SALT.
From honey let us proceed to salt, which is in great request both amongst the savages and almost all beasts, though they are scarce ever able to procure it: for notwithstanding that some parts of Paraguay abound in salt either natural, or artificial, yet none of either kind can be obtained throughout immense tracts of land, unless it be brought at a great expense from other places. All the Guarany towns are destitute of chalk, and salt, both of which are forced to be conveyed in ships, or waggons, from the remote colonies of the Spaniards, are often purchased at an exorbitant price, often not to be procured. In the Cordoban territories, and elsewhere, the lakes which have been exhausted by a long drought do indeed afford coagulated salt; but during time of drought it is very difficult to reach those lakes, as the plains, through which you must pass, deny water both to the carriers, and to the oxen, by whom the salt is conveyed in waggons to the cities. In rainy seasons, when those lakes are full, no salt is coagulated, which being frequently the case, salt is in consequence often scarce and dear. In many places under the jurisdiction of the cities Asumpcion, and St. Iago, nitre collected in the plains, or salt water boiled in small pans, is converted into salt. At the town of Concepcion the salt boiled in the little town of Sta. Lucia was sometimes too bitter to be eaten: that salt made in the Indian town Lambare, and in Cochinoco where it borders on Peru, is much esteemed, because it is hard as a stone, very white, and fit for medicinal purposes. The people of Buenos-Ayres sometimes convey salt in ships by the South Sea, sometimes in waggons by land from the lakes, where there is an immense accumulation of native salt, and of snow. These lakes, as they are situated towards the straits of Magellan, many days' journey from the city, can never be reached without much expense, and seldom without some danger. Great troops of Spaniards were often cruelly murdered on the way by the southern savages, who scarce left one alive to announce the massacre to the city. On considering these difficulties you will not much wonder that salt is generally scarce in Paraguay, and often not to be procured. The Guaranies eat their meat and all their other provisions without a grain of salt; but a single spoonful was given on Sundays by the free bounty of the priest, to every father of a family, to last the whole week: yet even this little portion was expensive to the towns, of which some contained a thousand inhabitants, others seven or eight hundred. For as an arroba (a Spanish weight of twenty-five pounds) of salt often cost four crowns, or eight Austrian florens, a pound was worth about twenty of our cruitzers. The savages who live in hidden wilds generally eat their food without salt, as there are no salt-pits there; and this is, in my opinion, the reason that so many of them are afflicted with cutaneous disorders. Others burn a shrub which the Spaniards call la vidriera, the ashes of which they used instead of salt, to season their meat with and to prepare medicines.