III
To the east of the Cordilleras, and south of the river Negro, stretches the territory long known as Patagonia, first in swelling plateaux and then flattening out into a continuation of the upper level pampas. This is now the scene of Argentina’s advancing sheep industry. For Patagonia, east of the Andean summits, and the east half of Tierra del Fuego were awarded to Argentina by the boundary arbitrator, King Edward VII, following the report of Sir Thomas Holdich’s commission, and is now divided into the Federal Territories of Rio Negro, Chubut, and Santa Cruz. The land of Patagonia, so named by the early explorers from the big feet (pata goas) of the Tehuelche Indians, is now reached by steamer to Punta Arenas in Magellan Strait, the southernmost city on the globe, for the railways of Argentina have not yet penetrated this country to any considerable extent. In climate it ranges from the temperate to extreme cold, like that of northern Michigan in the winter months. From the time of Darwin, who first took the country out of the category of terras incognitas, Patagonia has lost most of its mystery and is now being settled by the diverted immigration from Buenos Aires. The Scots, English, and Germans have taken up large allotments of land, and many New Zealand sheep men have come over to add their skill to the leading industry. There are also colonies of Boers and Jews.
The Fuegian Archipelago, at the southern extremity of South America, covers a territory as large as Nebraska. A tortuous, wind-swept labyrinth of waterways separates the hundreds of islands that constitute this group. The largest is Tierra del Fuego, half as large as Illinois. It is divided longitudinally between Chile and Argentina, by far the larger and more valuable portion having been awarded to the former by the Royal Arbitrator. The name was given to the archipelago by Magellan, when he saw the trails of smoke from the signal fires of the natives who followed his epoch-making course through the strait that now bears his name. Very little of the Fuegian country is under cultivation, although thousands of sheep graze over its rich valleys and verdant plains. The southernmost point, Cape Horn (in Chilean territory), is a monster rock, bleak and forbidding, against which the antarctic storms beat with such terrific force that, in the old days of sailing vessels, it was called the headstone of the mariners’ most populous graveyard.
A vastly different scene awaits the traveler who penetrates into the tropical wilds of the northern territories of Argentina. Going aboard one of the fine steamers of Nicholas Mihanovitch—the kings of the river traffic—at Buenos Aires, the traveler follows the course of the Paraná, which is the main water highway of Argentina. The trip will take him through the richest provinces of the Camp, past the busy miniature Buenos Aires, the city of Rosario, which is the port of shipment for the grain of this region, and up into the tropical scenery and mystery of the Chaco and Misiones territories, opening up vistas of prodigious natural growths and riotous beauty, differing in every way from the somber majesty of the Fuegian country. The Chaco and the territory of Formosa, adjoining it on the north, are still almost wholly occupied by uncivilized Indians. Up to the present time this region has been exploited chiefly for the wood of the quebracho (qui-bra-hacha—axe-breaker) tree, which yields the best quality of tannin and timber for railroad ties; it is richer in the former product than any other tree yet discovered.
IGUAZÚ FALLS, WHERE BRAZIL, PARAGUAY, AND ARGENTINA MEET.
The picturesqueness of the Paraná River scenery along its upper courses has excited enthusiastic descriptions from all the travelers who have penetrated this marvelous country. A thousand miles up the river, in Misiones, near the point where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet, are located the famous Iguazú Falls. The great cascade, fifty feet higher and with a lateral extent 1250 feet greater than Niagara, lies in the midst of a primeval forest. The enormous volume of water bursts through a series of thickly wooded islands with a roar that is all the more impressive to the spectator because of the solitude that reigns throughout this scantily populated region. The hand of man has done nothing here—no attempt has been made to harness the mighty power; nature has been left alone to revel in utter abandon.
IV
URUGUAY
One of the first inquiries that engages the mind of the visitor to Uruguay and Argentina is why the great body of water that separates the two countries—apparently an arm of the sea—should not be called the Gulf of La Plata. After a brief stay in this region of great cities, great productiveness, and great opportunities, it will probably occur to him that dwellers among such great things could be satisfied with nothing less than an estuary of the broad Atlantic to serve as a river for their capitals. If the Paraná and Uruguay—mighty rivers which rank in size immediately behind the Mississippi—had joined their floods some miles above Buenos Aires, instead of flowing separately into La Plata, a stream of unquestionable status might have satisfied their demands; but the God of Waters willed otherwise, evidently not anticipating the greatness of these people and their illimitable ambition.
The exact point at which La Plata River merges with the Atlantic is also a matter of speculation among geographers. For all practical purposes, however, Montevideo, the capital, metropolis, and chief port of Uruguay, lies just beside this phenomenon. One can say, therefore, that the eastern side of the little peninsula on which the main city is built faces the ocean, while the southern and western fronts, bordering the bay of the actual port, look upon the river Plata.
Taking the night boat at Buenos Aires, one arrives in Montevideo in the early morning after a pleasant ride of just a hundred miles diagonally across the river, and is immediately impressed with the picturesqueness of El Cerro, an ancient fortress that still poses as the guardian of the entrance of the river. Much more important to-day, however, is the lighthouse that rises from this height. Entering the port the visitor comes upon a modern city of almost four hundred thousand inhabitants, possessed of all the attributes of the present-day metropolis; an adequate and up-to-date system of docks, fine business blocks, public buildings, plazas, boulevards, and broad streets laid out on the checkerboard scheme, sewer, water, and lighting systems, and extensive and well-managed electric tramway lines.
To the Buenos Airean, naturally enough, Montevideo is a second Brooklyn, for the “ferry” trip of a hundred miles is not incongruous where people think in superlatives. Here the Buenos Airean may come, after a period of consuming activity in his own more closely built city, for rest and soul expansion among the leisurely and dignified Montevideans, and, at the expense of his neighbor, even permit himself a bit of friendly chaff in which he might venture to use the word “soporific.” The Montevidean by no means resents the imputation. There is no resentment because, although a restful atmosphere does pervade the city, there is not the slightest taint of stagnation. The Montevidean is conscious that his sturdy, vigorous, and even bellicose race has built up a nation unique in South America in its promise of material prosperity; that his country is among the richest in the quality and varied productiveness of its soil of any on the continent, and that his city, housing a third of the country’s population, is the pivot of the nation’s astonishing commercial activity and one of the most healthful and delightful residence cities in the world.
Montevideo was founded in 1726, but remained a comparatively unimportant way station until some thirty years ago, when it began to imbibe the modernism of its big rivals in Brazil and Argentina. To-day it is almost as cosmopolitan as Buenos Aires, the Italian element predominating among the foreigners, with the British preëminent as investors of capital, as in the latter city. To the superb Solis Theater come all the European companies that appear in Buenos Aires; club life is best represented in the Club Uruguay and the English Club, situated on opposite sides of the Plaza Matriz; and afternoon tea has come to be an important feature of the social life, several tea houses being now distributed over the leisure sections of the city.
The pride of the Montevidean is Prado Park. He has made of it one of the fairest gardens imaginable—its lakes and rolling lawns and great variety of trees and flowering bushes, its intersecting avenues of towering eucalyptus trees rivaling Japan’s famous avenue of cryptomerias, on the road to Nikko, all give pleasure to the city’s thousands, who, like Parisians, seek the country scenes for their holiday amusements. Driving along Agraciado Road and other plane-tree-shaded avenues, the visitor reaches either of the pleasure suburbs of Colón or Pocítos.
In these excursions he has an excellent opportunity to note the varied styles of architecture coming into vogue in the more progressive cities of South America; they range from the comfortable bungalow of the British residents, to that strange development of the old Spanish home (the quinta) in which the wealthy Spanish-Americans love to house themselves on the outskirts of the cities. Until recent years the Spanish house in town and country was bare and unlovely on the outside; its beauty and richness were confined to the interior surroundings of the patio; where, in feudal privacy, the family secluded itself. To-day, in the new era of civic pride and the freer association of society in the modern boulevard and café life, the adornment is extended to the outside, and the effort made, by the addition of pinnacles and towers and much delicate tinting, to add to the attractiveness of the “city beautiful.” In the business sections, of course, the modern architecture corresponds for the most part with the type seen in the great cities of Europe and North America.
SOLIS THEATER, MONTEVIDEO.
CAGANCHA PLAZA, MONTEVIDEO.
In October, when the summer comes into these latitudes south of the Equator, the quintas assume a most entrancing aspect. Some of them, set in the midst of gardens many acres in extent, are veritable haunts of delight. Toll has been levied upon every resource to add to their charm. The gardens are inclosed within hedges that blaze with the color of the hedge-rose, honeysuckle, bougainvillea, wistaria, and other creeping vines. Inside, forming a background, may be seen a goodly growth of ivy-covered oaks or chestnut trees. Within, nearer the fairy-like home, and in the random of artistic disorder, are many flowering bushes and trees—lilacs mingling their scent with magnolia, orange, myrtle, and mimosa—while the lawns are carpeted with a brilliant profusion of periwinkles, pansies, marigolds, arum lilies, and carnations, the whole yielding up the delights of its ever changing fragrance as the wondering guest wanders about in company with his courtly host and hostess.
In entire harmony with this perfection of nature is the beauty of the women. They are justly famous. To the far-famed grace and natural Spanish stateliness of her sisters throughout South America, the Uruguayan señorita adds a freshness of complexion and sprightliness of temperament that go to make a most bewitching consummation of feminine charm. Her praises are sung by all visitors; not less appreciative, her own kith and kin liken her, in their poetic way, to all pleasant things from a dove to the moon.
It is with genuine regret that the traveler leaves the hospitable capital for a trip through the country; but he will soon discover that the delightful climate (like that of Tennessee, but without the snows of winter) is characteristic of Uruguay as a whole. From the capital radiate some fifteen hundred miles of good railways penetrating Brazil at several points, and also tapping the commerce along the Uruguay River.
The country he will see is one great rolling pasture as large as all New England, and with occasional ridges of mountains. None of these, however, exceeds two thousand feet in height. Until recently Uruguay was given over almost entirely to the raising of cattle and sheep; now it promises great strides in products of the soil. Indeed, it is the boast of the Uruguayan that not an acre of his country’s 72,000 square miles of territory is unproductive. Here can be seen growing corn, wheat, and potatoes, and a great impetus has of late been given to viticulture—and there is no fear of either drought or frost. So far, however, only about three per cent. of the territory is under cultivation in foodstuffs. In 1909 Montevideo handled imports to the value of $35,000,000 and exports amounting to $32,000,000, while the ports of Rocha, Maldonado, and Colonia, on the south coast, and Salto, Paysandú, Fray Bentos, Mercédes, and others on the Uruguay, handled three millions more of imports and exports. Her production in cattle in that year amounted to 6,827,428, in sheep 16,608,717, and in pigs, horses, mules, and goats 700,000.
At Fray Bentos, on the Uruguay River, the Liebig Company has located a great plant, slaughters over three hundred thousand head of cattle a year, and does an enormous business in extract of beef, canned meats, hides, tallow, hair, horn, and other by-products. A day’s sojourn in the prosperous, if soup-laden, atmosphere will give one a proper appreciation of the rest of the country, for nowhere has Nature been more lavish with her favors, nowhere has she distributed more favorable conditions for life and national prosperity—everything man needs for food or clothing is here capable of being raised. Every section is reached by navigable rivers, which also furnish abundant water for irrigation and mechanical purposes. The country being on a gold basis, its credit in the European money markets is excellent.
Uruguay, as one historian expresses it, has always been the cockpit of the southern half of the continent. From the time of the appearance of the first whites in the Plata region—Diaz de Solis in 1515, and ten years later Sebastien Cabot—down to the period of Hernando Arias and Garay, who, in about 1580, permanently established the power of Spain on the river Plata, the Spanish and Portuguese settlements on the Plata and Uruguay had to contend with the incessant hostilities of a race of Indians—the Charrúas, who, next to the Araucanians of Chile, had the distinction of offering the most vigorous and successful opposition to the dominion of the Europeans in South America.
Throughout the colonial régime, Uruguay constituted the eastern border province (Banda Oriental) of Spain’s La Plata colony, and was the storm center of the Spanish and Portuguese strife for territorial control. Following this period came the abortive invasion of the English in 1806, and, a few years later, the wars of independence. When Spanish rule came to an end in the Plata country, the Banda Oriental became the bone of contention between Brazil and the newly born state that is now Argentina—a veritable new-world Flanders and the theater of many fierce battles. Brazil held the province from 1817 to 1829, and called it her Cis-platine Province. Finally, on May 1, 1829, Uruguay achieved her independence and set up a government of her own under the style of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
There is good reason, then, why the Uruguayans should have emerged from these three hundred years of turbulent character building into independence with a bellicose personality exactly suited to the Montague-and-Capulet existence that prevails in her politics between the Blancos, or reactionists, and the Colorados, who now hold the political power and stand for progress. The forcefulness of the nation is now finding its expression in industrial and commercial enterprises and has made of her chief port a powerful commercial rival of the busy mart across the Plata.
V
PARAGUAY
Paraguay is in the longitudinal center of South America, and, with the exception of Bolivia, is the only country on the continent that does not border on the sea. Next to Uruguay it is the smallest of the South American republics, possessing a territory of 196,000 square miles. Until the break with Spain, in 1813, it was, like Uruguay, part and parcel of La Plata colony, under the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Buenos Aires, and was known as the Province of Paraguay. As will be observed from a glance at the map, it is hedged in by Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina, and is separated from its twin sister, Uruguay, by an arm of the mother country (Misiones Territory) that reaches up into Brazil between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers.
For a proper acquaintance with the country it must be conceived as a dual personality, for it is divided longitudinally by the river Paraguay into western Paraguay, or the Chaco, and eastern Paraguay, or Paraguay proper. It is in the latter region that the republic has its being and in which the visitor’s interest is naturally centered. El Chaco is a vast, thickly wooded, and, for the most part, savage and unexplored section that was awarded to Paraguay by our President Hayes as arbitrator of its boundary dispute with Argentina; in gratitude the government named the chief settlement in the territory Villa Hayes. The region is now given over almost wholly to the immigrant Swiss, German, Italian and other communities that have been started on the west bank of the river, and to nomadic bands of still uncivilized Indians.
With a climate similar to that of southern California, Paraguay, throughout its entire extent, is blessed with abundant rain the year round. It is well watered and quite thickly wooded, and thus protected from the intense heat usual in low-lying countries.
Eastern Paraguay resembles Uruguay in its rolling, fertile areas, but is more mountainous. On the northern frontier is the range known as the Quinze Puntas. Inclosing the country on the east are the Cordilleras of Amambay and Mbaracayú, while down the center, from north to south, run a broken series of lesser sierras and the range called Caaguazú, forming a ridge or backbone that subdivides this half of Paraguay into the two great basins drained by the Paraná River on the east and the Paraguay on the west.
Almost the whole of Paraguay proper has forests of valuable woods with occasional clear places, where settlers have made serviceable the marvelous fertility and luxuriance of the soil. For centuries this region has been the barrier between the two distinct phases of Spanish civilization in South America—the golden empire of Peru and the agricultural colonies on the Plata and its tributaries—just as Uruguay has been the buffer state between the Portuguese and Spanish peoples. These phases have merged but little and to-day present a most interesting contrast.
From the time of Cabot’s fortified settlement of Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay) at the junction of the Paraguay and Pilcomayo rivers, in 1536, whence his lieutenant, Domingo Irala, made his vain attempt to penetrate into Peru, down to the present, Paraguay has been isolated to a considerable degree from the march of progress. The six hundred adventurers who followed the fortunes of Irala stayed on the land, intermarried with the Guarany Indians and bred the mixed race that was the foundation of the nation of to-day; and the Indians developed, along with the mestizos, to a status unique in South America. Evading the abject slavery that decimated the aboriginal races throughout the Andean region, the Guaranies were taught the arts of the soil and war by the Jesuits, and, during the hundred and fifty years of the latter’s sway, achieved a stage of development corresponding to that of the peasantry of France.
GOVERNMENT PALACE, ASUNCIÓN.
VIEW OF ASUNCIÓN AND RIVER PARAGUAY FROM ROOF OF THE CENTRAL RAILROAD STATION.
The story of the Jesuit missions which occupied the Paraná basin, is an important and thrilling chapter in Latin-American history. Early in its life, the Society turned its attention to the evangelization of South America; it was the genius of its founder, Ignatius Loyola, that perfected the organization to accomplish this. In 1550 the Jesuit Fathers began their work on the Brazilian coast settlements, but were driven farther and farther inland by the Portuguese as it became apparent that their policy of education and uplift would put an end to the enslavement of the natives which was the basis of the economic scheme of the colonists. Eventually, some time about 1586, the Jesuits entered the Paraguay region, won the confidence of the Guaranies and purposed to “reduce” the tribes of the whole Plata country. They met with the same opposition from the Spanish colonists and their stronghold became restricted to the secluded and isolated region mentioned—the Paraná basin and Misiones territory of Argentina.
Here, for over a hundred years, under the protection of the official sanction won from the Spanish King, Philip III, they worked among their proselytes. They learned and perfected the native dialects; taught the men to cultivate the soil, and the women to spin and weave cotton; induced them to clear the forests and to build and live in towns, and even organized them into an effective militia, which more than once enabled them to preserve the integrity of the remarkable state—a state unique in a way, since it was virtually under the direct control of the General of the Order, although within the territorial sovereignty of Spain. This “republic” lasted until 1769, when the famous decree of the King of Spain banished the Jesuits from all his dominions; but the effects of their presence are still noticeable throughout Paraguay and Misiones.
It is a matter of wonder to this day how the Jesuit Fathers, even taking into consideration their unquenchable zeal and marvelous energy and determination, ever succeeded in reaching so isolated a territory and in traversing it in every direction, as they did, in pursuit of their campaign. Even to-day it is well-nigh impossible to reach the heart of the region—the great cataract of Guayra, which, hundreds of miles from the habitations of man, isolated by jagged mountains, fiercely swirling waters and the wild tangle of underbrush that make headway through the awesome tropical forest very difficult, constitutes one of the most majestic of nature’s wonder-works in South America. Situated about a hundred miles up the Paraná River from the better known Iguazú Falls, the Guayra cataract lies on the frontier with Brazil. A volume of water twice as large as that which thunders over Niagara is forced through a gorge two hundred feet wide from a stream two and a half miles in width. The roar of its plunge of fifty-six feet to the lower levels, adds the essential note to this tremendous symphony of primeval nature. Outside the Arctic regions, one explorer declares, no part of the world is less accessible than the Paraná above the Great Cataract.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits the Paraná basin reverted to forest and the nation pursued its checkered career in the section drained by the Paraguay. This river intersects the republic from north to south and is navigable through its entire course by ocean steamers, which pass up from Buenos Aires through the Paraná, and past Corrientes, where the two great streams join forces.
On the left bank of the Paraguay, at the point of its confluence with the equally great Pilcomayo, the traveler comes to the ancient city of Asunción, the capital of the country. Here was the seat of the colonial authority over Plata settlements until Buenos Aires grew into importance. It has a population of 52,000, and is now thriving and prosperous, rapidly taking on the cosmopolitanism that characterizes the other ports of South America. The capital, and indeed the whole country has but recently entered into a new life, a life as sharply contrasted with its period of political storm and stress as the transition was sudden.
For, during the first sixty years after the country had attained its freedom from Spain, Paraguay’s progress was stifled by a succession of tyrants—remarkable men, all three of them, but men who, as a result of their rule, well-nigh cost her her national existence. The first of these, Dr. José Rodríguez Gaspar Francia, had been the dominating figure in the revolutionary junta, and afterward, with his confrère, General Yegros, had been appointed Consul and invested with the supreme power. “He was a lawyer,” Dawson tells us, “who had become a sort of demigod to the lower classes by his fearless advocacy of their rights, and inspired almost superstitious reverence by his reputation for learning and disinterestedness.” A year later, the historian continues—
“He forced Yegros out, and, with general consent, assumed the position of sole executive, and, in 1816, was formally declared supreme and perpetual dictator. For the next twenty-five years he was the government of Paraguay. History does not record another instance in which a single man so dominated and controlled a people. A solitary, mysterious figure, of whose thoughts, purposes, and real character little is known, the worst acts of his life were the most picturesque and alone have been recorded. Although the great Carlyle includes him among the heroes whose memory mankind should worship, the opinion of his detractors is likely to triumph. Francia will go down to history as a bloody-minded, implacable despot, whose influences and purposes were wholly evil. After reading all that has been written about this singular character, my mind inclines more to the judgment of Carlyle. I feel that the vivid imagination of the great Scotchman has pierced the clouds which enshrouded the spirit of a great and lonely man, and has seen the soul of Francia as he was. Cruel, suspicious, ruthless, heartless as he undeniably became, his acts will not bear the interpretation that his purposes were selfish or that he was animated by mere vulgar ambition....
“He absorbed in his own person all the functions of government; he had no confidants and no assistants; he allowed no Paraguayan to approach him on terms of equality. When he died, a careful search failed to reveal any records of the immense amount of governmental business he had transacted during thirty years. The orders for executions were simply messages signed by him and returned to be destroyed as soon as they had been carried out. The longer he lived, the more completely did he apply his system of absolutism, the more confident he became that he alone could govern the people for their good. He adopted a policy of commercial isolation, and intercourse with the outside world was absolutely forbidden. He neither sent nor received consuls nor ministers to foreign nations. Foreign vessels were excluded from the Paraguay River and allowed to visit only one port in the southeastern corner of the country. He was the sole foreign merchant. The communistic system inherited from the Jesuits was developed and extended to the secular parts of the country.... Dreading interference by Spain, Brazil, or Buenos Aires, he improved the military forces and began the organization of the whole population into a militia. His policy, however, was peaceful....
“As he grew older he became more solitary and ferocious. Always a gloomy and peculiar man, absorbed in his studies and making no account of the ordinary pleasures and interests of mankind, he had reached the age of fifty-five and assumed supreme power without marrying.... His severities against the educated classes increased; he ordered wholesale executions and seven hundred political prisoners filled the jails when he died. He feared assassination and occupied several houses, letting no one know where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and, when walking the streets, kept his guards at a distance before and behind him. Woe to the enemy or suspect who attracted his attention! Such was the terror inspired by this dreadful old man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan literally dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was ‘El Supremo,’ and, after he was dead, for generations he was referred to simply as ‘El Defunto.’... He did not rise by any sycophantic arts. Indeed, he never veiled the contempt he felt for the party schemers and officials around him. When he had supreme power in his hands, he used it for no selfish indulgences. His life was austere and abstemious; but, though parsimonious for himself, he was lavish for the public.... In his manners and life, he was absolutely modest; he received any one who chose to see him. If he was terrible, it was to the wealthy and powerful; the humblest Indian received a hearing and justice. During his reign Paraguay remained undisturbed, wrapped in a profound peace; the population rapidly increased, and, though commerce and manufactures did not flourish, nor the new ideas that were transforming the face of the civilized world penetrate, food and clothing were plentiful and cheap and the Paraguayans prospered in their own humble fashion.”
Following the reign of Francia came a long period of open intercourse with the neighboring states and foreign countries under the dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, and some measure of progress was made, but still there was no development of republican institutions. His death made room for his son Francisco, who was a man of thirty-five at the time of his accession, and, having spent some time in Europe, had returned permeated with the vices of the great capitals and a consuming ambition for military renown. A very different character of man morally, he is said to have been, from the first of his line. He is described as vain, licentious, gluttonous, and unscrupulous to the last degree, though good-looking and an eloquent speaker. “He began his reign like a Mohammedan sultan,” says Dawson, “ridding himself of his father’s most trusted counselors, imprisoning and executing the most intelligent and powerful citizens.... He ordered his best friends to execution; he tortured his mother and sisters and murdered his brothers. The only natural affection he ever evinced was a fondness for a woman he had picked up in Paris, and for her children. He seems to have treated her well to the last, but his numerous other mistresses and their children he heartlessly abandoned.”
He soon raised an army of more than eighty thousand, the largest that had ever been assembled since the conquest, and, by assuming the aggressive in certain boundary disputes with Brazil and Argentina and interfering in civil disturbances that were going on in Uruguay, involved the country in war with these three powers, which, alarmed at his Napoleonic aspirations, promptly formed an alliance for the purpose of resisting him. This war lasted five years and for Paraguay was one long succession of appalling disasters. Before the first battle was fought her population numbered more than 1,300,000; when Lopez was finally defeated and killed in 1870, but 221,079 remained, of whom only 28,746 were men. “No modern nation has ever come so near to complete annihilation,” says Dawson. “Not less than 225,000 Paraguayan men—the fathers and bread-winners, the farmers and laborers—had perished in battle, by disease or exposure or starvation. One hundred thousand adult women had died of hardship and hunger, and there were less than 90,000 children under fifteen in the country. The surviving women outnumbered the men five to one; ... but the integrity of Paraguay and her continuance as an independent power had been mutually guaranteed by Brazil and Argentina when they began the war against Lopez, and neither of them could afford to let the other take possession of her territory, so the country was left substantially intact.”
Asunción shows on its face the two phases—the modern business houses, residences and public service improvements of the new era, and the ruined districts and wrecks such as those of cathedral, presidential palace and old public buildings that emphasize the lessons of the old. To-day the visitor looks with a shudder at the ruins of the uncompleted mausoleum in which the last tyrant expected his remains to rest and at the two-million-dollar palace where, in rooms hung with rare laces and crimson satin, his unspeakable orgies were held; he turns with relief toward the modernism now beginning to be apparent which proves the substantial worth of a people which can arise from such a past and prosper. The survivors of the old régime have been severely tested for fitness to enjoy the fruits of their well-favored country.
The republic—no longer such in name only—is governed under an enlightened constitution modeled after our own. The present administration has opened wide the doors to immigration and foreign capital, and the artificial barrier erected by her political system of the nineteenth century no longer exists as the complement to the natural barriers that have stood for four centuries between the northern and southern countries of South America.
Those who may be so fortunate as to obtain control of Paraguay’s highways, the Paraguay and Pilcomayo, and supplement them by extending its 155 miles of railway into a system that will develop the vast agricultural and mineral empire of central and southern Brazil and Bolivia, and carry the produce to the Argentine seaboard, will gain a prize unequaled in the railroad world, and make of Paraguay a country of first importance on the continent.
Throughout the country the forests are being cleared to make room for potreros (cattle ranches) and the growing agricultural industries. Yerbales are coming more and more under the scientific culture which greatly enhances the value of the country’s leading product, yerba maté, or Paraguay tea.
Paraguay is the namesake and chief producer of the famous yerba maté or Paraguay tea, which is the national drink—the cup of ceremony and popular tipple throughout the central part of South America below the coffee belt; that is, on the Argentine Campo, in Uruguay, Paraguay, the lower part of Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. So well adapted is the beverage to the climate that the German colonists forsake their beer and the European-Latins their sweet cordials for the stimulating and non-alcoholic native product.
The yerba leaf is prepared by steeping in boiling water, as in the case of the tea with which the rest of the world is familiar. The maté is the dried gourd in which the tea is brewed. Into the aperture left by removing the stem, a tube (the bombilla), made of reed or bone, is inserted and through this the drinker sucks the refreshing brew. Whenever the occasion offers “Toma usted maté?” is almost a form of greeting in the yerba maté countries, so universal is its popularity. Among the rich the maté and bombilla are fashioned in costly metals, but elsewhere the gourd and reed serve their purpose with equal, if not greater, satisfaction.
The ilex paraguayensis, to give the herb its botanical name, is an evergreen tree or shrub from twelve to twenty-five feet high, with bright green leaves clustered in a bushy mass that cause it from a distance to resemble the orange tree. Although much of the yerba maté is still obtained from the immense natural forests, the ever-increasing demand has made cultivation a necessity. Many plantations have been successfully laid out, and crops of leaves have recently been gathered with commercially profitable results. The scientific methods now being adopted in the yerbales (yerba plantations) of Paraguay to supplant the destructive system of the past will insure for this growing industry a rich return to the owners.
The drink is taken without the addition of condiment and for the most part hot, like the Japanese sake. It is stimulating and sustaining, and soothes instead of irritating the nervous system. Unlike the concoctions made from the coca leaf (cocaine), sugar cane (rum), pulque, sake, vodka and other stimulants stumbled upon by native peoples and become destructive habits, yerba maté has no deleterious effects either immediate or after prolonged use.
Dr. Lenglet, President of the International League of Pure Food, says of it:
“The noteworthy point of the effect of maté on the system is its stimulating action on the cerebro-spinal organs. Taken with sugar the first thing in the morning it is very wholesome. It gives great capacity to undergo fatigue and invigorates the brain, and although it prevents feeling hungry, one does not enjoy one’s meals any the less. It does not appear to affect the intestinal organs; the nervous system is, nevertheless, insensible to the organic losses caused by the want of nourishment which are made known by hunger.
“In maté is found one of the most important means to obtain a maximum of strength and energy. It can be compared to a reservoir of vitality.”
VI
BOLIVIA
In the heart of the continent a vast table of land as large as all our Middle States has been crowded up into the air by some titanic convulsion to a height of more than two miles, or fourteen thousand feet. The surface in many places is deeply encrusted with salt, suggesting the upheaval of a great mediterranean sea and a spilling of its waters over the succession of terraced slopes that finally break off abruptly and merge in the summer valleys of Brazil and Paraguay; for from these heights innumerable streams shimmer off toward the distant Amazon.
The plateau is hemmed in by the Cordillera de la Costa (the coast range) and the Cordillera Real, the main range, on the east, and is intersected in various directions by cross-sections, the whole producing a topography of a grandeur that makes all attempts at description pitifully inadequate. The majestic snow-clad peaks of Guallatiri and Miniquis in the coast range, and Illampú (Sorata), Illimani, Chachacomani, and Karkaake in the Cordillera Real rise to a height of over 22,000 feet. A dozen more in both ranges exceed 20,000. On the northwestern border along the Peruvian frontier, lies Lake Titicaca, unique also in that it is the highest navigated body of water on the globe. It is 160 miles long by thirty wide and is fed by the melting Andean snows.
This plateau is the center of Bolivia’s life to-day, as it was the cradle of successive aboriginal civilizations that finally culminated many centuries ago in the Inca empire. It is the highest inhabited land on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Tibet. The evidence at every hand of nature’s tremendous activities must have left its impress on the races that formerly had their being here. The gigantic relics which are now the enduring monuments of these peoples are proof of the bigness of their point of view. They saw largely and the range of their vision embraced great distances, great altitudes, and great depths. There is evidence also that the newly awakened present race will prove worthy of its surroundings.
The people now inhabiting this great Andean Massif have in their veins the blood of both the intrepid Conquistadores and the hardy Aymara and Inca stock, and it is in the nature of things that the present-day Bolivian, now that his republicanism is established after a century of turbulent assimilation, will make great strides in industrial progress in justification of the spirit that is his birthright. In this altitude, so high that at first most foreigners suffer from its effects, the Bolivians have built their capital and chief cities. Here the first blow was struck against the oppression of Spain, and in the mountain defiles of the Peruvian Andes leading down to the Pacific coast the last shot was fired that drove the viceregal army to its transports. With the departure of the Spanish came the establishment, in 1825, of the Republic of Bolivia, the name given to the old Buenos Airean province of Alto-Peru by its first president, Bolívar’s famous lieutenant, General Sucré, in honor of his chief.
Bolivia is fourth in size among the South American republics. It covers 708,195 square miles, and could include within its limits the combined areas of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. The republic lies wholly within the torrid zone, but the gradation of its topography extends from the yungas (“hot valleys”) at the border of the Amazon basin to the punas, or high table-lands, ranging from four to fourteen thousand feet, so that animal and vegetable life of every clime is represented—from the brilliantly colored flamingo and butterfly of the Amazon plains to the dread condor of the Andes; from the rubber tree, through all stages of arborial and plant life, to the little yellow bitter potato, grown near the point at which vegetation vanishes in the Arctic cold of the higher peaks.
Of course, the shortest and most direct route to Bolivia’s capital and chief cities is by rail from either of the Pacific ports of Mollendo, in Peru, or Arica or Antofagasta, in Chile. The quick change of view from the arid coast to the grandeur of Andean mountain scenery, and the familiar comforts of railway travel incline most visitors to the approach from one of those points. But, as the greater part of Bolivia’s territory is that which falls away from the plateau, like a lady’s train, northward and eastward to the frontiers of Brazil and Paraguay, a more comprehensive and impressive acquaintance with the country can be had by entering either from the north, via the Amazon and Maderia rivers to Villa Bella on the Brazilian frontier, and thence over a thousand miles on horseback to La Paz, or from the east, starting from our last resting place at Asunción in Paraguay. From Asunción one travels up the Paraguay River to Corumbá in Brazil, thence, by a small affluent to Puerto Suárez, eighty-one miles distant on the frontier, thence by a zigzag course of eight hundred miles up the rising elevation to Santa Cruz, a thriving city of 20,000 population, and thence to Cochabamba, still larger and 8000 feet in altitude. From here there is a stage line over one hundred and ten miles of mountainous country to Oruro, where connection is made with the Antofagasta-La Paz railway to the capital.
Or one may go by railroad from Buenos Aires via Rosario, Cordoba and Tucumán to La Quiaca on the frontier and then north for only two hundred miles by stage-coach to Uyuni, through which the Antofagasta-La Paz line passes on its way to the capital. But, in any event, the approach from the east or north richly repays the visitor for the time consumed and discomfort he may have to undergo on the way. The noted naturalist, D’Aubigny, says of the yungas region, through which one must first make his way on leaving the Paraguay: “If tradition has lost the records of the place where Paradise is situated, the traveler who visits these regions of Bolivia feels at once the impulse to exclaim, ‘Here is the lost Eden.’”
Leaving the dense and weirdly impressive tropical forests of the hinterland, the rolling areas of the yungas ascend toward the plateau—a succession of vast gardens delicately scented and brilliant with color. As the country is coming more under cultivation each year the traveler’s eye rests frequently upon plantations of coffee, cacao, and coca, the plant from which we get cocaine. The coca leaf is highly prized by the native as a stimulant; he chews it as a Northerner would chew tobacco but with a better excuse, since by its use he can perform great feats of endurance and go many hours without food. With his pouch filled with coca leaves and a small supply of parched Indian corn, he can run fifty miles a day, for these fleet-footed Indians constitute the telegraph system of this region. The output of the cocales, or coca plantations, was nearly nine million pounds last year.
This is also the home of the highly nutritious if impossibly named jamacch’ppeke plant, which, when dried and powdered and mixed with water, produces a delicately flavored milk much used in hospitals and even for babies. Higher up in the valle zone wheat and corn fields may be seen as well as the famous chincona tree, so named because, in 1638, the Condesa de Chinchon (wife of the Peruvian Viceroy) wrote of her wonderful cure from malaria by an Indian draught prepared from the bark of this tree. It has been known since as chincona or Peruvian bark, but it was not until 1820 that the French chemist, Pelletier, extracted from the tree the calisaya or quinine with which we are now familiar, and which, by the way, is said to be one of the two or three natural specifics ever yet discovered for disease.
On these slopes also grows the new substitute for wheat, quinua, a grain more nutritious and more cheaply produced than its northern prototype, also the delicious camote, a delicately flavored type of sweet potato, the palta, known in Cuba and Mexico as the aguacate and in Florida as the alligator pear, which makes the rich salad, and all variations of the sweet, pulpy fruits like the pomegranate, granadilla, capote, etc. This is also one of the homes of the nutmeg, olive, and castor bean, and of sugar, cotton, oranges, cinnamon, vanilla, saffron, indigo, and ginger; also of a remarkable variety of medicinal plants: for instance, those from which are derived aconite, arnica, absinthe, belladonna, camphor, quassia, cocaine, digitalis, gentian, ginger, ipecaque, jalap, opium, sarsaparilla, tamarind, tolu and valerian. The Indians of this belt are the most artistic leather workers in the world, and their beautiful ponchos (a sort of circular cape the mountaineers wear, with a hole in the center for the head to go through), woven from native silk, are eagerly sought by all visitors.
Leaving this richly endowed agricultural region for the still richer location of Bolivia’s mineral wealth, the traveler ascends to the great plateau on which the capital and important cities are built. At Potosí one is in the heart of the great silver country. From one mountain here, the Cerro de Potosí itself, over three billion dollars’ worth of silver has been taken since its discovery in 1545. The luxury and almost unbelievable extravagance told of in the annals of this city have given it a world-wide fame. Its principal building, the mint, cost the then unprecedented sum of two million dollars, an expenditure that brought many qualms to the miserly ascetic, Philip II, who would have preferred to pour the flood of wealth into the coffers of the church. The author of “Don Quixote” refers to Potosí as the synonym for fabulous wealth, and there is hardly a writer of the early days of the colony who did not mention the silver mountain to illustrate the idea of lavish abundance. In those days silver was regarded as equally valuable with gold.
Bolivia’s marvelous wealth in tin is unexcelled even in the Malay Peninsula. Already one of the chief centers of the tin industry, this metal promises to bring to the twentieth-century Bolivia as much commercial fame as the gold mines brought Alto-Peru in the sixteenth century. Copper, iron, lead and bismuth, as well as topazes, emeralds, opals, jasper, and marble, are also present in large quantities throughout the plateau.
After descending from Potosí, which is at an altitude of 15,380 feet, one should visit the white city of Sucré before proceeding to the present seat of government, La Paz. In Bolivia the name of Sucré is as omnipresent as Bolívar’s in Venezuela and Colombia, and most naturally when the new republic was formed the name of its chief city, Charcas, was changed to Sucré to honor the hero of Ayacucho—Antonio José de Sucré—when this “right hand” of Bolívar became its first president. The city is ancient, kindly, and romantically beautiful in its setting on the eastern slope of the royal range, and once, under a law enacted some eighty years ago, it was the capital.
SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF CAPACABANA, ON BOLIVIAN SHORE OF LAKE TITICACA.
TOWN AND MOUNTAIN OF POTOSÍ, BOLIVIA.
Its extreme altitude, however, made impossible the cosmopolitanism that must pertain to a capital city—the foreign diplomats in most cases refused to reside there because of the severity of the siroche, or mountain sickness, that nearly always assails the newcomer to these altitudes. So the seat of government was removed to La Paz, and now it is the tribunal of the Supreme Court and Archiepiscopal see only. Here also are located the University of San Francisco Xavier and the homes of many of Bolivia’s most aristocratic families. Thus far, modernism has had a beneficial influence on the city in many respects, but has not changed its appearance. Its public works have made it healthful and comfortable, but its stately old dwellings and public buildings preserve their peculiar charm unaltered to suit the modern architectural taste.
Farther north, and not yet connected by rail with Sucré, lies the present capital, La Paz, the actual seat of government. There for many years have resided the president, the congress, and the representatives of the foreign governments, so that the Paceño is justified in looking upon his city as the metropolis. Like its predecessor in this distinction, it was rechristened when the Spanish régime came to an end. When the Conquistadores exterminated the Indians resident on its site and built the present city, for some occult reason they named it La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de la Paz! Our Lady of Peace clung to the name, no doubt, with grim humor during the turbulent times that followed, until the decisive battle of Ayacucho brought to the nation a more effective peace from Spanish oppression, and to-day La Paz de Ayacucho is the official name of the seat of government.
La Paz, Quito, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico are the five highest capitals in the world, but the first-named is loftier by half a mile than any of its rivals. The visitor is always surprised at the location of La Paz. Having been told of its great elevation—12,300 feet above the sea level, he naturally expects to see a city perched on a high mountain; in fact, it is at the bottom of a deep canyon, backed, however, by the giant peak Illimani, which towers above, to a height of 22,500 feet. Its startling location results in daily variations in temperature that greatly incommode the stranger; frequently the thermometer drops from 80° F. at noon to below zero at night, although generally these extremes vary but little during the year.
Winding cautiously down the canyon to a depth of some 1500 feet, the train comes to a terrace overlooking the city and then unfolds before the traveler one of the most remarkable and picturesque scenes in South America. The reds of the roofs of the flat, two-story houses and the softer tints of the walls that make Caracas so alluring are here given a more brilliant and positive tone. The Oriental atmosphere is tempered by the rugged surroundings and the crisper, clearer air of the higher altitude. Everywhere the bright, elemental colors—red, green, and yellow—worn by the Indians, add to the brilliant scenes of outdoor life. The streets of the city are a series of steep ascents, admirable for drainage, no doubt, but affording little pleasure to the visitor who is fond of walking, for to the newcomer the rarified atmosphere makes exercise a trial. Surpassing Rome in one respect, La Paz seems to be built upon at least fifty hills, but many level areas are laid off in beautiful parks, a dozen or more in number, and here the Paceño brings his guests for the delightful social intercourse—perfected here for long centuries for want of many of the other amusements—that makes his city memorable to the visitor.
One of the most attractive parks, the Plaza Murillo, is named to commemorate the inspiring genius of the revolution against Spain: Pedro Domingo Murillo. The Alameda is a broad driveway of five parallel avenues that run for over half a mile through rows of fine shade trees. At night it is lighted with electricity and makes a delightful pleasure ground for the people. An extension of this boulevard, the Avenida Doce de Deciembre, leads to Obrajes, about three miles distant.
The most notable building in the city is the great cathedral. For more than seventy years it has been in course of construction and when completed will be the largest and most impressive church erected in Latin America since the war of independence. In style it is Greco-Roman, with a central cupola 150 feet high and two towers that rise to a height of 200 feet. The interior work is of exceptional magnificence. Like many of the old cathedrals of Spanish origin, its altar is of wonderfully carved wood. Besides the cathedral, La Paz can boast more than a dozen places of worship that compare favorably with the churches of other South American capitals.
Only a short distance from La Paz by railroad are the prehistoric ruins of Tiahuanaco, which Squier tells us
“Have been regarded by all students of American antiquities as in many respects the most interesting, important and at the same time the most enigmatical, of any on the continent. They have excited the wonder and admiration alike of the earliest and latest travelers, most of whom, vanquished in their attempts to penetrate the mystery of their origin, have been content to assign them an antiquity beyond that of the other monuments of America and to regard them as the solitary remains of a civilization that disappeared before that of the Incas began, and contemporaneous with that of Egypt and the East.... Tradition, which mumbles more or less intelligibly of the origin of many other American monuments, is dumb concerning these.”
They are on a broad, arid plain, overlooking Lake Titicaca, about twelve miles from the shore, and occupy about a square mile. In his description of them Mozans says: “In addition to a number of shapeless mounds, of earth, there are remarkable traces of five different stone structures, which writers, for the purpose of classification” (and because of their resemblance to plans of such buildings elsewhere), “have agreed to call the fortress, the palace, the temple, the sanctuary, and the hall of justice.”
“The materials used in their construction,” he goes on,
“Are trachyte, basalt, and red sandstone. The fortress, to judge from its present condition, originally resembled a Mexican teocalli, or the pyramid of Sakkarah in Egypt, and must, when first erected, have presented a very imposing appearance. It is a great, terraced mound of earth, supported by stone walls, is 50 feet high, 620 feet long, and 450 in width. It is, however, in a very dilapidated condition, owing to the depredations of treasure-seekers and to its having been for centuries used as a quarry whence material was obtained for buildings in the neighboring towns, for the railroad and for structures in La Paz. The temple is in the form of a rectangle, 388 by 445 feet. It has been very appropriately called the American Stonehenge, to which, at least in some of its monoliths, it bears a striking resemblance.
“The other three edifices, especially at the hall of justice, are likewise remarkable for the area they occupy and for the cyclopean masses of stone that still remain to attest the extraordinary character of their construction. It is these wonderful megaliths, rivaling anything found in Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, that have excited the astonishment of travelers since the time of the conquest. The platform, for instance, in the hall of justice, is paved with immense slabs, some of which are 25 feet long, 14 feet broad, and nearly 7 feet thick. But the most remarkable feature in these cyclopean structures is the great monolithic gateway, of very hard trachyte, ornamented with numerous well-executed sculptures, apparently of a symbolical character. This is more than 13 feet long, 7 feet above ground, and 18 inches thick. Some of the stones are in a rough, unhewn condition, but most of them are cut and fashioned in a most remarkable manner. Squier, in referring to this feature of these extraordinary ruins, writes: ‘Remove the superstructures of the best-built edifices of our cities, and few, if any, would expose foundations laid with equal care and none of them stones cut with such accuracy.’”
CHURCH OF THE CONSERVIDAS, LA PAZ.
OLD SPANISH RESIDENCE, LA PAZ.
In a short time the new home of the president and national congress will be finished and occupied, and the stately old palace where the president now resides will be devoted to other uses. The city is well endowed with public service conveniences, electricity, telephones, and handsome public buildings, and its hotels are among the best to be found anywhere on the continent outside of Buenos Aires, Rio and Valparaiso.
Of the 80,000 inhabitants, but one thousand are foreigners. As soon as the railways now projected to radiate from this center are completed, the city will be thrown open to all the bustle of cosmopolitanism, and much of the charm given it by the old Spanish characteristics will be swept away. But the nation will profit vastly by the change. The development of its agricultural and mineral resources should multiply its population of 2,500,000 by ten, and make of the country a Mecca for the capitalist from the North as well as the tourist in search of nature’s wonders and beauties.