Upon returning to Buenos Ayres, my blue-satin bedroom looked strangely artificial and effeminate, after sleeping on the ground under the stars for so long.
CHAPTER IX
Paraguay—Journey up the river—A primitive Capital—Dick the Australian—His polychrome garb—A Paraguayan Race Meeting—Beautiful figures of native women—The "Falcon" adventurers—a quaint railway—Patiño Cué—An extraordinary household—The capable Australian boy—Wild life in the swamps—"Bushed"—A literary evening—A railway record—The Tigre midnight swims—Canada—Maddening flies—A grand salmon river—The Canadian backwoods—Skunks and bears—Different views as to industrial progress.
As negotiations had commenced in the "'eighties" for a new Treaty, including an Extradition clause, between the British and Paraguayan Governments, several minor points connected with it required clearing up.
I accordingly went up the river to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, five days distant from Buenos Ayres by steamer. A short account of that primitive little inland Republic in the days before it was linked up with Argentina by railway may prove of interest, for it was unlike anything else, with its stately two hundred-year-old relics of the old Spanish civilisation mixed up with the roughest of modern makeshifts. The vast majority of the people were Guaranis, of pure Indian blood and speech. The little State was so isolated from the rest of the world that the nineteenth century had touched it very lightly. Since its independence Paraguay had suffered under the rule of a succession of Dictator Presidents, the worst of whom was Francisco Lopez, usually known as Tyrant Lopez. This ignorant savage aspired to be the Napoleon of South America, and in 1864 declared war simultaneously on Brazil, Uruguay, and the Argentine Republic. The war continued till 1870, when, fortunately, Lopez was killed, but the population of Paraguay had diminished from one and a quarter million to four hundred thousand people, nearly all the males being killed. In my time there were seven women to every male of the population.
The journey up the mighty Paraná is very uninteresting, for these huge rivers are too broad for the details on either shore to be seen clearly. After the steamer had turned up the Paraguay river on the verge of the tropics, it became less monotonous. The last Argentine town is Formosa, a little place of thatched shanties clustered under groves of palms. We arrived there at night, and remained three hours. I shall never forget the eerie, uncanny effect of seeing for the first time Paraguayan women, with a white petticoat, and a white sheet over their heads as their sole garments, flitting noiselessly along on bare feet under the palms in the brilliant moonlight. They looked like hooded silent ghosts, and reminded me irresistibly of the fourth act of "Robert le Diable," when the ghosts of the nuns arise out of their cloister graves at Bertram's command. They did not though as in the opera, break into a glittering ballet.
On board the steamer there was a young globe-trotting Australian. He was a nice, cheery lad, and, like most Australians, absolutely natural and unaffected. As he spoke no Spanish, he was rather at a loose end, and we agreed to foregather.
Asuncion was really a curiosity in the way of capitals. Lopez the Tyrant suffered from megalomania, as others rulers have done since his day. He began to construct many imposing buildings, but finished none of them. He had built a huge palace on the model of the Tuileries on a bluff over the river. It looked very imposing, but had no roof and no inside. He had also begun a great mausoleum for members of the Lopez family, but that again had only a façade, and was already crumbling to ruin. The rest of the town consisted principally of mud and bamboo shanties, thatched with palm. The streets were unpaved, and in the main street a strong spring gushed up. Everyone rode; there was but one wheeled vehicle in Asuncion, and that was only used for weddings and funerals. The inhabitants spoke of their one carriage as we should speak of something absolutely unique of its kind, say the statue of the Venus de Milo, or of some rare curiosity, such as a great auk's egg, or a twopenny blue Mauritius postage stamp, or a real live specimen of the dodo.