Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875. Various
during a part of the year is transformed into a lake. Throughout this region decay and ruin have set their seal on what was formerly one of the most prosperous parts of the republic. Orange trees grow in wild profusion on the spots where once stood farm-houses, while mud ranchos, tenanted by a few old women who sustain life with oranges and manioc, here and there disturb the monotony of desolation. The early Jesuits have left their traces in their churches, college squares now empty, and houses gone to wreck, while their labors in the cause of religion and civilization are recalled in the names of saints borne by the villages. At Carapegua, which owes what importance it possesses to its proximity to Paraguari and the railroad, our traveler once more finds himself amid the products of civilization, for on the shelves of the grocery stores are displayed, among other wares, cans of preserved fruits and meats from Europe.
From Carapegua, M. Forgues journeys to Paraguari, a day's ride. Eight days later he is in Asuncion, and ready to take passage on the Republica for Buenos Ayres. "From the preceding extracts," he writes, "a very exact idea may be formed of a journey in the interior of Paraguay at the present time. How to procure a piece of bread is a matter of serious moment: riding on horseback fifteen leagues at a stretch, or threatening to blow out somebody's brains, is, as it were, a matter of daily occurrence. What is seen and done there is often monstrous compared with our European customs, and yet is not even shocking there where it is seen and done."
The political future of the country is still an unsolved problem. The rule of the dictators, which the allied powers specifically covenanted among themselves to destroy, has ended, probably for ever. When the war closed with the death of Lopez, chaos prevailed in Paraguay, and the people were both bankrupt in fortune and degraded in morals. The reign of outlaws commenced, and it was dangerous to go beyond Asuncion and into the interior. But the Brazilians and the Argentines occupied the capital with a force strong enough to maintain order, and to convince the Paraguayans that their rule must be respected. To-day Paraguay possesses only a nominal independence. She has her president, and he has his cabinet, who hold their offices under the constitution of the republic; but from the glimpse that M. Forgues has given us of the submissive spirit of these officials, it is clear that they themselves feel that they govern only by the sufferance of their conquerors. The policy of Dom Pedro's government is to intervene Paraguay between Brazil and the Argentine Confederation in order to prevent a clashing of interests between his empire and its late ally. In the mean time, Paraguay is loaded with heavy debts, contracted under Brazilian auspices since the war, in the shape of loans and obligations which must weigh her down for a long time. To illustrate the attitude of Brazil toward the conquered state one incident, and a recent one, will suffice. In the autumn of 1874 the boundary commission, composed of Brazilian and Paraguayan officers, set out for the final survey of the new boundary-line between Paraguay and Brazil. The commission had been engaged on this duty for two years, and last November it brought its work to a close. The line fixed by the Brazilians follows the Apa River from its junction with the Paraguay to its source, and thence extends along the summit of the cordillera to the falls of the Parana—the Salto de la Guayra of the Paraguayans and the Siete Quedas of the Brazilians. The Brazilian commissioners took advantage of the fact that the Apa River has two forks, and chose the south fork as the boundary. This selection added a few hundred square miles to the territory of the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, but, in spite of the protests and objections of Paraguay, the boundary treaty has been made on the basis of the Brazilian idea of what is right between the two governments. The liberty of opinion accorded to Paraguay by Brazil is merely the liberty which a cat grants to a captive mouse, to run about within reach of its sheathed claws.
A TALE OF THE CONSCRIPTION
One afternoon, some years ago, I was walking along a narrow old road which leads from Le Crotay, a fishing-village in Picardy, to the town of St. Valéry-sur-Somme. It was in the month of February, and one of those luckless days on which cold, wind and rain all seem banded in league against the comfort of mankind: the sky, dull and lowering, presented to the eye nothing but a bleak, cheerless desert of gray, relieved only by troops of dark, inky clouds, which would at moments, as though flying the fury of a raging storm, roll pell-mell through the air like an army in rout, pouring down at the same time through the thick, black fog that covered land and sea like a pall a deluge of cold, heavy water, which occasional blasts of a violent north-west wind would lash into whistling, pelting and drenching gusts. It was wretched weather; and how I came to be out in it I am sure I forget; but perhaps it was that the morning had been a bright one, and that, beguiled by the clear winter sun, which threw its will-o'-the-wisp rays on my table like gold-edged invitation cards to be stirring, I had set out joyously in hopes of a good bracing walk on the hard, frost-dried roads, which, seen from my windows, gleamed smooth and glistening as white marble, or, again, in expectation of a gay stroll through the crisp, clean snow which draped the fields with its downy folds and reflected the morning light in opal tints like the glossy satin of a wedding-dress.
But in any case, and whatever may have been my reasons for so doing, certain it is that about noon I had ventured out; and equally so that some two hours after I had good reasons to regret my presumption, for at three, having already wandered far from home, I found myself tramping on the road I have named, wearily plodding my way through a slough of thawing snow, teeth chattering, eyes watering and fingers numbed, whilst a wind fit to dethrone all the weather-cocks in Christendom was ploughing up the earth in showers of mud around me, blowing my hat off my head and howling in my ears like a maniac who has broken his chains and got loose.
I groaned pitifully amidst all this: in the first place, because I had no umbrella; and in the second, because I had no companion to be drenched through with me; for it is a curious fact, and one aptly illustrative of the happy way in which man is constituted, that, whereas I should most certainly have scrupled to ask a dog out on such a day, yet I should have felt the most pleasurable relief in seeing a fellow-being soaked like a towel in my company. The fact is, man is a sociable animal, and, loving to share his emotions with his neighbors, steps into a puddle with a lighter heart when a bosom friend is being wetted to the skin by his side.
Lacking a partner, however, I trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before finding a shelter of any kind. I think I must have been walking thus three-quarters of an hour when I suddenly heard the music of two pairs of hobnailed boots splashing in the dirt behind me, and forming between them a symphony, the charms of which those only who have been in the same predicament as I can appreciate. "Thank the Fates!" I murmured, and stopped to allow the comers to reach me, noting with a grim smile that they were covered with mud from top to toe, and as damp as a couple of Malvern hydropaths. Their plight was every whit as pitiable as mine; and although the rain had not abated its flow or the wind its strength, yet I almost felt as though it had grown fine again. Corroborative proof of the sociability of the human race.
The two men who were stepping along the road in my direction, and reconciling me by their crestfallen demeanor with the inclemencies of the season, were peasants. The one was an old man, gray-haired, stooping, and apparently sixty years of age: the other, his son, as I afterward found out, was a mere youth of, at the most, twenty. They were strikingly alike in physiognomy, notwithstanding the difference in their years, but neither had anything at all remarkable either in his looks or general appearance: both were small, clumsy-limbed, somewhat simple-faced, rather ugly; and on the whole they were a very commonplace, every-day-to-be-seen pair of countrymen.
Both mechanically raised their rusty beaver hats as they approached me; but after wishing me a short "Good-evening" continued, much to my surprise and no less to my disappointment, to walk on without taking the slightest notice of me, or, indeed, seeming to remember that I existed; and this although I stepped by their side and tried to keep pace with them.
"This is poor weather," I observed, in hopes of starting a conversation with my fellow-wayfarers.
"Yes, sir," was the curt reply, and both relapsed again into silence, receiving in monosyllables or with simple shrugs of the shoulders every attempt of mine—and I made many—to renew an intercourse.
As such uncivil taciturnity is very rare amongst Frenchmen, I began to examine my companions