Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay. Richard Francis Burton
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Bisingallo, an angular and pointed grain, which gives the sweetest flour.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 7
ill 1857 of twenty-five departments^ including one in the Gran Cliaco, and the other on the left bank of the Parana River. Each of these divisions had one or more towns, villages, or chapels, with a military commandant, a juge de paix, and a curate. The capital is Asuncion, numbering some 12,000 souls, which anchors raise to 15,000, to 21,000, and Colonel du Gratz to 48,000. Other places of name are El Pilar, which we shall visit, Villa Rica, a pauper central set- tlement in the richest lands, hence generally known as Villa Pobre, and differing little from the various Pueblos, Pueblitos, and Capillas, south of the Tebicuary. It lies in south latitude 25° 47' 10, and west longitude 56° 30' 20", some 323 feet above Asuncion, and 580 higher than Buenos Aires. Villa Real is built on the river eighty leagues above Asuncion. Twenty leagues further is Tevego, now Fort Bourbon or Olympo, the " Botany Bay of Dr. Francia ; and there are sundry minor places, as Encarnacion on the Parana, and La Villeta, S. Pedro, and Concepcion on the Paraguay, rivers. These are dignified with the pompous titles of cities and towns. They are mere villages and hamlets.
Where the limits of a country are not accurately laid down we know what to think of its census. Moreover, the case of Paraguay is complicated by the admission or non-admission of the so-called " Indian " element. We" must therefore not be astonished to find that, about the beginning of the war, the extremes of estimate varied be- tween 350,000 and 1,500,000.
In 1795 the accurate Azara gives the official census as 97,480 souls, including 11,000 ^'^ mission Indians.-*^ In 1818 Messrs. Rodney and Graham* report 300,000. In
Mr. (sometimes called Colonel) Graham, United States' Consul at
Buenos Aires, was sent to Paraguaj^ by Mr. Brent, American Charge d' Affaires to the Argentine Confederation. He was received with great suspicion, and he was long delayed at El Pilar.
8 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
1825 Messrs. Rengger and Longcharaps suggest 200,000, of whom 800 only were whites or Spaniards. The Brothers Robertson (Jan. 1st, 1838) increase the figure to 300,000 souls, with a regular force of 3000 but never 4000 men. In 1839-40, the census of Paraguay, ordered by Dr. Francia before his death, numbers 220,000 souls, and this estimate is probably the most reliable. In 1848 General Pacheco y Obes* suggests 600,000 to 700,000 souls. In 1857 Colonel du Graty, probably including the Indians, exaggerates it to 1,337,449, whereas the vast Argentine Confederation had at that time about one and a-half millions. Since 1856 all children of strangers born in Paraguay have become by law citizens, but they are too few to be of any importance. In 1860 M. Demersay allows 625,000 souls, and after the calculations of Azara, 18,041 female to 16,753 male births. The book officially published in the same year, under the direction of the Paraguayan Government, increases the sum to 1,337,439, which at the beginning of the war, in 1865, would give in round numbers, 400,000. The "Almanac de Gotha,^^ in 1861, suggests 800,000, and this number is repeated by Captain Mouchez in 1862. On the other hand, the late Dr. Martin de Moussy unduly reduces it under official in- spiration to 350,000. Mr. Gould (1868) places the total between 700,000 and 800,000, justly remarking that there are no reliable data for the computation. He estimates the loss during the war at 100,000 men (including 80,000 by disease), and this would exceed the whole number of
"Le Paraguay, son Passe, son Present et son Avenir; par un
Etranger qui a vecu longtemps dans le pays. Ouvrage public ^ Eio Janeiro en 1848, et reproduit en France, par le General Oriental Pacheco y Obes. Paris : Lacombe. 1851." The general prefixed a preface to the work of a resident of more than six years' standing, probably a medical man.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 9
the army at first levied.* The Times newspaper adopts the figure 600,000, with a fighting force of 20,000. And it is understood that Dr. Stewart and other officers tho- roughly conversant with the country, further diminish it to 400,000.
Colonel du Graty would make the population double in seventeen years ; but this formula is also officially inspired, and is probably greatly exaggerated. The population of Buenos Aires has trebled in twenty-five years ; but in her case there has been a most important influx of foreigners. Moreover, from the days of Azara, it has been believed that in Paraguay the births of the sexes are not equal. ' Un fait assez notable est la proportion plus forte des naissances du sexe feminin que celles du sexe masculin.^' (Du Graty, 265.) This peculiarity would doubtless be the effect of the hot damp climate of the lowlands aff'ecting the procreative powers of the male, and combined with the debauchery of the people, would, to a certain extent, tend to limit multiplication. We may, I believe, safely adopt the 220,000 souls of Dr. Francia's census in 1840, and double them for 1865, thus obtaining at most 450,000 inhabitants, of whom 110,000 would be fighters between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five, and perhaps 150,000 of twelve to sixty years old. It is evident that the male popu- lation must now be almost destroyed or deported. Since early 1865, marriages have been rare, and of late they have ceased to be contracted. Paraguay will presently be left with a population of some 200,000 women and children— our 1,500,000 of inutilized women are nothing to such propor- tions as these. Unless she establish polygamy her history is at an end.
The Paraguayan race may be divided into four dis-
Colonel Thompson, C.E. (Chap. Y.), computes the Paraguayan army
in April, 1865, at about 80,000 men.
10 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
tinct types. The few hundred " Whites ^^ forming the aristocracy of the land^ are descended from the blue blood of Spain and Biscay through Guarani and other red- skin women^ and they have kept themselves tolerably pure by intermarriage,, or by connexion with Europeans. The nobility, therefore, is Spanish ; the mobility is not. The mulatto or ^^ small ears " is a mixture of the white with the Indian or the Negro, the third and fourth breeds ; as usual, he is held to be ignoble : an " Indian^^ might enter the priesthood ; not so the mulatto. The same was the case in the United States, and in the Brazil — the instinct of mankind concerning such matters is everywhere the same. It is only the philanthropist who closes his ears to the voice of common sense.
It is a mistake to consider the Paraguayans as a homogeneous race. The Whites or Spaniards preponde- rated in and about Asuncion ; whereas at Villa Rica the " Indian element was strong. About 1600-1628, the " Mamelukes of S. Paulo having seized and plundered the nearest Reduction of Jesus and Mary in the province of La Guayra, distant only 900 miles from their city, the people fled to Central Paraguay, and their descendants, the Villa Ricans, are still known as Guayrenos. In the southern and south- eastern parts of the country the blood was much mixed with Itatins"^ or Itatinguays, a clan which also migrated from the banks of the Yi River to the seaboard of Brazilian S. Paulo. When independence was declared, the negroes who were household servants did not exceed 2000 — others reduce them to 1000. The Consular Government decreed the womb to be free, and forbad further import. Until very lately, however, slaves were sold in Paraguay.
Thej may be called so from their original settlements, Ita-tin, mean-
ing a white stone.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 11
The Paraguayo — not Paragueno, as some travellers write the word — is, then^ a Hispano-Guarani, and he is, as a rule, far more " Indian'^ than Spanish. Most of the prisoners with whom I conversed were in fact pure redskins. The figure is somewhat short and stout, but well put together, with neat, shapely, and remarkably small extremities. The brachycephalic head is covered with a long straight curtain of blue-black hair, whilst the beard and mustachios are rare, except in the case of mixed breeds. The face is full, flat, a ad circular ; the cheekbones are high, and laterally salient; the forehead is low, remarkably contrasting with the broad, long, heavy, and highly-de- veloped chin ; and the eyes are often oblique, being raised at the exterior canthi, with light or dark-brown pupils, well- marked eyebrows, and long, full, and curling lashes. The look is rather intelligent than otherwise, combined with an expression of