When Francisco Solano Lopez, late president of Paraguay, fell on the field on March 1, 1870, at the head of a few hundred followers, the survivors of that courageous army of sixty thousand men with which in 1865 he had begun his five years' struggle, he had left behind him a devastated country, a decimated people and an impoverished population. It is to this land, almost remote enough from the pathway of our modern civilization to partake of the mystery of an unknown interior; where Nature has lavished her beauties with open hand; where a brilliant vegetation alternates with noble forests, solitudes that have rarely echoed the footfall of civilized man, and vast plains dotted with palms—a country of mountainous reaches in which the jaguar roams at will, of great lagoons, the home of a primitive race dwelling for the most part in villages,—to this land it is that we shall follow M. Forgues on his journey of more than a thousand miles, and see with his eyes its life and scenery.
From Buenos Ayres the traveler, issuing from the Rio de la Plata, ascends the Parana by steamer to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay; and on the morning after the conversation with his principal M. Forgues embarked on the Republica, a low-pressure steamboat furnished with a walking-beam, and similar in its architecture and equipments to the passenger steamers in use on the waters of the Northern and Middle States of the Union.
After steaming two hours the Republica reaches the vast delta of the Parana, skirting the Tigre Islands, a lovely group formed by the numerous winding mouths of the river. The month is August, and a charming effect is produced by the forests of palms, orange trees and wild peach trees, the latter rosy with blossoms, which cover the islands. The wild peach of the clingstone variety is almost the only fruit of the province of Buenos Ayres, and when the season for gathering it comes, a multitude of boats from the city may be seen moored in the high grasses along the shores of the Tigre Islands, while the barqueros collect the peaches, which are free to whoever will pluck them, fill their boats and return to the capital to sell them.
DELTA OF THE PARANA.
TIGER ISLAND, MOUTH OF THE PARANA.
The Republica ascends the river through the branch called the Parana de las Palmas, up which Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1525, when in a schooner of a hundred tons burden he penetrated to the heart of South America. It passes, to the left, a hamlet, Campana, the prominent feature of which is a handsome white building resembling a palazzo of Italy, and which, built on an elevation, dominates the other houses; Zarate, where are situated a number of saladeros, or salting-places for the salting of the hides of the province; and finally the mouth of the Baradero River, a small stream which leads to a village of the same name, the home of a prosperous colony of Swiss settlers.
Higher up, on the right shore, lies the drowsy old town of San Pedro, founded in the middle of the seventeenth century, and which is chiefly noticeable as having been at a standstill since that period, although within the past three or four years it has begun to show signs of development, one of which is a project to cut a ship-canal across a narrow reach of sand which separates the lagoon on which the town is built from the river, so as to give passage to Transatlantic vessels.