"Lopez, the cause of all this sacrifice and misery, has gone to his final account, his soul stained with the blood of seven hundred thousand of his people, the victims of his ambition and cruelty."
Towns which flourished before the outbreak of hostilities were sacked by the emboldened Indians from the Chaco and wiped off the map, San Salvador (Holy Saviour) being a striking example. I visited the ruins of this town, where formerly dwelt about 8,000 souls. Now the streets are grass-grown, and the forest is creeping around church and barracks, threatening to bury them. I rode my horse through the high portal of the cannon-battered church, while the stillness of the scene reminded me of a city of the dead. City of the dead, truly—men and women and children who have passed on! My horse nibbled the grass growing among the broken tiles of the floor, while I, in imagination, listened to the "passing bell" in the tower above me, and under whose shade I sought repose. A traveller, describing this site, says: "It is a place of which the atmosphere is one great mass of malaria, and the heat suffocating—where the surrounding country is an uninterrupted marsh—where venomous insects and reptiles abound." San Salvador as a busy mart has ceased to exist, and the nearest approach to "the human form divine," found occasionally within its walls, is the howling monkey. Such are the consequences of war! During the last ten years Paraguay has been slowly recovering from the terrible effects of this war, but a republic composed mostly of women is severely handicapped. [Footnote: Would the suffragettes disagree with the writer here?]
Paraguay is a poor land; the value of its paper currency, like that of most South American countries, fluctuates almost daily. In 1899 the dollar was worth only twelve cents, and for five gold dollars I have received in exchange as many as forty-six of theirs. Yet there is a great future for Paraguay. It has been called the Paradise of South America, and although the writer has visited sixteen different countries of the world, he thinks of Paraguay with tender longing. It is perhaps the richest land on earth naturally, and produces so much máte that one year's production would make a cup of tea for every man, woman and child on the globe. Oranges and bananas can be bought at six cents a hundred, two millions of cattle fatten on its rich pasture lands; but, of all the countries the writer has travelled in, Mexico comes first as a land of beggars, and poor Paraguay comes second.
CHAPTER VIII.
ASUNCION.
Being in England in 1900 for change and rest, I was introduced to an eccentric old gentleman of miserly tendencies, but possessed of $5,000,000. Hearing of my wanderings in South America, he told me that he owned a tract of land thirteen miles square in Paraguay, and would like to know something of its value. The outcome of this visit was that I was commissioned by him to go to that country and explore his possession, so I proceeded once more to my old field of labor. Arriving at the mouth of the River Plate, after five weeks of sea-tossing, I was, with the rest, looking forward to our arrival in Buenos Ayres, when a steam tug came puffing alongside, and we were informed that as the ship had touched at the infected port of Bahia, all passengers must be fumigated, and that we must submit to three weeks' quarantine on Flores Island. The Port doctor has sent a whole ship-load to the island for so trifling a cause as that a sailor had a broken collar-bone, so we knew that for us there was nothing but submission. Disembarking from the ocean steamer on to lighters, we gave a last look at the coveted land, "so near and yet so far," and were towed away to three small islands in the centre of the river, about fifty miles distant. One island is set apart as a burial ground, one is for infected patients, and the other, at which we were landed, is for suspects. On that desert island, with no other land in sight than the sister isles, we were given time to chew the cud of bitter reflection. They gave us little else to chew! The food served up to us consisted of strings of dried beef, called charqui, which was brought from the mainland in dirty canvas bags. This was often supplemented by boiled seaweed. Being accustomed to self-preservation, I was able to augment this diet with fish caught while sitting on the barren rocks of our sea-girt prison. Prison it certainly was, for sentries, armed with Remingtons, herded us like sheep.
The three weeks' detention came to an end, as everything earthly does, and then an open barge, towed by a steam-launch, conveyed us to Montevideo. Quite a fresh breeze was blowing, and during our eleven hours' journey we were repeatedly drenched with spray. Delicate ladies lay down in the bottom of the boat in the throes of seasickness, and were literally washed to and fro, and saturated, as they said, to the heart. We landed, however, and I took passage up to Asuncion in the "Olympo."
The "Olympo" is a palatial steamer, fitted up like the best Atlantic liners with every luxury and convenience. On the ship there were perhaps one hundred cabin passengers, and in the steerage were six hundred Russian emigrants bound for Corrientes, three days' sail north. Two of these women were very sick, so the chief steward, to whom I was known, hurried me to them, and I was thankful to be able to help the poor females.
The majestic river is broad, and in some parts so thickly studded with islands that it appears more like a chain of lakes than a flowing stream. As we proceeded up the river the weather grew warmer, and the native clothing of sheepskins the Russians had used was cast aside. The men, rough and bearded, soon had only their under garments on, and the women wore simply that three-quarter length loose garment well known to all females, yet they sweltered in the unaccustomed heat.
At midnight of the third day we landed them at Corrientes, and the women, in their white (?) garments, with their babies and ikons, and bundles—and husbands—trod on terra firma for the first time in seven weeks.