Paraguay—Journey up the river—A primitive Capital—Dick the Australian—His polychrome garb—A Paraguayan Race Meeting—Beautiful figures of native women—The "Falcon" adventurers—a quaint railway—Patiño Cué—An extraordinary household—The capable Australian boy—Wild life in the swamps—"Bushed"—A literary evening—A railway record—The Tigre midnight swims—Canada—Maddening flies—A grand salmon river—The Canadian backwoods—Skunks and bears—Different views as to industrial progress.
As negotiations had commenced in the "'eighties" for a new Treaty, including an Extradition clause, between the British and Paraguayan Governments, several minor points connected with it required clearing up.
I accordingly went up the river to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, five days distant from Buenos Ayres by steamer. A short account of that primitive little inland Republic in the days before it was linked up with Argentina by railway may prove of interest, for it was unlike anything else, with its stately two hundred-year-old relics of the old Spanish civilisation mixed up with the roughest of modern makeshifts. The vast majority of the people were Guaranis, of pure Indian blood and speech. The little State was so isolated from the rest of the world that the nineteenth century
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had touched it very lightly. Since its independence Paraguay had suffered under the rule of a succession of Dictator Presidents, the worst of whom was Francisco Lopez, usually known as Tyrant Lopez. This ignorant savage aspired to be the Napoleon of South America, and in 1864 declared war simultaneously on Brazil, Uruguay, and the Argentine Republic. The war continued till 1870, when, fortunately, Lopez was killed, but the population of Paraguay had diminished from one and a quarter million to four hundred thousand people, nearly all the males being killed. In my time there were seven women to every male of the population.
The journey up the mighty Paraná is very uninteresting, for these huge rivers are too broad for the details on either shore to be seen clearly. After the steamer had turned up the Paraguay river on the verge of the tropics, it became less monotonous. The last Argentine town is Formosa, a little place of thatched shanties clustered under groves of palms. We arrived there at night, and remained three hours. I shall never forget the eerie, uncanny effect of seeing for the first time Paraguayan women, with a white petticoat, and a white sheet over their heads as their sole garments, flitting noiselessly along on bare feet under the palms in the brilliant moonlight. They looked like hooded silent ghosts, and reminded me irresistibly of the fourth act of "Robert le Diable," when the ghosts of the nuns arise out of their cloister graves at Bertram's command. They did not though as
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in the opera, break into a glittering ballet.
On board the steamer there was a young globe-trotting Australian. He was a nice, cheery lad, and, like most Australians, absolutely natural and unaffected. As he spoke no Spanish, he was rather at a loose end, and we agreed to foregather.
Asuncion was really a curiosity in the way of capitals. Lopez the Tyrant suffered from megalomania, as others rulers have done since his day. He began to construct many imposing buildings, but finished none of them. He had built a huge palace on the model of the Tuileries on a bluff over the river. It looked very imposing, but had no roof and no inside. He had also begun a great mausoleum for members of the Lopez family, but that again had only a façade, and was already crumbling to ruin. The rest of the town consisted principally of mud and bamboo shanties, thatched with palm. The streets were unpaved, and in the main street a strong spring gushed up. Everyone rode; there was but one wheeled vehicle in Asuncion, and that was only used for weddings and funerals. The inhabitants spoke of their one carriage as we should speak of something absolutely unique of its kind, say the statue of the Venus de Milo, or of some rare curiosity, such as a great auk's egg, or a twopenny blue Mauritius postage stamp, or a real live specimen of the dodo.
Nothing could be rougher than the accommodation Howard, the young Australian, and I found at the hotel. We were shown into a very dirty brick-paved
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room containing eight beds. We washed unabashed at the fountain in the patio, as there were no other facilities for ablutions at all, and the bare-footed, shirtless waiter addressed us each by our Christian names tout court, at once, omitting the customary "Don." The Spanish forms of Christian names are more melodious than ours, and Howard failed to recognize his homely name of "Dick" in "Ricardo."
As South American men become moustached and bearded very early in life, I think that our clean-shaved faces, to which they were not accustomed, led the people to imagine us both much younger than we really were, for I was then twenty-seven, and the long-legged Dick was twenty-one. Never have I known anyone laugh so much as that light-hearted Australian boy. He was such a happy, merry, careless creature, brimful of sheer joy at being alive, and if he had never cultivated his brains much, he atoned for it by being able to do anything he liked with his hands and feet. He could mend and repair anything, from a gun to a fence; he could cook, and use a needle and thread as skilfully as he could a stock-whip. I took a great liking to this lean, sun-browned, pleasant-faced lad with the merry laugh and the perfectly natural manner; we got on together as though we had known each other all our lives, in fact we were addressing one another by our Christian names on the third day of our acquaintance.
Dick was a most ardent cricketer, and his
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baggage seemed to consist principally of a large and varied assortment of blazers of various Australian athletic clubs. He insisted on wearing one of these, a quiet little affair of mauve, blue, and pink stripes, and our first stroll through Asuncion became a sort of triumphal progress. The inhabitants flocked out of their houses, loud in their admiration of the "Gringo's" (all foreigners are "Gringos" in South America) tasteful raiment. So much so that I began to grow jealous, and returning to the hotel, I borrowed another of Howard's blazers (if my memory serves me right, that of the "Wonga-Wonga Wallabies"), an artistic little garment of magenta, orange, and green stripes. We then sauntered about Asuncion, arm-in-arm, to the delirious joy of the populace. We soon had half the town at our heels, enthusiastic over these walking rainbows from the mysterious lands outside Paraguay. These people were as inquisitive as children, and plied us with perpetual questions. Since Howard could not speak Spanish, all the burden of conversation fell on me. As I occupied an official position, albeit a modest one, I thought it best to sink my identity, and became temporarily a citizen of the United States, Mr. Dwight P. Curtis, of Hicksville, Pa., and I gave my hearers the most glowing and rose-coloured accounts of the enterprise and nascent industries of this progressive but, I fear, wholly imaginary spot. I can only trust that no Paraguayan left his native land to seek his fortune in Hicksville, Pa., for he might
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have had to search the State of Pennsylvania for some time before finding it.
I have already recounted, earlier in these reminiscences, how the Paraguayan Minister for Foreign Affairs received me, and that his Excellency on that occasion dispensed not only with shoes and stockings, but with a shirt as well. He was, however, like most people in Spanish-speaking lands, courtesy itself.
Dick Howard having heard that there was some races in a country town six miles away, was, like a true Australian, wild to go to them. Encouraged by our phenomenal success of the previous day, we arrayed ourselves in two new Australian blazers, and rode out to the races, Howard imploring me all the way to use my influence to let him have a mount there.
The races were very peculiar. The course was short, only about three furlongs, and perfectly straight. Only two horses ran at once, so the races were virtually a succession of "heats," but the excitement and betting were tremendous. The jockeys were little Indian boys, and their "colours" consisted of red, blue, or green bathing drawers. Otherwise they were stark naked, and, of course, bare-legged. The jockey's principal preoccupation seemed to be either to kick the opposing jockey in the face, or to crack him over the head with the heavy butts of their raw-hide whips. Howard still wanted to ride. I pointed out to him the impossibility of exhibiting to the public
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his six feet of lean young Australian in nothing but a pair of green bathing drawers. He answered that if he could only get a mount he would be quite willing to dispense with the drawers even. Howard also had a few remarks to offer about the Melbourne Cup, and Flemington Racecourse, and was not wholly complimentary to this Paraguayan country meeting. The ladies present were nearly all bare-foot, and clad in the invariable white petticoat and sheet. It was not in the least like the Royal enclosure at Ascot, yet they had far more on, and appeared more becomingly dressed than many of the ladies parading in that sacrosanct spot in this year of grace 1919. Every single woman, and every child, even infants of the tenderest age, had a green Paraguayan cigar in their mouths.
These Paraguayan women were as beautifully built as classical statues; with exquisitely moulded little hands and feet. Their "attaches," as the French term the wrist and ankles, were equally delicately formed. They were "tea with plenty of milk in it" colour, and though their faces were not pretty, they moved with such graceful dignity that the general impression they left was a very pleasing one.
Our blazers aroused rapturous enthusiasm. I am sure that the members of the "St. Kilda Wanderers" would have forgiven me for masquerading in their colours, could they have witnessed the terrific success I achieved in my tasteful, if brilliant, borrowed plumage.
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Asuncion pleased me. This quaint little capital, stranded in its backwater in the very heart of the South American Continent, was so remote from all the interests and movements of the modern world. The big three-hundred-year cathedral bore the unmistakable dignified stamp of the old Spanish "Conquistadores." It contained an altar-piece of solid silver reaching from floor to roof. How Lopez must have longed to melt that altar-piece down for his own use! Round the cathedral were some old houses with verandahs supported on palm trunks, beautifully carved in native patterns by Indians under the direction of the Jesuits. The Jesuits had also originally introduced the orange tree into Paraguay, where it had run wild all over the country, producing delicious fruit, which for some reason was often green, instead of being of the familiar golden colour.
Everyone envies what they do not possess. On the Continent cafés are sometimes decorated with pictures of palms and luxuriant tropical vegetation, in order to give people of the frozen North an illusion of warmth.
In steaming Asuncion, on the other hand, the fashionable café was named, "The North Pole." Here an imaginative Italian artist with a deficient sense of perspective and curious ideas of colour had decorated the walls with pictures of icebergs, snow, and Polar bears, thus affording the inhabitants of this stew-pan of a town a delicious sense of arctic coolness. The "North Pole" was the
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only place in Paraguay where ice and iced drinks were to be procured.
Being the height of the summer, the heat was almost unbearable, and bathing in the river was risky on account of those hateful biting-fish. There was a spot two miles away, however, where a stream had been brought to the edge of the cliff overhanging the river, down which it dropped in a feathery cascade, forming a large pool below it. Howard and I rode out every morning there to bathe and luxuriate in the cool water. The river made a great bend here, forming a bay half a mile wide. This bay was literally choked with Victoria regia, the giant water-lily, with leaves as big as tea-trays, and great pink flowers the size of cabbages. The lilies were in full bloom then, quite half a mile of them, and they were really a splendid sight. I seem somehow in this description of the Victoria regia to have been plagiarising the immortal Mrs. O'Dowd, of "Vanity Fair," in her account of the glories of the hot-houses at her "fawther's" seat of Glenmalony.
Few people now remember a fascinating book of the "'eighties," "The Cruise of the Falcon," recounting how six amateurs sailed a twenty-ton yacht from Southampton to Asuncion in Paraguay. Three of her crew got so bitten with Paraguay that they determined to remain there. We met one of these adventurers by chance in Asuncion, Captain Jardine, late of the P. and O. service, an elderly man. He invited us to visit them at
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Patiño Cué, the place where they had settled down, some twenty-five miles from the capital, though he warned us that we should find things extremely rough there, and that there was not one single stick of furniture in the house. He asked us to bring out our own hammocks and blankets, as well as our guns and saddles, the saddle being in my time an invariable item of a traveller's baggage.
Dick and I accordingly bought grass-plaited hammocks and blankets, and started two days later, "humping our swags," as the Australian picturesquely expressed the act of carrying our own possessions. That colour-loving youth had donned a different blazer, probably that of the "Coolgardie Cockatoos." It would have put Joseph's coat of many colours completely in the shade any day of the week, and attracted a great deal of flattering attention.
The ambitious Lopez had insisted on having a railway in his State, to show how progressive he was, so a railway was built. It ran sixty miles from Asuncion to nowhere in particular, and no one ever wanted to travel by it; still it was unquestionably a railway. To give a finishing touch to this, Lopez had constructed a railway station big enough to accommodate the traffic of Paddington. It was, of course, not finished, but was quite large enough for its one train a day. The completed portion was imposing with columns and statues, the rest tailed off to nothing. Here, to our amazement, we found a train composed of
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English rolling-stock, with an ancient engine built in Manchester, and, more wonderful to say, with an Englishman as engine-driver. The engine not having been designed for burning wood, the fire-box was too small, and the driver found it difficult to keep up steam with wood, as we found out during our journey. We travelled in a real English first-class carriage of immense antiquity, blue cloth and all. So decrepit was it that when the speed of the train exceeded five miles an hour (which was but seldom) the roof and sides parted company, and gaped inches apart. We seldom got up the gradients at the first or second try, but of course allowances must be made for a Paraguayan railway. Lopez had built Patiño Cué, for which we were bound, as a country-house for himself. He had not, of course, finished it, but had insisted on his new railway running within a quarter of a mile of his house, which we found very convenient.
I could never have imagined such a curious establishment as the one at Patiño Cué. The large stone house, for which Jardine paid the huge rent of £5 per annum, was tumbling to ruin. Three rooms only were fairly water-tight, but these had gaping holes in their roofs and sides, and the window frames had long since been removed. The fittings consisted of a few enamelled iron plates and mugs, and of one tin basin. Packing cases served as seats and tables, and hammocks were slung on hooks. Captain Jardine did all the cooking and ran the establishment; his two companions (Howard
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and I, for convenience's sake, simply termed them "the wasters") lay smoking in their hammocks all day, and did nothing whatever. I may add that "the wasters" supplied the whole financial backing. Jardine wore native dress, with bare legs and sandals, a poncho round his waist, and another over his shoulders. A poncho is merely a fringed brown blanket with hole cut in it for the head to pass through. With his long grey beard streaming over his flowing garments, Jardine looked like a neutral-tinted saint in a stained-glass window. It must be a matter for congratulation that, owing to the very circumstances of the case, saints in stained-glass windows are seldom called on to take violent exercise, otherwise their voluminous draperies would infallibly all fall off at the second step. Jardine was a highly educated and an interesting man, with a love for books on metaphysics and other abstruse subjects. He carried a large library about with him, all of which lay in untidy heaps on the floor. He was unquestionably more than a little eccentric. The "wasters" did not count in any way, unless cheques had to be written. The other members of the establishment were an old Indian woman who smoked perpetual cigars, and her grandson, a boy known as Lazarus, from a physical defect which he shared with a Biblical personage, on the testimony of the latter's sisters—you could have run a drag with that boy.
The settlers had started as ranchers; but the
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"wasters" had allowed the cattle to break loose and scatter all over the country. They had been too lazy to collect them, or to repair the broken fences, so just lay in their hammocks and smoked. There were some fifty acres of orange groves behind the house. The energetic Jardine had fenced these in, and, having bought a number of pigs, turned pork butcher. There was an abundance of fallen fruit for these pigs to fatten on, and Jardine had built a smoke-house, where he cured his orange-fed pork, and smoked it with lemon wood. His bacon and hams were super-excellent, and fetched good prices in Asuncion, where they were establishing quite a reputation.
Meanwhile, the "wasters" lay in their hammocks in the verandah and smoked. Jardine told me that one of them had not undressed or changed his clothes for six weeks, as it was far too much trouble. Judging from his appearance, he had not made use of soap and water either during that period.
Dick Howard proved a real "handy man." In two days this lengthy, lean, sunburnt youth had rounded up and driven home the scattered cattle, and then set to work to mend and repair all the broken fences. He caught the horses daily, and milked the cows, an art I was never able myself to acquire, and made tea for himself in a "billy."
Patiño Cué was a wonderful site for a house. It stood high up on rolling open ground, surrounded by intensely green wooded knolls. The
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virgin tropical forest extended almost up to the dilapidated building on one side, whilst in front of it the ground fell away to a great lake, three miles away. A long range of green hills rose the other side of the water, and everywhere clear little brooks gurgled down to the lake.
I liked the place, in spite of its intense heat, and stayed there over a fortnight, helping with the cattle, and making myself as useful as I could in repairing what the "wasters" had allowed to go to ruin. They reposed meanwhile in their hammocks.
It was very pretty country, and had the immense advantage of being free from mosquitoes. As there are disadvantages everywhere, to make up for this it crawled with snakes.
Jardine's culinary operations were simplicity itself. He had some immense earthen jars four feet high, own brothers to those seen on the stage in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" at pantomime time. These must have been the identical jars in which the Forty Thieves concealed themselves, to be smothered with boiling oil by the crafty Morgiana. By the way, I never could understand until I had seen fields of growing sesame in India why Ali Baba's brother should have mistaken the talisman words "Open Sesame" for "Open Barley." The two grains are very similar in appearance whilst growing, which explains it.
Jardine placed a layer of beef at the bottom of his jar. On that he put a layer of mandioca (the
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root from which tapioca is prepared), another layer of his own bacon, and a stratum of green vegetables. Then more beef, and so on till the jar was half full. In went a handful of salt, two handfuls of red peppers, and two gallons of water, and then a wood fire was built round the pot, which simmered away day and night till all its contents were eaten. The old Indian woman baked delicious bread from the root of the mandioca mixed with milk and cheese, and that constituted our entire dietary. There were no fixed meals. Should you require food, you took a hun............