There we determined to go and rest our horses, and left the place, our guide Florencio’s wife impressing on him to be sure and bring her back a little missal from the capital, and he, just like an Arab or an Indian leaving home, unmoved, merely observing that the folk in Asuncion were “muy ladino” (very cunning), and it behoved a Christian to take care.
A day’s long march brought us near Santa Rosa, and our guide here fell into his first and only error on the road. Pursuing an interminable palm-wood, we came out upon a little plain, all broken here and there with stunted Yatais, then to our great disgust the road bifurcated, and our guide insisted on striking to the left, though I was almost certain it was wrong. After an hour of heavy ploughing through the sand, I suddenly saw two immense palm-trees about a league away upon the right, and luckily remembered that they stood one on each side of the old Jesuit church at Santa Rosa, and after an hour of scrambling through a stony wood arrived at the crossing of the little river just outside the place. Girls carrying water-jars upon their heads, and dressed in long white shifts, embroidered round the neck with coarse black lace, were going and coming in a long procession to the stream. A few old men and about thirty boys composed almost the entire male population of the town. Women entirely ruled the roost, and managed everything, and, as far as I can now recall, did it not much more inefficiently than men. The curious wooden church, dark, and with overhanging eaves, and all the images of saints still left from Jesuit times in choir and nave, with columns hewn from the trunks of massive trees, stood in the centre of the village, which was built after the fashion of a miner’s “row,” or of a St. Simonian phalanstery, each dwelling at least a hundred feet in length, and all partitioned off in the inside for ten or fifteen families. The plaza was overgrown with grass, and on it donkeys played, chasing each other up and down, and sometimes running up the wooden steps of the great church, and stumbling down again. Those who had horses led them down to bathe, cut “pindo” [69] for them, rode them at evening time, and passed their time in dressing and in combing them to get them into condition for the Sunday’s running at the ring, which sport introduced by the Jesuits has continued popular in all the villages of the Misiones up to the present time. The women flirted with the men, who by their rarity were at a premium, gave themselves airs, and went about surrounded by a perpetual and admiring band. The single little shop, which contained needles, gunpowder, and gin, was kept by an Italian, who, as he told me, liked the place, lent money, was a professing and quite unabashed polygamist, and I have no doubt long ere this time has made a fortune, and retired to live at Genoa in the self-same green velvet suit in which he left his home.
In this Arcadia we remained some days, and hired several girls to bathe the horses, which they performed most conscientiously, splashing and shouting in the stream for hours at a time, and bringing back the horses clean, and garnished with flowers in their manes. I rode one day to see a village two or three leagues away, where report said some of the Jesuit books had been preserved; got lost, and passed the night in a small clearing, where a fat and well-cared-for-looking handsome roan horse was tied. On seeing me he broke his picket-rope, ran furiously four or five times round me in circles, and then advancing put his nostrils close to the nostrils of my horse, and seemed to talk to him. His owner, an old Paraguayan, lame from a wound received in jumping from a canoe onto the deck of a Brazilian ironclad, told me his horse had been with him far into the interior, and for a year had never seen another horse. But, he said, “Tata Dios has given every animal its speech after its kind, and he is glad to see your horse, and is no doubt asking him the news.”
During the night, I cannot say exactly what the two horses talked about, but the old Paraguayan talked for hours of his adventures in the lately terminated war. It appeared that he, with seven companions, thinking to take a Brazilian ironclad anchored in the Paraguay, concealed themselves in a small canoe, behind some drift-wood, and floating plants called “camalotes,” drifted down with the stream, and coming to the ship jumped with a yell aboard. The Brazilians, taken by surprise, all ran below, and the poor Paraguayans thinking the ship was theirs, sat quietly down upon the deck to plan what they should do. Seeing them off their guard, some of the crew turned a gun upon them, and at the first fire killed six, and wounded my host, who sprang into the stream, and gained the bank, but most unluckily not on the Paraguayan side. As at that time the Chaco Indians, who had profited by the war to make invasions upon every side, killed every Christian, as my host said “sin perdon,” so he remained half starving for a night and day. On the third morning, wounded as he was, and seeing he must starve or else be killed if seen by Indians, he got a fallen tree, and with great difficulty, and marvellously escaping the fierce fish who come like wolves to the scent of blood, and unmolested by the alligators, he reached the other side. There he was found by some women, lying unconscious on the river-bank, was cured, and though scarred in a dozen places, and lame for life, escaped, as he informed me, by his devotion to San José, whom he described under the title of the “husband of the mother of our Lord.”
In the morning he rode a league with me upon the way, and as we parted his horse neighed shrilly, reared once or twice, and plunged, and when we separated I looked back and saw the devotee of St. Joseph sitting as firmly as a centaur, as his horse loped along the sandy palm-tree-bordered trail. During our stay at Santa Rosa, which was an offshoot from the more important mission of Santa Maria de Fé, although they had no priest the people gathered in the church, the Angelus was rung at evening for the “oracion,” and every one on hearing it took off his hat and murmured something that he thought apposite. Thus did ceremony, always much more important than mere faith, continue, and no doubt blessed the poor people to the full as much as if it had been duly sanctified by a tonsured priest, and consecrated by a rightly constituted offertory. We left the place with real regret, and to this day, when in our hurried life I dream of peace, my thoughts go back to the old Paraguayan Jesuit “capilla” lost in the woods of Morosimo, Curupay, and Yba-hai, and with its two tall feathery palm-trees rustling above the desecrated church; to the long strings of white-robed women carrying water-jars, and to the old-world life, perhaps by this time altered and swept away, or yet again not altered, and passing still in the same quiet fashion as when we were there.
Little by little we left the relatively open country of the Misiones behind, and passing Ibyra-pucú, San Roque, and Ximenes, came to the river Tebicuary. We passed it in canoes, the horses swimming, with their backs awash and heads emerging like water-monsters, whilst an impassive Indian paddled in the stern, and a young girl stood in the bows wielding a paddle like a water-sprite. The river passed, we got at once into the forests, and followed winding and narrow paths, worn by the footsteps of the mules of ages so deeply that our heavy Gaucho spurs almost trailed on the ground, whilst overhead lianas now and then quite formed a roof, and in the heavy air winged animals of every kind made life a burden. At last, leaving the little town of Quiquyó upon the right, we emerged on to a high and barren plain near Caapucú. On the evening of the second day from where we crossed the river, we came to Caballero Punta, just underneath a range of flattish hills, and riding to the door at a sharp gallop, pulled up short, and found ourselves greeted by the ex-manager of the Potrero San Antonio, my friend the “Forty-niner,” and for the first time for four months saw a familiar face. Gentle and kindly, though quick on the trigger, as befitted one who had crossed the plains in ’48 on foot, and with his whole possessions packed on a bullock, passing the Rocky Mountains alone, and through the hostile tribes at that time powerful and savage, John Oliver was one of those strange men who, having passed their lives in perils and privations, somehow draw from them that very kindliness which those living in what appear more favourable surroundings so often lack. Born somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales (these he remembered well), and as he thought “back somewhere in the twenties,” he had suffered all his life from the strange fever which impels some men to search for gold. Not on the Stock Exchange, or any of those places where it might reasonably be expected to be found, but in Australia, California, Mexico, in short wherever life was hard, death easy, and experience to be gathered, he sought with pick and shovel, rocker and pan and cradle, the “yellow iron,” as the Apaches used to call it, which sought and found after the fashion of his kind, enriches some one else. From California he had drifted to Peru, from thence to Chile, but finding silver-mining too laborious or too lucrative for his conversing, and hearing of a fertile diggings opened in the Republic of Uruguay, had migrated there, and arrived somehow in Paraguay to find that the enchantment of his life was done, and settled down to live. Tall, and with long grey hair hanging in Western fashion down his back, a careful horseman after the style of the trappers of the West, his pale blue eyes looked out upon the world as with an air of doubt; yet he had served in San Francisco as a “vigilante,” sojourned with Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, leaving as he confessed two or three wives among the saints, sat in Judge Lynch’s court a dozen times, most probably had killed a man or two; still, to my fancy, if the meek are to inherit any portion of the earth, his share should not be small.
He made us welcome, and his wife waited upon us, never presuming to sit down and eat, but standing ready with a napkin fringed with lace, to wipe our hands, pressing the food upon us, and behaving generally as if she found herself in the presence of some strange beings of an unfamiliar race. He said he had no children and was glad of it, for he explained that “Juaneeter was a good woman, but ‘uneddicated,’ and he had never taken thoroughly to half-caste pups, though he remembered some born of a Pi-Ute woman, way back somewhere about the fifties, who he supposed by now were warriors, and had taken many scalps.” His wife stood by, not understanding any English and but little Spanish, which he himself spoke badly, and their talk was held in a strange jargon mixed with Guarani, without a verb, without a particle, and yet sufficient for the two simple creatures whom a strange fate, or a discerning, ever-watchful Providence, had thus ordained to meet. No books were in the place, except a Bible, which he read little of late years, partly from failing sight, and partly, as he said, because he had detected what seemed to him “exaggerations,” chiefly in figures and as to the number of the unbelievers whom the Chosen People slew. Two days or more, for time was taken no account of in his house, we waited with him, talking late every night of Salt Lake, Brigham Young, the Mountain-meadows Massacre, Kit Carson, Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, and matters of that kind which interested him, and which, when all is said, are just as interesting to those attuned to them, as is polemical theology, theories of art, systems of jurisprudence, the origin of the Atoll Islands, or any of the wise futilities with which men stock their minds. We parted on the third or fourth, or perhaps the fifth or sixth day, knowing that we should never meet again, and taking off my silver spurs I gave them to him, and he presented me with a light summer poncho woven by his wife. Much did he thank me for my visit, and made me swear never to pass the district without stopping at his house. This I agreed to do, and if I pass again either by Caballero Punta or by Caapucú, I will keep faith; but he, I fear, will have deceived me, and in the churchyard of the “capilla,” under a palm-tree, with a rough cross above him, I shall find my simple friend.
Three or four days of jogging steadily, passing by Quindy, and through the short “estero” of Acaai, which we passed splashing for several hours up to the girths, brought us to Paraguari, which, with its saddle-shaped mountain overhanging it, stood out a mark for leagues upon the level plain. Seldom in any country have I seen a railway so fall into the landscape as did the line at the little terminus of this the only railway in all Paraguay. The war had left the country almost in ruins, business was at a standstill, food was scarce, and but for a bale or two of tobacco, and a hide-sack or two of yerba, the train went empty to and fro. But as the people always wanted to go to the capital in search of work, six or eight empty trucks were always sent with every train. On them the people (mostly women) swarmed, seated like flies, upon the top and sides, dangling their legs outside like people sitting on a wharf, talking incessantly, all dressed in white, and every one, down to the smallest children, smoking large cigars. Six hours the passage took, if all went well, the distance being under fifty miles. If aught went wrong, it took a day or more, and at the bridges the trucks were all unhooked and taken over separately, so rotten was the state of the whole line, and in addition every here and there bridges had been blown away during the war, and roughly rendered serviceable by shoring up with wood. To meet a train labouring and puffing through the woods, the people clustering like bees upon the trucks, the engineer seated in shirt-sleeves, whilst some women stoked the fire, was much the same as it is to meet a caravan meandering across the sands. If you desired to talk with any one the train incontinently stopped, the passengers got out, relit their cigarettes, the women begged, the time of day was passed, and curiosity thus satisfied you passed on upon the road, and the “Maquina-guazu,” [78] as it was called, pursued contentedly the jolting and uneven tenor of its way. We naturally despised it, though the conductor, scenting business, offered to take us and our horses at almost any price we chose.
By the Laguna Ypocarai we took our way; skirting along its eastern shores, then desolate, and the whole district almost depopulated, we passed by palm-groves and deserted mandioca patches, reed cottages in ruins, watched the flamingoes fishing in the lake, the alligators lying motionless, and saw an Indian all alone in a dug-out canoe, casting his line as placidly as he had lived before the coming of the Spaniards to the land. A red-blue haze hung on the waters of the lake, reflected from the bright red earth, peeping between the trees, and on the islands drifts of mist gave an effect as if the palms were parachutes dropped from balloons, or perhaps despatched from earth to find out whether in the skies there could be anything more lovely than this quiet inland sea. Close to the top end of the lake stands Aregua, once under the Mercenary friars of Asuncion, who, as Azara says, having made the people of the place work for them for near two hundred years, began to think they were indeed their slaves, till an official sent from Spain in 1783 gave them their liberty, and the Mercenaries (as he says) at once retreated in disgust. Here we fell in with a compatriot, who at our time of meeting him was drunk. He told us that he passed his time after the fashion of the patriarchs in the Old Testament, and on arriving at his house it seemed he was provided with several wives, but of the flocks and herds, and other trade-marks of his supposed estate, we saw no trace. Still he was hospitable, setting the women to cut down pindo for the horses, take them to water, bathe them, and finally to cook some dinner for ourselves. His chief complaint was that his wives were Catholics, and now and then trudged off to mass, and left him without any one to cook his food. I doubted personally if a change of creed would better things, but held my peace, seeing the man set store by the faith which he had learnt in youth and still said he practised, but, as far as I could see, only by cursing the religion of the people of the place. We left his house without regret, though he was hospitable and half drunk for nearly all the time that we were there, and started on our last day’s march considerably refreshed by meeting one who in a foreign land, far from home ties and moral influences, yet still pursued the simple practice of the faith which he had learned at home.
Luque, upon its little hill, the Campo Grande, like a dry lake, surrounded by thick woods on every side, and then the Recoleta, we passed, and entering the red sandy road made at the conquest to move troops upon, we saw the churches of Asuncion only a league away. And yet we lingered, walking our horses slowly in the deep red sand, passing the strings of countrywomen with baskets on their heads, driving their donkeys packed with sugar-cane, and smoking as they went; we lingered, feeling that the trip was done; not that we minded that our fortunes were not made, but vaguely felt that for the last five months we had lived a time which in our lives we should not see again, and fearing rather than looking forward to all the approaching change. The horses too were fat, in good condition, had become old friends, knew us so well we never tied them, but all night in camp left them to feed, being certain that they would not stray; and thus to leave them at the end of a long trip seemed as unreasonable as to part from an old friend simply because death calls.