. Francia before his death, numbers 220,000 souls, and this estimate is probably the most reliable. In 1848 General Pacheco y Obes* suggests 600,000 to 700,000 souls. In 1857 Colonel du Graty, probably including the Indians, exaggerates it to 1,337,449, whereas the vast Argentine Confederation had at that time about one and a-half millions. Since 1856 all children of strangers born in Paraguay have become by law citizens, but they are too few to be of any importance. ”

“ The population of Buenos Aires has trebled in twenty-five years ; but in her case there has been a most important influx of foreigners. Moreover, from the days of Azara, it has been believed that in Paraguay the births of the sexes are not equal. ' Un fait assez notable est la proportion plus forte des naissances du sexe feminin que celles du sexe masculin.^' (Du Graty, 265.) ”

“ The northern mountain-masses are conjectured to be of trap formation, and to inosculate with the Highlands of the Brazil, especially with the Serra do Espinha90, whose out- lines extend to the Andine system. The trend is laid down as quasi-meridional; the Oriental slopes are the more abrupt, and the ridge divides the Republic into two planes. Thus there is a double watershed of about equal areas, E.S.-eastward to the Parana, W.S.-westward to the Paraguay, and the streams are unimportant. ”

“ Dictator Francia at once established himself in the palace of the ancient Spanish Governors, and began to govern in real earnest. The dark and mysterious figure, morally as well as physically, has excited abundant interest. ”

“ If he falls the cause of Paraguay — and she has a cause — is sheer lost; whilst he lives she has hope. He has always been able to escape ; his enemies are ever ready to build for him a bridge of gold, and the best conditions are at his service ”

“ Hostile writers aver that the un- happy land lived embruted under a death-like peace imposed by ignorance and terror,, enduring a despotism of isolation and desolation more lethal and funest than all the civil wars and anarchy. But there are few men who have not political creeds prejudged and formulated in advance^ with models, prototypes, and ideal predilections which falsify their judgment. Evidently the Republic of the Dictator was a reproduction, in somewhat a sterner mould, of the Jesuit Reduction system, and it throve because the popular mind was prepared for it. ”

“ Of course the women were faithful to the men as long as they loved them, and when that phase passed away they chose for themselves anew. Like the Brazilians, both sexes are personally clean, and the Paraguayan camps were ex- ceptionally so, but the people do not keep their houses in Dutch order. ”

“ It is only the philanthropist who closes his ears to the voice of common sense.
It is a mistake to consider the Paraguayans as a homogeneous race. The Whites or Spaniards preponde- rated in and about Asuncion ; whereas at Villa Rica the " Indian element was strong. About 1600-1628, the " Mamelukes of S. Paulo having seized and plundered the nearest Reduction of Jesus and Mary in the province of La Guayra, distant only 900 miles from their city, the people fled to Central Paraguay, and their descendants, the Villa Ricans, are still known as Guayrenos. ”

“ In one notable point is the Paraguayan soldier de- ficient, and that is in intelligence. He wants initiative : his arm is better than his head. This is the inevitable result of the '^ Indian " being mixed with European blood ; and the same may be seen in the Chilian and the Peru^dan — good soldiers, but lacking brains. He despises pain, to which he is probably little sensitive, and he has not that peculiar ferocity which characterizes the people of the Pampas, as it does all the shepherd races of mankind. ”

“ The difficulties of the new ruler were increased by the hostility of Buenos Aires, which required him to create and to provide for the maintenance of an army. He began with 3000 soldiers, enlisted for only three years, and pre- sently he could muster a force of 8000 regulars, an effective militia of 30,000 men, and a levee en masse in their rear. ”

“ This body, which is described as being more than usually ridiculous, restored the consular government, or rather a duumvirate, consisting of D. An- tonio Carlos Lopez, and an old soldier. Colonel D. Mariano Roque Alonzo. It opened, also, Paraguayan ports to general commerce; it concluded a treaty of friendship and trade with the Province of Corrientes, then at war with Buenos Aires ; and it convened an extraordinary session of itself — the deliberative body usually met for five days every five years — in order to consider the desideratum of re-establishing foreign connexions. ”

“ Without being a practical soldier he is an excellent topographer, and he has fought the defensive part of the campaign, if not with ability, at any rate with fewer blunders than his assailants. Driven backwards by the combination of army and iron- clads, he shifted his base line to the north till he found some readily defensible position. ”

“ The Jesuits, it may be remembered, were almost all foreigners — Italians and French, Germans and Portuguese, English and Irish. Their communistic system, their gold, and their troops at last seriously alarmed the Spanish monarchy. Men had heard of Nicholas Neengiru, " King Nicholas of Paraguay ;" f and a proverb-loving race quoted the saying, " La mentira es hija de Algo." By his decree of April 27, 1767, issued some 220 years after the Jesuits had landed upon the shores of South America ”

“ Philip III. having, by his decree of 1606, approved of the project to propagate the faith, allowed two Italians, Simoni Mazeta and Giuseppe Cataldino to set out (December 8, 1609) en route for the colony of La Guayra, where some Spaniards had settled and had laid the foundations of future empire. The Jesuits began to form their rival government in the regions to the east and south-east of the actual republic, the fertile valleys of the Rivers Parana and Uruguay ; and between 1685 and 1760 they established the Misiones or Reductions of Paraguay. ”

“ On the other hand, he is a savage who willingly mutilates the corpse of his enemy, and hangs strings of ears to the shrouds of his ship. The secret of his success is, that he holds himself single-handed a match for any half-dozen of his enemies. The secret of his failm-e is, that his enemies have divined him. ”

“ Spread-Eagleism ' of the United States, and they are becoming predominant throughout Southern America.
In Paraguay the system of government depends rather upon persons than upon institutions. Strangers, therefore, generally believe that the repressive measures imposed upon society by the energetic will of " the Supreme,^ and kept up for a whole generation, would, after his death, bring on a reaction more or less violent. The contrary was the case, and with his decease commenced the ordering and organization of the Republic. ”

“ Everywhere the woman of Guacho-land takes a most matter-of-fact view of a subject into which most peoples of the world attempt to infuse a something of poetry and romance. Love is with her as eating and sleeping — a purely corporeal necessity. Like Rahel Varnhagen, she is constant : she always loves some one, but not the same. As everywhere in South America^ marriage is not the rule, and under Dr. Francia it was forbidden, or rather it was conceded under exceptional circumstances only ”

“ Like Ma- horamed Ali Pasha of Egypt, he is assiduous in his endeavours to establish a system of industry, to add agricul- ture and cattle breeding to the miserable trade in yerba and tobacco that characterized the still and silent shores of the mighty Paraguay. ”

“ The Paraguayan right corps d'armee retreats behind its own proper frontier, the line of the Parana River, and thus terminates the offensive phase of the campaign.
For nearly a year, between November 1865, and Sep- tember 1866, the Allies having crossed the Parana River, hold their ground despite the frantic efforts of the Para- guayans to dislodge them. Amongst the actions the most severe are the Battle of Estero Bellaco (May 2, 1866,) and the Battle of Tuyuty (May 24, 1866) . ”

“ Francia, commenced the isola- tion which afterwards gave to Paraguay the titles of Japan and " Chine Americaine.^ Then began the sterile, extra- vagant theocratic despotism which made the race what it still is, an automaton that acts as peasantry and soldiery ; not a people but a flock, a servum pecus knowing no rule but that of their superiors, and whose history may be summed up in absolute submission, fanaticism, blind obe- dience, heroic and barbarous devotion to the tyrant that rules it, combined with crass ignorance, hatred of, and contempt for, the foreigner. ”

“ The fact is, he ruled the people by systematising the primitive laxity and the malpractices which he found amongst them ; and in autocracies generally, the liberty conceded to society is in exact inverse ratio to the strictness with which political latitudinarianism is curbed. ”

“ A system of complete uniformity was extended even to the plan of the settlement and of the houses. Travellers in the Missions have deemed themselves victims of delusion when after riding many leagues from one Reduction they found themselves in a facsimile of that which they had left. ”

“ To ridicule such a man is evidently absurd ; the attempt can only recoil upon those who make it. Dictator Francia^s system demanded complete isolation, and thus Paraguay, which had been temporarily thrown open by the Revolution of 1810, became a Darfur, a Waday. Commerce was prohibited, or rather was mono- polized, and sequestration soon annihilated a trade which, during the thirty years ending the last century and ten years of the present, had risen to upwards of $1,500,000 per annum, and employed several thousand hands in 750 ships of sizes, thirty of them exceeding 200 tons. ”

“ A hard fate caused it to be sold by auction at Buenos Aires.
Using the state of political parties in the Banda Oriental as a pretext. President Lopez, in early 1864, began actively to prepare fcr war. There is little doubt that he thought the proceeding one of self-preservation against his mortal enemies the Liberal party, which threatened incontinently to hem him in, and he is said to have declared, " If we have not a war with the Brazil now, we shall have it at a time less convenient for ourselves." Since then, in a mani- festo, he stated, " Paraguay must no longer consent to be ”

“ The first British Envoy, Sir Charles Hotham, charged with a special mission, accom- panied by Mr. Secretary Thornton, reached Asuncion in H.M.^s ship Locust at the end of 1852, and the late M. de Saint-Georges presently appeared in the Flambard, which had run aground. In March, 1853, when General Urquiza had formally recognised the independence of the Republic, the Plenipotentiaries of England and the United States, France and Sardinia, meeting at the capital, signed with Paraguay treaties of friendship, commerce, and navigation. ”

“ The town of El Pilar or Nembucu, 154 miles from Asuncion, was made the terminus of ship navigation and the 7ie plus ultra of the foreign voyager. As late as 1845, Colonel Graham, the United States^ Consul, Buenos Aires, when on a special mission to Paraguay, was here delayed by Dr. Francia some twenty days. The strip of country between S. Borja and Ytapua, now Encarnacion, was constituted the sole place ac- cessible to land import, especially to Brazilian commerce, and no Paraguayan could repair thither without leave ; thus the post became the " mutual factory of a second China." ”