ERRATUM.
Page 411, line 13, and note, for Sutâo, read Sertâo.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Note. Of the objects in the lower compartment of this plate, the Pine is mentioned at p. 81; the Aloe at p. 130; the Cara is described at p. 97, and the Mandioca at p. 101.
[2] Here I found mint, caraway, balm, wormwood, and many other aromatic herbs, growing wild in the greatest luxuriance. The stratum of vegetable earth was at least two yards thick.
[3] At a small town called Minas, ten leagues from Maldonado, I was informed that there was a lead mine in limestone. A piece of that substance was sent to me; it was flesh-colored, granular, and close in texture.
[4] The people of Paraguay are a more inactive and listless race than any I ever met with. They seem to be conscious of no wants beyond those of mere animal existence, and these they choose to supply at the smallest possible expense of bodily exertion. Their supreme enjoyment is to remain at home in a state of quietism or rather torpor, leaving to the negroes the little agricultural toil that is required. They are reserved, slothful, and patient, yet, with all their apathy, they are friendly and somewhat courteous to strangers, provided they be not required to go much into society or to bear an active part in conversation. Commerce is almost unknown among them, and there is very little specie in circulation. To a stranger, who has mingled in the busy scenes of life, they seem absolutely weary of existence as of a burthen. Blest with a fine climate and a land flowing with milk and honey, they are unable to appreciate and turn to advantage the bounties which divine Providence has lavished upon them; and from these and other causes the population is very scanty compared with the extent of the country. Such is the native land of the Peons of Monte Video and Buenos Ayres. The state of society in that remote region is deteriorated by the admission of refugees from Europe, who here find shelter from justice, and propagate, in safe obscurity and with perfect impunity, their vices among a people too much predisposed by indolence for such contaminations, and unfitted by the same failing for receiving any tincture of civilization, which a more lively and apprehensive race of men might imbibe from foreign settlers, however dissolute in morals. The Peons, who migrate southward to seek employment, soon acquire a taste for ardent spirits, and thus heighten, sometimes to an uncontrolable degree, the ferocity engendered by the habit of torturing and killing cattle. They have no strong sense of danger to deter them from crime, but, on the contrary, are aware, that on any breach of the law they can elude its penalties by galloping three or four hundred miles into the interior, where their crimes will be unknown, and where they can bid defiance to pursuit or detection.
In some parts of Paraguay timber grows in abundance; it is cut, and floated down the river to Buenos Ayres, not in rafts but in single trees.