Seven eventful Years in Paraguay. A narrative of personal experience amongst the Paraguayans. With a map

Front matter

SEVEN EVENTFUL YEARS IN PARAGUAY. SEVEN EVENTFUL YEABS IN PARAGUAY. gk Harraiik of PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AMONGST THE PARAGUAYANS. BY GEORGE FREDERICK MASTERMAN, LATE ASSISTANT-SURGEON, PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA, CHIEF MILITARY APOTHECARY, GENERAL HOSPITAL, ASU NCION, 'PARAGUAY. FORMERLY OF MEDICAL STAFF OF HER MAJESTY'S S2.-ID REGIMENT. WITH A MAP. LONDON : SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. MDCCCLXIX. [The Bight of Translation Reserved.] TO JOHN BALMER, ESQ., IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF MANY YEARS OF UNVARYING KINDNESS, THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PAGE CONTENTS.

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Introduction

. In October, 1861, I entered the service of the Re public of Paraguay as Chief Military Apothecary, and reached Asuncion on the Christmas-Eve of that year. Don Carlos Antonio Lopez was then President, and under his administration there seemed little fear that the peace, which Paraguay had enjoyed for some years, would be interrupted. I was assured by his English agents, moreover, that the country was a civilized and advancing one. Outwardly, perhaps, such was the case ; the Paraguayans were polite in their manners, ready in conversation, and the better classes usually well dressed ; but it needs more than these to constitute a civilized people. The Paraguayans were advanced, certainly, when compared with the Indians of the Chaco, their neighbours, the Payaguas and the Guyciirus ; and it would be unfair to judge them or their acts by European standards, by rules only applicable to communities long in the enjoyment of absolute civilization. I say thus much to show that I did not wilfully run into danger, and, on the

INTRODUCTION.

. XII other hand, to deprecate too stern a judgment of a people I esteem and pity. It must be remembered that two classes, related, but distinct, formed the population of Paraguay: the descendants of the Spanish settlers, more or less tainted by admixture with the Guaranis and other Indian tribes, the aboriginal inhabitants of Paraguay, and the descendants of these Indians themselves. Of the latter, necessarily more numerous, the bulk of the people consisted, and they were raised but a step above the savage of the pampas. The former and superior class was almost exter minated during the first year of the war, and hence one reason of the blind obedience of the rest to the orders of Lopez, an obedience almost as unreason ing as that of an ox to his master, but which has been mistaken in Europe for devotion and patriotism.

For, owing to the system adopted by the Jesuits, who first gathered them into communities, and gave them just sufficient knowledge to enable them to feel the immeasurable superiority of their instructors, a system which threw the whole management of their affairs, even to the minutest details of their lives, into the hands of their priestly masters, they have never tried to think or act for themselves, and to obey unques tioningly was almost an instinct with them. Deprived of the aid of the only men who could have successfully resisted the tyranny of Lopez ; by education, by habit, by many years of most repressive despotism, trained into the belief that any opposition to the will of their ruler would be the worst of crimes; and never doubting the story that the Brazilians wished

INTRODUCTION.

. XIII to enslave them, they have fought, against all hope and chance of success, for four long years. And even now, reduced to the one-hundredth part of their original number, they still fight in defence of a man who has repaid their devotion by ingratitude, their obe dience by merciless cruelty. It reduces our admiration of their courage and endurance very materially to learn the truth of this matter. The spectacle of a people fighting valiantly, hopelessly, in defence of their liberty, and dying to the last man rather than yield it up, is one to excite our noblest sympathies. But a band of slaves madly resisting the very men who offer them freedom and independence, and, blind to their own degradation, clinging to the chains which bind them, is one we can only view with mingled pity and indignation.

Lopez has been regarded as a great general, an un selfish patriot. He is neither the one nor the other. The miserable incapacity of the commanders opposed to him, not any military talent of his own, has de ferred his destruction so long ; and with the Indio- Spanish obstinacy and tenacity, which he possesses in so remarkable a degree, it is very certain that he will never yield, although he knows that his cause is irre trievably lost, so long as he has a man to fight for him- As for his patriotism, the war itself sufficiently dis proves its existence. The same men who would fight for him so de votedly would, of course, make the kind of police a tyrant would chose. The pitiless cruelty with which they executed his orders may also be traced partly to natural ferocity, and partly to the gratification

INTRODUCTION.

. which men treated with repressive severity feel in trampling upon those superior, either in birth or in fortune, to themselves. I have retained the Spanish spelling of the names of places and of Guarani words, but I have marked the accented syllable with a grave accent, as Parana, in all cases; in Spanish words I have, as a rule, only used the accent, and then the acute, when they vary from the usual accentuation of that language; in which, by the way, j -sand sometimes g and x) is a guttural aspirate. It must rather astonish a Spaniard to hear how Juan, Juanita, and our old friend Don Quixote are generally miscalled by us. I may remark that the diphthongs ai and ay should be pronounced exactly like the i in thigh, so Para guay should rhyme with why, and " The town of Buenos Ayres Built all in the mire is," writes a local poet of Hibernian extraction.

It is remarkable that the Indians of South America almost invariably accent the last syllable, as in Tuyuti (toojute) mud-and-water, a marsh. Tuyucue (tooju quay) mud-that-was, a dessicated marsh. Tatame, a little fire, give me a light. Yaguaete, (jagwaata) a big dog, a tiger ; whilst those of the North generally place the stress of the voice on the penultimate, e.g. Mohican, Pot6mac, Shamoke, and so on. The word Paraguay means a fishing-net, or a hide bag for carrying water, and should be written para-

INTRODUCTION.

. XV gua-eii. The last syllable, eii (water) however, cannot be represented by any combination of letters known to the Spaniards; indeed, it is almost unpronounceable by Europeans, so they wrote it as we see. But it was a blunder altogether. The discoverers of the river under Gabot found some natives fishing, and pointed to the river to ask its name ; the Indians thought they indicated the net, and replied paragua-eu, and the mis take was not found out till it was too late to alter it. G. F. M. Croydon, August, 1869. ERRATA. Page 9 line 32 for "graet" read great „ 59 „ 9 „ "lindo" „ lindo- „ 84 „ 31 „ "judgments" „ judgment „ 106 „ 8 „ "feasts" „ fiesta' „ 124 „ 15 „ "lablache" „ Lablache „ 218 „ 17 „ "ante-ater" „ anteater „ 220 „ 24 „ "might" „ might THE SEAT OF WAR IN PARAGUAY.

Chapter I. Paraguay

ASCENT OF THE RIVER. SCENERY. — STORY FROM RUIDIAZ DE GUZMAN. MESTIZOS. Since the commencement of the disastrous war be tween Brazil, the allied Republics, and President Lopez, public attention has been drawn so much to the district of La Plata, that it is no longer necessary to define exactly the geographical position of Paraguay. But five years ago, few Europeans had any clearer idea of its locality, than that it was situated somewhere amid the bewildering network of rivers radiating from the Parana, and close to Brazil. Now, however, the position of this jealously guarded republic is well known, and the name of Humaita, the Sebastopol of South America, is familiar to all newspaper readers. I may shortly state, therefore, that Paraguay is a tract of country about four hundred and fifty miles long, by two hundred in average breadth, bluntly wedge-shaped in form, and almost in the centre of the great southern peninsula.

It is bounded on the east and on the south by that river of islands, the Parana, and on the west by the river Paraguay. Its northern margin is not well defined ; for neither a large river nor a continuous mountain chain divides it from the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso, and the question of boundary there is still unsettled. Paraguay claimed, also, some territory to the south east of the Parana, but that clearly belongs to Cor rientes; and a considerable part of the Gran Chaco, an almost unexplored district on the west of the Rio Paraguay, apparently a dreary waste of lagoons and marshes traversed by rapid, muddy, and tortuous rivers. The only value of this latter claim lay in the fact, that Paraguay thus commanded the mouth of the river Vermejo, a broad strongly flowing stream, which, rising as it does in Bolivia, may one day become the highway of a large trade, and one of the most impor tant outlets for the produce of that country.

At present, not even a canoe floats on its turbid waters. The south-west of Paraguay, the side from which it is generally approached, is low, flat, and for many a long league marshy and impassable ; it is the district of the esteros, as these flooded lands are called. Even beyond them the soil, a stiff clay containing much selenite, retains the rain on its surface, and in the wet season immense shallow lakes form, simulating the esteros themselves, but drying up in hot weather, and leaving a grey dusty soil, full of cracks, and covered with wiry grass and low shrubs. When the river is high, the water extends far PARAGUAY. 3 and wide beyond its crumbling banks, and were it not for the melancholy palms standing as landmarks above the flood, it would be difficult to trace its for mer boundaries, or navigate the muddy lakes almost illimitable in extent.

These districts are, of course, very unhealthy, but are valuable for grazing purposes. Immense herds of cattle fed there before the war; but except the few soldiers at the river guardias, the soli tary herdsmen here and there were the only human beings to be seen. Above the Tebiquari, the country is higher and more diversified ; a long range of distant hills can be seen, which culminate, a hundred miles above, in the cordillera of Cerro Leon. The landscape also becomes bolder and almost picturesque. Vast woods, broader and denser as we journey to the north, vary, and at length occupy, the entire breadth of the picture, and a dark red sandstone, easily disinte grating into sparkling grains, replaces the grey clay of the esteros. The south-eastern division of the republic, called the Missi6nes, the old Jesuit settlements, or " reduc ciones de los Indios," as they were called, is perhaps the most fertile and valuable in the whole country.

Before the war, the richest and oldest families in Paraguay were to be found there. And the climate being cool, the land high, the soil deep and crumbling, the province was celebrated for its salubrity and productiveness. Large churches, comfortable homesteads, and innumerable herds of cattle were then to be seen, where now is but a desolate wilder ness, without a single inhabitant. 1 A Of the eastern division, bounded by the Parana, very little is known ; pathless and almost impenetra ble forests defy exploration on the land side, whilst the falls and rapids of Curituba cut off the upper waters of the river from navigation. The north of Paraguay is hilly, but it has been scarcely explored far enough to enable me to de scribe it, except near the large town of Concepcion. There, however, gneiss and mountain limestone re place the basalt, sandstone, and clays of the south ; and there, if anywhere in Paraguay, the mineral wealth South Americans are always dreaming about should be looked for.

But the Government, and the people generally, showed a singular distrust and reti cence whenever this subject was mentioned. I received several specimens of copper ore to analyse and report upon, but could never learn where they came from, except that it was " up the river." And when I told them that neither yellow mica nor rhombic iron pyrites contained gold, I was supposed to be intentionally misleading them, with some ulterior purpose. As an example of their Avant of faith in us, whenever the precious metal was in question, I may relate the following affair, which annoyed me greatly at the time. In 1866 we were without sulphur in the Hospital, and I wrote to Mr. Charles Twite, the Government mining engineer, who was then searching hopelessly for coal to send me in a few arrobas of the above pyrites, which yield sulphur abundantly when heated.

He succeeded in getting me about a hundredweight of the mineral, and sent it to the commandant of ASCENT OF THE RIVER. 5 the partido, with orders to forward it without delay. That functionary, however, finding the box to be very heavy, opened it, and the bright yellow stones at once excited his suspicions. He reported what he had seen to the Minister of War, and when the box arrived in the capital an investigation took place, and a sample of the mineral was sent to an Italian apothecary in the Plaza for examination. He reported that it was only a compound of iron and sulphur, and almost without value. This was not satisfactory^; another specimen was sent to him with the information that it certainly contained gold, of which " el senor Boticario Ingles" and Mr. Twite intended to rob the republic.

He replied, as before, that it did not contain a particle of gold ; and through a mutual ac quaintance he informed me of the whole affair. I had commenced the distillation of sulphur from the pyrites, which had, meanwhile, been sent on to me, but I at once ceased working when I heard of the suspicion entertained concerning us, and called upon the Minister of War, to request an explanation. He, Paraguayan-like, had the hardihood to say, that he knew nothing about the investigation he had himself ordered, although a specimen of the mineral lay upon his table as I entered ! But to return. One feature of the rivers of Para guay, and a very depressing one to the traveller, is the absence of life from their banks. One steams up for league after league against the turbid stream, and no sign of man or his industry, or scarcely, indeed, of any living creature, is visible.

Here and there an alligator is basking on a sand bank, and disappears, as boat approaches, with a lazy plunge into the water; a few melancholy storks watching with dreamy eyes for the chance of seizing an unwary fish ; or a vulture waiting with folded wings for the mangled remains of a capincho, are, perhaps, all one sees in a long day's journey. There are the high clay banks, if the rivers are falling, or the lagunas, if at flood, with the meadow like pampas beyond, covered Avith a short dry turf, scarcely green in the foreground, except shortly after rain, grey and then blue, as the plains recede to the horizon, and, save for the shadow of a passing cloud, without one interruption to the gradual change of tint ; and as silent and unpeopled as when they first rose from the bottom of the sea.

If, when the Paraguay is ascended, it should be at flood, the view is but of endless swamps covered with camelote and other aquatic plants, or half-drowned trees showing their tops above the water, and only upheld by the twisted cables of lianas which bind them firmly to each other, or else floating in natural rafts, corded and moored by their tangled strands. The tepid water between them is almost hidden by white and blue lilies, or the broad leaves and snowy flowers of their queen, the Victoria Regia. Flocks of small aquatic birds are seen, it is true, fishing amidst the network of creepers and branches, but they give no animation to the scene, and utter no sound, save a low warning cry of alarm, if we approach them too nearly. It is only at sunset, when the parrots are flying back after a raid on the orange trees, that the death-like silence is broken.

Their harsh screams, softened by SCENERY. 7 distance, as they wing their way far overhead, then sound almost musical, and light and life seem to fade out together, as the red disc disappears and the last straggler passes. On the Gran Chaco shore, the right bank of the Paraguay, and on both above Humaita for a hundred miles, there are palms in endless succession, not, how ever, with the tall column-like stems, rising slender and arrowy to the feathery crest of foliage, as one usually pictures that most graceful of trees, but with thick bulging trunks, rough with spines, with a thin ragged crown, and great bunches of last year's dead leaves rustling dry and withered beneath the new growth, till the high winds shall sweep them away. When the river is very high, it is difficult for a per son on it to believe that it is not flowing in a canal raised above the general level of the country ; for, no banks being visible, and the water extending without definite margin between the trees, the land appears to slope gradually down from it on both sides.

This absence of life and activity is not peculiar to the scenery of the Paraguay ; it is the same the whole way from Buenos Ayres. The few sleepy towns on the Parana scarcely vary its monotony, but rather seem to intensify it. Silent woods are beautiful, but silent towns are melancholy. And of these the deep sandy streets, save for wandering fowls or goats, are almost always still and lifeless; and if by chance a few passers by should be seen, they are only idly strolling without an apparent purpose, el even a pretext of business. The towns themselves have a singular concentration about them, speaking of time when they were surrounded with stockades, and their inhabitants crowded together for mutual defence against the Indians of the pampas. Not only so, but they seem to be thoroughly isolated, and were it not for the domes of the churches seen afar on these vast plains, one would come upon them absolutely without warning.

There are towns there, of five. or ten thousand souls, in the midst of an unpeopled waste, scarcely a road, not a trace of a suburb around them. To me they always looked like some ancient centres of civilization long abandoned to the owls and the fox, rather than the homes of a large, often increasing, but siesta-loving, population. After leaving Corrientes, a hot, dreary, sandy city, reeking with most villanous smells, there is not a single town for near three hundred miles. Between Hu maita and Asuncion are, or were, for the war has left but the names of several of them, only a few villages, a little cluster of huts around a comandancia, or per haps a barn-like church ; for all trade being confined to the capital, in order to facilitate the collection of the custom dues, they had no chance of increasing in size beyond the needs of their few inhabitants.

Paraguay was first colonized by the Spaniards in 1536, shortly after the destruction of the first settle ment in La Plata, now the site of the present town of Buenos Ayres. For a long time there was but a stockaded fort, dependent upon external supplies for food and other necessaries ; for the Indians around them were so warlike and intractable, that all agri cultural operations — for which however the Spanish settlers never seem to have had much taste — were out THE FAMINE IN BUENOS AYRES. of the question, and the garrison was several times reduced to great straits for want of provisions. A native friend of mine lent me for a short time a book entitled " La Historia de la Conquista, por Rui diaz de Guzman. Conquistador. " It had been printed by order of Don Carlos Lopez, the late President of Paraguay, from the original manuscript in his possession.

I should have liked to have translated the whole of it, for it gives a most vivid picture of the toils and difficulties of the first settlers; and coming from an eye-witness, these stories are of greater value. In one place he tells a tale which has been quoted by Parish from Azara, but it is so curious that I give it here from the original. " In the year 1535, they suffered cruel hunger in Buenos Ayres, and since proper food was utterly wanting, they ate toads, snakes, and putrid animals, which they found on the plains ; and coming at last to the same extreme famine which the inhabitants of Jerusalem suffered in the time of Titus and Vespasian (when they devoured human flesh), so it came to pass that the miserable people sustained the life of the living by eating the bodies of the dead, and even of executed criminals, leaving nothing but the bones, and there Avas one man seen eating the corpse of his own brother.

" At last, almost all the people died, and it happened that a Spanish woman, who could no longer bear such terrible suffering, Avas constrained to leave the town to seek amongst the Indians some means of sustaining life; so she journeyed along the bank and up the river till she reached Punta-gorda in a graet wood. It was then night, and she looked out for a place to lie down in, and spying a cave in the river banks, she en tered it, and found herself face to face with a fright ful lioness; the terrified woman, nearly dead with fright, fainted away, and when she came to she laid herself down humbly at the animal's feet. The lioness, although dolorously ill, when she first saAv her, sprang forward to tear her in pieces ; but her royal nature prevailing, she felt compassion for her, and lay ing aside the ferocity and fury Avith which she Avas about to rend her, she gave food to the poor woman (who had now lost all care for her life) in a caress ing manner.

The woman then assisted the suffering animal, which shortly aftenvards gave birth to two cubs. In their company she remained for several days, being fed by the lioness on the flesh of animals she killed, and gratefully feeling this hospitality, she nursed the little animals. At last, one morning as she Avas going doAvn to drink of the river, some Indians, Avho Avere passing, surprised and carried her off to their village, where one of them took her for his Avife. " Some time afterwards, a captain and his company making an excursion into the neighbouring territory, brought in this same Spanish woman, avIio through hunger had fled to the Indians. When Francisco Ruiz Galan (the captain) saw her, he ordered her to be cast out into the wilderness, that she might be torn and eaten ; his order being carried out, they led off the poor woman, and tied her firmly to a tree, and left her there alone about a league out of the town.

At night a great number of Avild beasts collected to devour her, and amongst them came the lioness which she LA MALDONADA. 11 had assisted in her trouble, and, recognising her, she defended her from the other beasts which sought to tear her in pieces ; she remained guarding her that night, the next day, and the following night, until at last, on the third day, some soldiers Avent out by order of the captain to see what had become of the Avoman, found her alive, and the lioness, with her tAVO cubs, at her feet. Without being attacked, the animals AvithdreAV a certain distance to alloAv the men to approach, and they, admiring the instinct and humanity of the wild beast, went up, untied the woman, and took her away with them, leaving the lioness roaring furiously to show how she felt the loss of her friend her royal generosity and gratitude being very different to the want even of humanity shown by the men.

" The Avoman, Avho thus escaped from the fate in tended for her when she was left in the wilderness, I know ; she is named Maldonada, but she ought rather to have been called Biendonada. " However, from the result, we see that she did not deserve such a punishment, since necessity had been her only reason for leaving her own people and going amongst the barbarians. Some attribute this hard sentence to Captain Alvarado ; but whoever it might have been from, it was, as I say, of almost unheard-of cruelty." We gather from this narrative that the Spanish women were not alloAved to mix with the natives, although the men very generally did so, and Avith very lamentable results. The Spaniards committed tAVO grand mistakes in South America : Enslaving the aborigines, and intermarrying Avith them. The first, a cruel wrong to the Indians; the second, an irreparable injury to them selves, for in place of raising the race they mingled Avith, they sunk themselves to the lower level.

And the folly has brought retributive punishment for the crime. The endless intestine wars of the turbulent, indolent, and lawless mestizos, their wholesale butcheries of each other, Avhich have depopulated whole provinces, are but the result of that primary error. Nor will they cease, I fear, until the whole mixed race has disappeared, until the descendants of the oppressor and the oppressed shall have been alike annihilated by the terrible vengeance demanded for the atrocities ot the conquistadores. Had they only acted as wisely, in that respect, as our colonists did in North America, and had " no dealings with the heathen," how different the result Avould have been !

Chapter II. Asuncion

— PUBLIC BUILDINGS. — STREETS. — RELIGION. Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, is situated in lati tude 25° 16' 29" south, and longitude 57° 20' 53" west. It is built on a gentle slope, which rises from the river for about a mile, and then falls gradually away to the south, but reaches a higher elevation beyond the town in the opposite direction. Before the war, the popu lation was about twenty thousand. From the river it makes but a poor appearance, oiving to the absence of lofty buildings, and as the houses are rarely more than one story — a ground-floor — in height, there is little to be seen from a distance but red-tiled roofs, with here and there a Avhite- Avashed mirador rising above them. There Avas but one really handsome building, the Palacio, built by Don Francisco Lopez for his OAvn residence, but destined to be never occupied by him.

The railway station and the new church are unfinished. The quay, the first point seen by a traveller there, showed but little appearance of business, and except for a few lounging soldiers or smoking market women, was often nearly deserted, and the ships seemed to be rotting at their moorings, rather than taking in or discharging cargo. Yet there was a considerable trade carried on in an idle, irregular, shambling way. The wharves, being built on the outside of a bend which the river makes there, are being gradually abandoned by its waters, the opposite bank is com pensatingly eaten away by the current, and the channel will soon be far from the city. A hundred years ago the landing place was more than a mile above its pre sent site. Now it is far from the business part of the town (for the merchants have not retreated with the river), with a sandy waste, a shallow muddy brook, and a dilapidated bridge intervening.

To the right, as one lands, is the Arsenal, a large unfinished building, with a number of rough sheds clustered around it. The engines, machines, and ma terials all came from England, and the work was directed and principally performed by Englishmen. The chief engineer, Mr. W. Whytehead, was a man of remarkable skill and administrative ability ; his death, in the first year of the war, was an irreparable loss to Lopez. Above it, on a gentle eminence, stands the Hospital, a long low building, with a colonnade of heavy pillars in front, and a red-tiled roof. In a line with it, but overlooking the river, is a brick battery which used to mount eight guns, and is the one attacked by the iron clads in 18G8 ; lower down is a formidable earth-work. The unfortunate hospital is so placed regarding these defences, that a shot missing either of them was pretty sure to pass through some part of it.

At the other extremity of the river-wall is another battery, a brick casemate, well and solidly built. Close to it is the public buildings. 15 Aduana or Custom-house, which, like all else in the country, is unfinished, and is, moreover, so hideous that one can only regret that it was ever commenced. The ground on which it is built slopes at an angle of about ten degrees, and, as a Paraguayan sees no beauty in, nor necessity for, level lines, the whole front of the very long building follows the slope of the ground ! To make matters worse, there is not a single break or projection to hide the defect, and the piazza, with its twenty-two arches and heavy cornice, looks as if it were sliding into the river. To an Englishman, who cannot bear to see even a picture hung awry, the indifference which the Para guayans show in their houses and streets to levels and symmetry is very curious.