Amongst pernicious insects no inconsiderable place should be assigned to the garrapata, which is about the size of a lentil, and in form resembles a land tortoise, except that it is more spherical, wearing on its back a mail like that animal. It is of a dark tawny colour, partly variegated, has a flat body, eight little feet, and a prominent head or proboscis, which it inserts into the skin, fastening, at the same time, the hooks of its feet into it, and whilst it sucks blood from every part of the body, creates an itching and inflammation, followed by swelling and matter, which often lasts four days or more, while the ulcer will hardly heal within a fortnight. When the insect has fixed its head deep into the flesh, it is very difficult to pull it out entire; and if it remain sticking in the flesh you will be in a bad condition; for the venom will not be got rid of till matter has flowed for a long time from that itching ulcer. The plains and woods are filled with this insect, so hostile both to man and beast. Where you see rotten leaves, or reeds, there you will find swarms of this little animal. When we travelled in the woods to discover the hordes of the savages, we disregarded tigers, serpents, and caruguàs, in comparison with these noxious insects: it was our constant complaint that we had not eyes enough to avoid them, nor hands sufficient to drive them away. The Spaniards employed in seeking the herb of Paraguay, when they daily return to their hut, lay down the bundles of boughs with which they are laden, and hasten to the next lake or river to bathe, where, having stripped themselves naked, they examine one another's bodies, and pluck out the garrapatas sticking in their flesh; unless this precaution were adopted, they would be killed in a few days with the superabundance of matter, and of ulcers. Goats, does, monkeys, tamanduas, dogs, and every wild animal that inhabits the plains or woods, all swarm with these insects. The lesser garrapatas are much more mischievous than the larger ones.
There are many species and incredible numbers both of creeping and flying ants in Paraguay. The worst and most stinging kind are the least in size, and of a red colour. They carry off sugar, honey, and every thing sweet, so that you have need of much ingenuity to defend provision of this kind from them. From eating sweet things they increase their bile, and acquire a subtle venom. As soon as they get upon the skin, they create a pustule, which lasts many days, and causes severe pain. To this very small species of ants, I subjoin the largest I had an opportunity of seeing, which are formidable on account of their undermining buildings. They make burrows with infinite labour, under churches and houses, digging deep sinuous meanders in the earth, and exerting their utmost strength to throw out the loosened sods. Having got wings they fly off in all directions, on the approach of heavy showers, with the same ill fortune as Icarus, but with this difference, that he perished in the sea, they on the ground, to which they fall when their wings are wetted by the rain. Moreover those holes in the earth, by which the ants used first to pass, admit the rain water, which inundates the caves of the ants, and undermines the building, causing the wooden beams that uphold the wall and roof, first to give way, and unless immediately supported, to fall along with the house. This is a common spectacle in Paraguay. The whole hill on which St. Joachim was built was covered with ant-hills, and full of subterranean cavities. Our house, and the one adjoining, suffered much from these insects. The chief altar was rendered useless for many days: for, it being rainy weather, the lurking ants flew in swarms from their caves, and not being able to support a long flight, fell upon the priest, the altar, and sacred utensils, defiling every thing. Ten outlets by which they broke from their caves being closed up, next day they opened twenty more. One evening there arose a violent storm, with horrible thunder and lightning. A heavy shower seemed to have converted our court-yard into a sloping lake, the wall itself withstanding the course of the waters. My companion betook himself to my apartment. Mean time an Indian, the churchwarden, arrives, announcing that the floor of the church was beginning to gape, and the wall to open and be inclined. I snatched up a lamp and ran to the place, but had hardly quitted the threshold of my door, when I perceived a gap in the earth; and before I was aware of any danger, sunk up to the shoulders in a pit, in the very place of the chief altar, but scrambled out of it by the help of the churchwarden, as quickly as I had got in, for under that altar the ants seemed to have made their metropolis: the cavern was many feet long and wide, so that it had the appearance of a wine-cellar. As often as earth was thrown in by the Indians to fill it, so often was it dug out by the ants. In this universal trepidation, all the Indians were called to prop the gaping wall of the church with rafters and planks. The greatness of the danger rendered it impossible to remain quiet, whatever arts were adopted. That same night I removed from my apartment, which was joined to the church with the same beams and rafters in such a manner, that if one fell, the other could not avoid being involved in the ruin. I have read, that in Guayana, rocks and mountains have been undermined, walls thrown down, and people turned out of their habitations by ants, which I can easily believe, having myself witnessed similar, or even more incredible events.
In Paraguay I was made thoroughly acquainted with the powers of ants. They are weak, and, compared with many other insects, diminutive, but numbers, labour, and unanimity render them formidable, and endow them with strength superior to their size. In the plains, especially those near the Paraguay, I have seen ant-hills, like stone pyramids, three or more ells high, with a broad base, and composed of a solid material as hard as stone: these are the store-houses and castles of the ants, from the summits of which they discern sudden inundations, and safely behold the floating carcasses of less industrious animals. Elsewhere I have seen an immense plain, so covered with low ant-hills that the horse could not move a step without stumbling. In the plains you may often observe a broad path, through which you would swear the legions of Xerxes might have passed. The Spaniards hollow out these pyramidal heaps, and use them for ovens, or reduce them to a powder, which, mixed with water, serves admirably to floor houses. Pavements of this kind resemble stone in appearance and hardness, and are said to prevent the breeding of fleas, and other insects. But hear what mischief ants commit within doors. They flock in a long and almost endless company to the sacks of wheat, and in a journey uninterrupted by day or night, (if there be a moon,) carry off, by degrees, some bushels. They will entirely strip fruit trees of their leaves, unless you twist a cow's tail round the trunk to hinder their ascent, and eat away the crops so completely that you would think they had been cut with a sickle. Moreover, ants of various kinds are extremely destructive both to vineyards and gardens, devouring vegetables and pulse to the very root. Set a young plant in the ground and the next day you will seek it in vain. They refrain from pepper, on account of its pungency. If you leave meat, either dressed or raw, in your apartment, you will soon find it blackened with swarms of ants. They devour all sorts of trash, the very carcasses of beetles, toads, and snakes. On returning to my apartment, I found a little bird which I kept in a cage devoured by ants. Nor do they abstain from the bodies of sleeping persons. In the dead of the night an army of ants will issue from the wall or pavement, get upon the bed, and unless you instantly make your escape, sting you all over. This happened so frequently in the Guarany colonies, that we were obliged to burn a candle at night: for lighted sheets of paper thrown upon the swarm, are the only means of driving them away. The Portugueze have an old saying, that the ants are queens of Brazil. Certainly we have found them the sovereigns of Paraguay. There may be said to be more trouble in conquering these insects, than all the savages put together; for every contrivance hitherto devised serves only to put them to flight, not banish them effectually. Should you hire workmen at a great expense to throw fire upon the caves of the ants, and destroy their eggs, fresh ones will be found next day in other parts of the garden. If swine's dung, chalk, urine, or wild marjoram be put into their cave, they will depart, but only to dig themselves fresh habitations in the neighbourhood. Sulphur is superior to other remedies, and the way in which it is to be used we learnt from the Portugueze. You seek out the principal lurking-place of the ants, lay a chafing dish of lighted coals in the largest opening by which they enter the earth, blow them into a flame, and add sulphur to make a smoke. You carefully stop up the other openings, through which you perceive the smoke issue, with mud, that the sulphureous smoke may not be permitted to escape. You then light all the sulphur you have at hand, by means of bellows, and the smoke filling the whole cave will suffocate all the ants that lurk there. This has been successfully practised by many persons in Paraguay. But if sulphur be wanting in these solitudes, or patience to use it, then grapes and the productions of the trees and plains must fail also. The ants will devastate every thing, and elude all the arts of the cultivator, unless destroyed by the smoke of sulphur.
It were to wrong the Paraguayrian ants, if, after having so minutely described all the mischief they commit, I were to be silent on their benefits. Some of the larger sort have a little ball in the hind part of their bodies full of very white fat, which, when collected, and melted like butter, is eaten with pleasure both by Indians and Spaniards. Other very small ants, in those shrubs which bear the quabyra-miri, deposit a wax naturally white, and consisting of small particles, which is used to make candles for the use of the altar, and when lighted exhales an odour sweeter than frankincense, but quickly melts, and though double the price of any other wax is sooner consumed. There are also ants that convey to their caves particles of fragrant rosin, which serve for frankincense. In certain parts of Asia small particles of gold are collected by the ants, from mountains which produce that metal. The inhabitants, in order to get possession of the gold, attack their caves, the repositories of this treasure, especially in the heat of the sun; but the ants stoutly defending their riches, they often return empty-handed, and sometimes are obliged to make a precipitate retreat. I have long wished that those Europeans who have to feed larks and nightingales would come to this country, and load their ships with ant-eggs: they would certainly return with great profit, and at the same time do a signal service to America.
There are also incredible numbers of very large toads, especially in deserted, or but lately inhabited places. In the town of Concepcion, removed to the banks of the Salado, about evening all the streets were so covered with toads, that they were rendered as slippery as ice. They filled the chapel, our house, every place. They not unfrequently fell from the roof on to the floor, bed, or table. They could creep along the wall, and ascend and descend like flies. When the kitchen fire is kindled on the ground toads sometimes creep into the pans and kettles. Once, as I was pouring boiling water from a brass vessel into a gourd, to mix with the herb of Paraguay, I perceived that the water was bad, and of a black colour; and, on inspecting the vessel, found a toad boiled with the water, which had given it that dark hue, and was so swelled that it entirely choked up the mouth of the vessel. In the colony of the Rosary, which I founded on the banks of a lake, there was the same abundance of toads. Whilst I performed divine service the chapel swarmed with them, and though many were slain every hour of the day, for two years, their numbers seemed rather to increase than diminish. A species of toad, called by the Spaniards escuerzos, and much larger than European ones, are not only troublesome, but, when provoked, dangerous: for by way of revenge they squirt their urine at those by whom they are offended, and if the least drop of this liquid enter the eye it will immediately produce blindness. It is moreover indubitable that not only their urine, but their saliva, blood, and gall possess a poisonous property. We learn from creditable authors that the Brazilian savages roast toads, and then reduce them to a powder, which they infuse into the meat or drink of their enemies to cause their death; for it occasions a dryness and inflammation of the throat, together with vomiting, hiccups, sudden fainting, delirium, severe pains in the joints and stomach, and sometimes dysentery. Persons afflicted in this manner, if the force of the poison admit of medicine, should immediately have recourse to purging and vomiting, with repeated walking, or the bath, to produce perspiration. For the same purpose the sick man is sometimes put into a tolerably hot oven, or placed inside a beast that has been newly slain. Various herbs and roots are also made use of to dissipate the poison, the chief of which is one called nhambi. If the juice of this herb be thrown on the back or head of the toad, after those parts have been rubbed a little on the ground, it will instantly kill the pestilent animal. This also is effected by means of tobacco. American toads are of a cinereous or light red colour, sometimes variegated, covered with warts, and bristly like a hedgehog. I have read that certain savages feed on a species of toad, but never witnessed it myself. European physicians say that toads, properly prepared by druggists, are useful as diuretics in dropsy, plague, and fevers, and they advise a bruised toad to be applied to the back, about the kidneys, by way of a cataplasm, in cases of dropsy. The oil of toads is useful for curing warts, according to Woytz. River crabs, hartshorn, the flowers of the vine, and other things, are recommended by the same authors as remedies for the poison of toads. There is also a great variety and abundance of frogs, which croak away in the mud, equally annoying to the inhabitants and to travellers. In other respects they are neither useful nor prejudicial, though in Europe they are employed both as medicine and food; but there is nothing to which you would not sooner persuade an American than to eat frogs, or make any other use of them.
Leeches are always to be found in pools supplied solely with rain water; but I never saw any so large as ours. In the town of the Rosary, after a heavy shower the streets seemed full of leeches, and the Abipones, who always go barefoot, complained that they clung to their feet wherever they went; but in the space of an hour these troublesome guests all disappeared, having betaken themselves, most probably, to the adjoining lake. Of bats I have spoken in a former part of my history.
Paraguay may be called the Paradise of mice and dormice. From the number of oxen daily slain, such abundance of offal is every where to be had, that dormice, which in our country can hardly find anything to eat, here feast day and night, which, of course, must wonderfully increase their numbers. At Buenos-Ayres, to my astonishment, I beheld dormice, larger than our squirrels, issue by crowds out of the old walls into the court, about sun-set. At Cordoba in Tucuman, an ox, stripped of its hide and entrails, but entire in every other respect, was suspended from a beam in the clerk's office. The lay-brothers, on entering the office, beheld the ox entirely covered with dormice, and drew near to see how much they had devoured in the night. On handling the flesh, they found it completely hollowed, and three hundred dormice lurking within. Upon hearing this, I conceived such a disgust of meat gnawed by these animals, that for two days I carefully avoided the eating-room, and contented myself with bread alone. The fruit of my abstinence was, that the meat was thenceforward kept cleaner, and in a more appropriate place. An innumerable host of dormice not unfrequently came thronging from the southern parts of Buenos-Ayres, filled the fields, garners, and houses of Tucuman, and laid waste every thing. They swam across rivers without fear. They left the immense tract of plain country through which they took their way beaten and pressed as if by waggons. The Paraguayrian countrymen, frightened by their multitudes, chose rather to quit their huts, which were exposed on all sides, than take up arms against the foe. Nor should you imagine the Paraguayrian dormice are fond of nothing but beef; they delight in human flesh, for they frequently bite you when you are sound asleep, and that with no sluggish tooth. Moreover, there is no kind of trash which they will not steal and hide in their store-houses, to serve either for food or bed. They tear the silken markers out of the prayer-books to make their nests. They run off with aprons, bandages, stockings, linen and woollen articles of every kind, carrying them to their holes for bed-clothes and cushions. These troublesome pilferers not only commit daily thefts upon the inhabitants, but frequently set fire to the houses themselves. For they carry away burning tallow candles in their mouths, and in hastening to their caves, often set fire to the cottages of the Spanish peasants. They occasioned us much trouble in the colony of the Rosary. A light was forced to be kept up at night there on several accounts. When tallow was not to be had, I used oil expressed from cows' feet for this purpose. Almost every night the dormice snatched up the iron plate with the burning wick, in order to suck the oil when it cooled. To restrain their audacity, it was found necessary to bind the plate of the match to the lamp with a little brass chain, a weight of iron being added.
A most frequent, and almost annual calamity to Paraguay are the locusts, which are horrible to the sight and of immense size, being longer than a man's middle finger. When an infinite swarm of them approaches, a terrible darkness breaks from the farthest horizon, and you would swear that a black cloud pregnant with rain, wind, and lightning was drawing nigh. My Abipones, on such occasions, often snatched up arms, and placed themselves in battle array; for the locusts, beheld from a distance, looked like a cloud of dust stirred up by a troop of hostile savages. Wherever the locusts settle, they deprive the fields of their productions, the trees of their leaves, the plain of grass, and men and cattle of food; while the numerous offspring which they leave behind continue the devastation to another year, and create further misery. The army of locusts is prevented from flying to the ground, and feeding in the fields sowed with various kinds of grain, by the sound of drums, the shouting of voices, the firing of guns, and continual rustling of boughs in the air; if these methods fail of driving them away, all the men in the Guarany towns are employed in collecting and killing them. In one day we have often with pleasure beheld many bushels full of these insects, and have condemned them either to the fire or the water. The Abipones had rather eat locusts than drown or burn them; on which account, as they are flying, they knock them down to the ground with long sticks, roast them at the fire on the same, or on spits, and devour them with as much avidity as we do partridges or beccaficos, rejecting however the males. It has been my intention to treat here of all the noxious insects that occasion death, disease, or damage: but what a field should I have, were I also to describe the harmless ones both of the land and water. Good Heavens! what an abundance is there of flies, worms, bees, hornets, drones, and grasshoppers! What an immense diversity of glow-worms, shining here and there by night like stars! Some, which are about the size of a grass-worm, by moving their wings, others from their eyes alone, emit a light strong enough for one to read by. Some glow only behind, others in every part of their bodies. Wood, reeds, leaves, and roots of plants, when putrefied, scatter at night, particularly in moist places, a green, red, yellow, or blue radiance, resembling diamonds, emeralds, chrysolites, rubies, &c. This was a nightly spectacle to us in the woods between the rivers Acaray̆ and Monday̆. I carried some rubbish which I had observed to glitter in this manner, to my town, where it shone as long as it continued moist; when wetted, it regained its former splendour, which, however, ceased at last, in spite of fresh supplies of water. I never perceived phosphoric lights of this nature in any other part of Paraguay. Innumerable butterflies, of a beautiful variety of colours, adorn the sides of the rivers and woods, as flowers the meadows; but of these and other insects, many and accurate accounts have been already written, which are now in the hands of all. We must return to the Abipones, more destructive to Paraguay than any insect, who, though looked upon by the Spaniards in the light of robbers and murderers, do nevertheless profess themselves warriors and heroes; whether justly or no, I leave to the arbitration of my readers, to whom I shall proceed to describe their military discipline and method of warfare.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
OF THE MILITARY DISPOSITIONS OF THE ABIPONES.
I am at a loss in what colours to paint the military dispositions of the Abipones; no word corresponds to the idea which long acquaintance with these savages has impressed on my mind. That the Abipones are warlike, prompt, and active, none even of the Spaniards ever doubted, but I should hesitate to call them valiant and intrepid. Cicero himself distinguishes an active from a brave man, in these words, 2. Philipp. Ut cognosceret te, si minus fortem, attamen strenuum. It is my purpose to write the history not the panegyric of the Abipones: I must therefore be sincere, and declare my real opinion, whatever it be.