Lippincott\'s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, written by Various
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Various >> Lippincott\'s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15,
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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
JUNE, 1875.
Vol. XV, No. 90
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY.
Concluding Paper. [Illustrated]
A TALE OF THE CONSCRIPTION by E.C. GRENVILLE MURRAY.
THE SYMPHONY by SIDNEY LANIER.
THE BLOUSARD IN HIS HOURS OF EASE by WIRT SIKES.
EIGHT HUNDRED MILES IN AN AMBULANCE.
Two Papers.--1 by LAURA WINTHROP JOHNSON.
A MEETING AT SEA by ROBERT WILSON.
ART--EXPERIENCE OF AN IGNORAMUS by SARAH B. WISTER.
BY THE LAKE by ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
A SCENE IN THE CAMPAGNA by T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
THREE FEATHERS by WILLIAM BLACK.
Chapter XXXVI.--Into Captivity
Chapter XXXVII.--An Angry Interview.
Chapter XXXVIII.--The Old, Half-Forgotten Joke.
Chapter XXXIX.--New Ambitions
Chapter XL.--An Old Lady's Apology
CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.
II.--Night--Lake Helen by EDWARD KEARSLEY.
MILL'S ESSAYS ON RELIGION by LAWRENCE TURNBULL.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
Woman's Rights In The Eighteenth Century.
THE TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI.
T.W. ROBERTSON.
THE LETTERS OF A PRINCESS.
JAPANESE ART.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Books Received.
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE QUINTA DE LA MISERIA.
HOW THE POOR TRAVEL IN PARAGUAY.
VIEW OF IBITIMI.
ITAPE: PALACE AND CHURCH.
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT VILLA RICA.
A JAGUAR TRAP.
UNCAPTIONED
FOUNDRY AT IBICUY, DESTROYED DURING THE WAR.
VILLAGE OF CARAPEGUA.
UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY.
CONCLUDING PAPER.
One day--to return to our traveler and his personal experiences--M.
Forgues makes the acquaintance of a Swiss who resides at Paraguari, a
small interior town distant about twenty-five leagues from Asuncion.
His new acquaintance invites him to go with him to Paraguari, but
before complying with the invitation M. Forgues crosses the river and
rides into the territory of Gran Chaco as far as the Quinta de la
Miseria, situated about two miles and a half from the river-bank. The
owner of this farm, Mequelain, a French pioneer, his wife and three
servants, had been surprised and murdered by the Chaco Indians a short
while before the arrival of M. Forgues in Asuncion. The quinta is on
the edge of a vast plain. The unfortunate Mequelain had surrounded his
house with ditches and a small fence of posts. Besides this, he had
built a sort of observatory from which to watch the movements of the
Indians. But his precautions, as the end showed, proved useless. The
farm was occupied by new tenants at the time of M. Forgues's visit,
and the bodies of the five victims were buried in one of the ditches.
The Quinta de la Miseria derives its gloomy name from the tragic event
that had given it its melancholy prominence in the minds of the people
of Asuncion. To reach Paraguari our traveler avails himself of the
railroad which extends between that town and the capital. The
railroad-station presents a lively scene with its crowd of
savage-looking natives thronging it. In connection with this station
M. Forgues mentions a curious circumstance--that in order to prevent
the rush of the multitude to the cars on the departure of the train
the station-master has ingeniously replaced gates and fences, which
might be climbed easily, with brushes steeped in pitch and tar, so
disposed as to bar the passage. As the Paraguayan women hold
cleanliness to be one of the cardinal virtues, they religiously avoid
these defiling brushes for fear of soiling their garments. The cars
are built on the most approved American model. The train, furthermore,
has two platform-cars attached to it, which are reserved exclusively
for the gratuitous use of the poor, who are permitted to ride on them
with as much as they can carry in the way of bundles and other goods.
Sometimes the platforms are so crowded that they are lost to sight
under the passengers' heads and legs. Another feature of railway
travel in Paraguay--for a foreigner a sensation--is to observe a
woman clad in the Arcadian simplicity of a single garment enter a car
and take a seat opposite you or alongside of you with the most
unconstrained air imaginable.
[Illustration: THE QUINTA DE LA MISERIA.]
The train on its way to Paraguari passes Trinidad and many other
stations. The station-houses are all small structures covered with
tile roofs. At Luque, a village where the passengers stop for
refreshments, the women of the place flock at the windows and offer
for sale embroideries of their own invention worked on tulle or on a
special kind of netting, while the venders of lunches appear, not with
the traditional fried oysters, fried chickens or sandwiches of our own
favored land, but with bottles of fresh milk and _chiapa_, a kind of
bread made from manioc, among the ingredients of which are starch and
eggs, and for which Luque is famous. The engineer of the train, an
Englishman, is a person who is as important in his way as is the
Brazilian minister in his. At Luque he descends from his locomotive to
chat with a friend on the platform. Time--or what would be "time"
elsewhere--is up, but our Englishman continues to talk,
notwithstanding that after the utterance of impatient cries the
passengers leave the cars in wrath to crowd around him and overwhelm
him with abusive words. An admirable representative of English phlegm,
he finishes his conversation at his ease, looks at his watch, climbs
in a leisurely way to his position on the engine and puts the train in
motion. There is no danger of collision with any other train, however,
for this train is the only one on the line. It leaves Asuncion every
morning, moving at an average rate of fifteen miles an hour, and
arrives at Paraguari some time during the day, at the will of the
engineer. Returning from Paraguari the same day, it reaches Asuncion,
remarks M. Forgues, when it pleases Heaven that it shall do so.
[Illustration: HOW THE POOR TRAVEL IN PARAGUAY.]
The scenery along the road is beautiful, but the country is almost a
desert. Around the stations are groups of dwellings of varied
appearance, the most solidly built of which are connected with farms
that belonged to the late President Lopez. At times appear palm trees,
the feathery leaves of which mingle with beautiful effect with the
pale or dark foliage of an exuberant vegetation. Lopez had established
telegraphic communication between the mouth of the Paraguay and
Paraguari, but the line having been broken between the latter
terminus and a place called Cerro Leon, and nobody having been
sufficiently interested in it to have it repaired, it now stops at
Cerro Leon, the only telegraphic wire in the country, as the Asuncion
and Paraguari Railroad is the only railroad.
As the train approaches its destination the passengers see in the
distance the three _cerros_ of Paraguari. These isolated
sugar-loaf-shaped hills called _cerros_, covered with verdure, are a
marked feature of Paraguayan scenery. They rise from the flat plains,
and although their isolated situations impart to them an appearance of
great height, they are rarely more than four hundred feet above the
level of the plain. Paraguari comprises fifty or sixty houses worthy
of the appellation, built around a square. In the outskirts are
numerous mud-huts, all well populated with women and children. Its
inhabitants number about three thousand, and in its quality as
terminus of an unfinished railroad it has that flavor of desperadoism
which usually attaches to positions of that kind. Here gather
malefactors, generally of foreign birth, from Asuncion and
elsewhere--refugees from the central authority and the metropolitan
police--who are more free in Paraguari to prey on whomsoever chance
may throw in their way. Of the sixty houses, twelve are _tiendas_,
shops in which are sold at retail English cotton goods, Hamburg gins,
etc., in exchange for the products of the country--hides, tobacco,
_mate_ and other commodities.
The Paraguayan is an inveterate gambler, and in Paraguari two at least
of the houses are devoted to public play. They are crowded nightly,
and often the stakes amount to five hundred or a thousand francs.
Quarrels frequently arise over the play, and then the knife is brought
into requisition, but the affrays are due more to the presence of the
Italian, Argentine and Brazilian adventurers who flock there than to
the Paraguayans, who are not, naturally, a quarrelsome race. On the
night of his arrival, M. Forgues, with revolver in belt and
accompanied by his Swiss friend, walks through the village. The
_tiendas_ are lighted up, but the other houses are in darkness. They
look in on the gamblers. The dingy room is partially illuminated by a
petroleum lamp which hangs from the ceiling and casts its rays on
groups of men with hang-dog countenances seated or standing around a
long table, smoking pipes and playing at cards for silver coin, or
else engaged in a certain game played on a billiard-table, in which a
handful of small balls is thrown on the table by the players, the end
to be attained being to cause as many of the balls as possible to
enter the pockets. Then M. Forgues and his companion leave the scene
of the gambling orgie and look on another phase of life in Paraguari
after dark. Not far distant is a lighted stable-lantern on the ground:
around it, with a confused medly of ponchos and white skirts flying in
the air, goes on the merry dance to the sound of an organ's whining
notes. This is all that can be seen from where they stand, for the
faces of the dancers, too dark to be distinguishable in the night, are
invisible.
The village square is a kind of permanent fair-ground filled with
diminutive booths, each one composed of four posts stuck in the ground
and upholding a bit of cloth not much larger than a hand-kerchief,
under which the hucksters, women and children, sit as under a tent.
There is a multitude of sellers, and a pitiful lack of goods to be
sold. One woman, with her four children seated near her, offers six
eggs to the passer-by as her little store of merchandise: another
booth is presided over by two women and three children, and a dozen
ears of corn constitute their stock. There is a sad suggestion of
poverty about all this which is very depressing. The day before the
arrival of M. Forgues in the place an enterprising baker, the first
who had ever set foot in Paraguari, began the making and selling of
wheat bread. Everybody deserted his customary manioc and bought a loaf
of the good fellow, who rubbed his hands with delight at the success
of his speculation. The next day, not satisfied with a legitimate
profit, he raised the price of his loaves. Human nature is the same
all over the world, and the speculator found his bread left on his
hands. Nobody would pay his price, and everybody returned to manioc.
From Paraguari our traveler's course next led him toward Villa Rica, a
thriving town situated still farther in the interior, and near the
Cordillera of Caaguazu. He sets out accompanied by his Swiss
acquaintance. The journey is made in two days and on horseback. Their
route in the beginning lies across a small mountain-range, and then
through a piece of thick woods bearing an evil reputation as the home
of footpads. But the two pass through in safety, for the robbers are
either asleep or absent from their haunts. Reaching the head-waters of
the Yuqueri, which empties into the Canabe, a tributary of the
Paraguay, they skirt the heights of Angostura, where Lopez, after the
evacuation of Humaita, planted his batteries, and which he made his
final strategic point. Near by, on the right bank of the Canabe, is
the field of Las Lomas Valentinas, where the Paraguayan president
fought his last great battle. So far, the route had been through an
almost unpeopled solitude. In the evening they reach Ibitimi, a
village built, as are all the Paraguayan hamlets, in the shape of a
square, with its little church in the centre. Here the ravages of war
are painfully apparent. Many of the houses have gone to ruin,
dismantled piecemeal by passers-by, their owners never having come
back from the battlefield to reoccupy them. The surrounding country is
charming, and, seated on one side, M. Forgues sketches a cart drawn by
oxen which goes by slowly with the declining sun shining on its
leather top. An eight-year-old boy of the village, whose attire is
limited strictly to a necklace of black seeds, approaches him, looks
over his shoulder, and reads aloud the word which he writes under his
sketch: "Ibitimi." Returning from his little sketching excursion to
where his companion is awaiting him, he observes that he has suddenly
become an object of mingled curiosity and respect on the part of the
villagers. The cause of this prominence is a mystery to him until he
learns that during his absence his friend had spread the rumor that he
is a civil engineer who has come to make a definite survey of the line
of the Asuncion and Villa Rica Railroad, which, although it was
completed only to Paraguari, was originally intended to extend to
Villa Rica, taking Ibitimi in its route. Thus become a great man in
the little community, M. Forgues is besought by the political chief of
the village--a functionary who fulfills the duties of mayor--almost
the only male adult in Ibitimi, to command his services. These
services are pressed on him with so much warmth that he is fain to
seek relief from this persecuting hospitality by announcing his desire
to sleep that night under the canopy of heaven. Consequently, a bed of
girths is carried out into the public square for his use, a sort of
leather ticking is stretched on it, and he sleeps quietly with his
face to the stars.
[Illustration: VIEW OF IBITIMI]
A long day's journey to Villa Rica lies before our traveler and his
companion, and so they rise early while the moon is still brightly
shining. They bid the friendly political chief farewell, and take
their departure for Villa Rica. As they emerge from the village the
moon silvers with its pure light the tops of the palms and of the
bushes that line the road. Away from Ibitimi their course lies through
a pretty forest, wherein the party is increased by the addition of two
Paraguayans on horseback, one of them armed with a long sword, and of
a Paraguayan woman, who rides her horse man-fashion. A few miles
farther on they come to a vast marsh, a common feature of the
topography of Paraguay, and one of the great drawbacks to travel in
the country, for when the rains fall these marshes become dangerous
and impassable, and the traveler is compelled to go miles out of his
way to turn them before he can continue his journey. The lagoon which
lies before them on this occasion, however, is empty, and they are
thus saved the detour of more than ten leagues which they would be
compelled to make if it were filled with water. The sun, dispersing
the last vestige of the morning fog, rises in a clear blue sky, and
this spectacle they witness from a slight eminence, in front of which
extends an immense plain with its limit at the bank of the
Tebicuari-mi, the waters of which shine like a mirror.
M. Forgues now begins to enter a stretch of wooded country in which
the solitude of the day previous is replaced by a thickly-settled
region, wherein are to be seen in quick succession a multitude of
pretty ranchos nestled in the foliage. The day before, on the journey
from Paraguari to Ibitimi, scarcely ten persons had been met with, but
now they pass groups of men--the fact is more noticeable because of
the rarity of men in Paraguay--and women. The men salute the party by
removing their hats, and the women with a _Buen dia_ ("Good-day"),
uttered with a gracious smile. The whole of this forest is peopled
like the environs of Paris. Rancho succeeds rancho at short distances
apart, and each shelters under its blackened thatched roof many women
and children, of whose number its small dimensions give no idea. In
the towns the houses need to be large to protect their occupants from
the heat, but in this forest the people live in the open air chiefly,
entering their hovels only to sleep, be it during the day or the
night. In strange contrast with the humble aspect of the houses is the
heavy silver pitcher, weighing at least two pounds, from which M.
Forgues is given to drink by the owner of one of the huts of whom he
has asked water.
[Illustration: ITAPE: PALACE AND CHURCH.]
Leaving these cheerful forest-homes behind him, our traveler fords the
Tebicuari-mi, which rises in the cordillera where are gathered the
yerba-leaves from which is made the _mate_. The water at Paso de
Itape, as the ford is called, is shallow enough to permit the party to
walk their horses through it, although usually the passage is made on
the flat-boat and the two long canoes which are tied to the bank near
by. The ford derives its name from the village of Itape, which lies a
short distance beyond--a pleasant, prosperous hamlet with cultivated
lands surrounding it, and built in a square, with its church and its
bell-tower in the centre. The space at the entrance of the sacred
edifice is covered with sweet, fine grass, and contented-looking oxen
and horses browse at the foot of the wall.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT VILLA RICA]
It is the breakfast-hour, and M. Forgues and his companion stop in
front of the first house they reach as they enter the village and
utter the traditional _Ave Maria_, thus requesting the hospitality of
the owner. In response, from the shadow of the verandah in which he is
seated comes a tall, superb-looking, bearded man, who replies, "_Sin
peccado concebida"_ ("conceived without sin"), which indicates that
the hospitality asked for is granted. When the Paraguayan gives this
response to the invocation of the traveler, the latter may consider
himself at home; and so is it on this occasion with M. Forgues. His
host proves to have been one of that body of the Paraguayan army,
eight or ten thousand strong, which, besieged by the Brazilians in the
town of Uruguayana in 1865, at the very beginning of the war, became
prisoners when the town was surrendered. They fared far better than
their unfortunate fellow-soldiers, for, sent to Brazil, they remained
there four years before they were exchanged. In addition to this, they
returned to their own country more instructed and more civilized than
when they left it. It is to this long relief from the perils of
battle, by which the troops drawn from the department of Itape were so
generally spared the fate that overtook their comrades in the field,
that are due the evident prosperity and the large male adult
population of the district, as M. Forgues observed it. His host of the
rancho is as gracious in manners and as affable as it is possible to
be, and serves up for breakfast a soup of Indian corn, a chicken
fricasee and some delicious bread of crusty _chipa_--a frugal meal
assuredly, and one entirely out of keeping with the richness of the
service of silver plate which burdens the table, and which, worth
fully two thousand francs, includes three large plates, an enormous
dish and several massive mugs. The spoons and the forks, however, are
of more modest material, for the former are made of horn and the
latter of iron.
[Illustration: A JAGUAR TRAP.]
After a brief siesta M. Forgues and his companion resume their
journey toward Villa Rica. Under a shed on the roadside they see a
dozen women, all talking at the same time, and engaged in grating
manioc-roots in pails of water. The mixture thus obtained composes the
dough of manioc. This dough is very white, and is made into small
balls which are pressed between the hands--an operation which, when
completed, constitutes the entire process of making a coarse kind of
bread, not at all of delicate flavor, called _galetta_, which is
furnished to laborers of both sexes. Under another shed a young girl
with a complexion like bronze is seated before a loom weaving, with a
light and elegant shuttle, a hammock out of the cotton thread of the
country.
Evening is about deepening into night when M. Forgues arrives at Villa
Rica. His host in the town, a prosperous shopkeeper, invites him to
dinner, and at the table he meets the mistress of the house, a tall,
handsome Paraguayan woman, who receives him and his fellow-traveler
with polished courtesy. She belongs to the class of the posterity of
the old Spanish colonists. She is dressed in a long calico dress with
a white train, and with a row of small red buttons down the front. The
sleeves have deep cuffs, also fastened with small buttons. A wide,
turned-down collar partly covers the shoulders, and exposes to the
sight the lower part of a very shapely neck. In the course of
conversation this lady informs M. Forgues that the department of Villa
Rica is perhaps the only part of the country which may give an idea of
what Paraguay was before the war. The men, it is true, were killed
off, as were the men of the other departments, but by a happy chance
the women and children were spared that terrible flight to the
Cordilleras whereby thousands of their sex and age perished. His
hostess relates to him her experiences during that fearful period.
After the occupation of Asuncion by the Brazilians, and their advance
as far as Paraguari, Lopez gave the order that Villa Rica should be
abandoned and that the population should follow him to the mountains.
As it happened, however, the commanding officer of the two hundred
men who constituted the Paraguayan force at Villa Rica just about that
time committed some breach of discipline, for which he was arrested by
order of Lopez and sent to another point to be tried and shot.
Coincidently with this his detachment suddenly fell back, leaving word
with the inhabitants to quit the town within twenty-four hours or take
the consequences of disobedience. Despair and terror prevailed among
the people, and while they were hesitating as to what course to
pursue, before the twenty-four hours of grace had expired news came to
them that the Brazilians had reached Ibitimi in the pursuit. Then the
whole population fled in the night to the Brazilians for protection,
traveling until morning to Ibitimi, twelve leagues distant.
[Illustration]
The Guayrinos, as the inhabitants of Villa Rica are called, are
industrious, amiable and temperate. They possess great independence of
character, and speak somewhat contemptuously of the submissiveness of
the rest of Paraguay to the slightest caprice of the dictators who
have successively ruled the country. Foreigners meet with a cordial
welcome from them, and are often voluntarily selected by them to be
the godfathers of their children. The Guayrinos are, moreover, a
contented community, and are disposed to congratulate themselves on
the fact that they are spared the presence of the adventurers and
cut-throats of the class that infests Asuncion and Paraguari. The
women are very devout, and on Sundays the church is filled with
worshipers of the female sex, while the men are possibly engaged in
attending a cock-fight. Apropos of the religious fervor of the
Paraguayan women, M. Forgues relates that there is not a single house
in Paraguay occupied by natives which does not possess its two penates
in the shape of wooden images of a saint, which are kept enclosed in a
glass box and are the objects of incessant devotion. This box stands
on a small table which serves as a sort of altar, and is placed in a
certain corner of the hut, sacred for that reason from all other use.
From time to time the family, with a pious inspiration on them, walk
abroad in the village carrying the box with them. Then all the
neighbors, observing this, issue from their houses and follow the
bearers of the box. Family and escort chant while marching, and
everybody uncovers as the little procession passes. After a while the
transient ceremony is over, the box is brought back to its accustomed
corner, the neighbors disperse and quiet resumes its sway in the
hovel.
The department of Villa Rica produces excellent cotton, which is
cultivated, however, only in infinitesimal quantities. Indigo, called
by the natives _anil_, grows wild. The tobacco of the district is
especially renowned, and in the Cordillera, the tops of which compose
the background of the beautiful region lying to the east of the town,
_mate_ is grown successfully. The very name of the Cordillera of
Caaguazu bears testimony to the abundance of the yerba, _caa_ meaning
_mate_ in the Guaranian language, and _guazu_, "great" or "much." As
seen from the elevation on which Villa Rica stands, this
mountain-range, twelve leagues distant, stretches along the horizon an
undulating mass of blue. The intervening space nearer the town is
filled with beautiful forests, while beyond are vast plains, the
monotony of which is broken by lagoons and clumps of palms. The
population of the region around Villa Rica is estimated at fifteen
thousand. There are good opportunities here for immigrants, for
Nature, like a fruitful mother, holds ample treasures in her bosom,
which need only a little well-directed labor to bring the tiller of
the soil his reward. Laborers receive a sum equal to about twenty
cents of our money for a day's work, and carpenters about fifty cents.
Food of coarse quality, however, is supplied by the employer.
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