Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay. Richard Francis Burton
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Mr. Wilcocke (1807), who borrows without acknowledgment from Davie and other authors, echoes " variety of colours."
" Y " is written in the Tupi or Brazilian dialect, " ig," or " yg."
The sound, somewhat like the French " eu " in " eut," for instance, was and is still, a shibboleth for foreigners. We find, by a curious coincidence, which of course has no serious etymological significance, the Celtic Gauls expressing water by the terminal "y," for instance in vich-y = vich (strength or virtue) and " y," water.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 3
" Paraguay/' says D. Pedro de Angelis (1810)^ " must be translated, the River running out of the lake Xarayes, celebrated for its wild rice. The derivation would be Para, sea, gua, of, and y, water/'
"Paraguay," which in some old MSS. is written Paraquay, says Rengger, " is simply ' sea-water hole,' from Para, the sea, and qua-y, water- hole."
" Paraguay," says popular opinion, " merely expresses water of the (celebrated) Payaguaor Canoe tribe of Indians, corrupted into Paragua by the first Spanish settlers." *
" Paraguay," says Lieut. -Col. George Thompson, C.E., "is literally, ' the river pertaining to the sea' (Para, the sea, gua, pertaining to, and y — pronounced ii — river or water) ." Colonel Thompson, I may here remark, is spoken of as an excellent Guarani scholar, and he has prepared for publi- cation a vocabulary of that interesting moribund tongue.
An eighth derivation, for which there exists no authority, is " Water of the Penelope bird" (the Ortalida Parraqua, still common on its banks).
Without attempting to decide a question so disputed by authorities so respectable and so discrepant, I would observe, that even as late as 1837, a tribe of Guaranis had for chief one Paragua; that such names have been handed down amongst them from extreme antiquity; and that, both in Portuguese and in Spanish America, the conquerors often called geographical features after the caciques whom they debelled or slew. Paraguay therefore, may mean the river of (the kinglet) " Paragua."
It is not easy to treat of the topography and geography of Paraguay. Some portions, — for instance, the Paraguay river and the Parana to the parallel of Villa Rica, and even to the rapids of La Guayra — have for three centuries been travelled over and surveyed. On the other hand, the most tropical division of the Cordillera, which, runniDg north
1—2
4 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
from Villa Rica to the Apa River^ traverses the Republic like a dorsal spine^ may be pronounced to be in parts com- pletely unknown.
The limits of the Republic are undetermined ; upon this subject she has differences with all her neighbours^ — with Brazil_, with Bolivia^ and with the Argentine Confederation. A detailed history of these disputes would fill many a volume. She claims to extend between S. lat. 22° 58' and 37° 50' j and she traces her frontier up the Parana after its confluence with the Paraguay River to the Cordillera of the Misionesj thence to the line of the S. Antonio Mini till it falls into the River of Curitiba, then again bending west- ward up the Parana, and more westward still up the Ivenheima affluent (so called by the Brazilians, the Igurey or Yaguarey of the Spaniards), and finally over the moun- tains to the valley of the Rio Blanco (S. lat. 21°). Westward the limitation remains for adjustment with Bolivia, and to the southwest the Rio Bermejo separates the Paraguayan from the Argentine Republic. This demarcation, including the disputed territory between the Rio Blanco and Rio Apa (the Crooked Stream alias Corrientes) and others, in- volves a trifle of square 860 leagues.
Under these circumstances, as may be imagined, the area of the Republic is a disputed point. I will briefly cite the extreme views of other authors.
Messrs. Rengger and Longchamps (1825) allow to her 10,000 square leagues.
Mr. Demersay^s estimate is :
Square Leagues. Lands between the Parana and Paraguay Rivers . . . 10,413
Ditto ditto in Grand Chain 16,537
Ditto the Parana and Uruguay Rivers . . . 1,820
Total square leagues . 28,770*
These are square Spanish leagues=26,759 French, or 26,935 of 25 to
the deyrree.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 5
Colonel du Graty conjectures the extent of the Republic to represent a total of square Spanish leagues 29,470 — viz.,
Land east of the Paraguay River . . 11,123
Land west ditto . . 16,537 (purely fanciful).
The Misiones claim 1,820
Of these vast areas, only 2500 square leagues are supposed to be inhabited, cultivated, or used for cattle breeding.
We may concisely lay down the limits of Paraguay thus : the river of that name and the Gran Chaco limit the west, the Parana bounds the east and south, separating her from the Argentine Confederation; and northwards begins the Brazilian Empire. The parallelogram admits of two great divisions : the northern is a mountainous mass averaging, as far as is known, 1200 metres above sea level ; the southern is a delta or doab, in places lower than the two rivers which form it. Between the two is a middle part, called the " Cordilleritas,-'^ rarely exceeding in height 120 metres ; and here, the uplands fall into the lowlands. Such, for in- stance, are the Campos Quebrados (broken prairie), north of Asuncion; the Altos'^ about Paraguay and Asciirra, one of the places where Marshal President Lopez established his guerilla head quarters; and the "Lomada"" — a continuity of "Lomas,^^ or land-waves, immediately south of Asuncion.
The northern mountain-masses are conjectured to be of trap formation, and to inosculate with the Highlands of the Brazil, especially with the Serra do Espinha90, whose out- lines extend to the Andine system. The trend is laid down as quasi-meridional; the Oriental slopes are the more abrupt, and the ridge divides the Republic into two planes. Thus there is a double watershed of about equal areas, E.S.-eastward to the Parana, W.S.-westward to the Paraguay, and the streams are unimportant. The Cordillera is supposed to rise in Matto Grosso, about S. lat. 19°, under the names of Sierra de Amambay (the Tupi Samambaia, or poly-
6 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
podium), de S. Jose or de Maracaju (the Jesuits' Mbaracuyu, the Passion Flower). Running with southerly rhumb it fines off into a dos d^ane, under the names of Nabi- leque, Caa-guazu (large Yerba), and Cuchilla Grande, the divortium aquarum which throws ofi* the Tebicuary River. It then sinks into low hills some six miles north of the line of railway ; whilst the main ridge diverging to the east, forms, where traversed by the Parana River, the Rapids south of La Guayra. Finally, entering the Brazilian provinces of Parana and S. Paulo, it inosculates with the Eastern ghauts, the Serra do Mar; and in the south-east it joins the Cordillera of Misiones. This mountainous sec- tion of the Republic, deeply cut by streams and torrents, abounds in game, and is rich in primaeval forests of valuable timber : the savage Redskins, however, still hold possession of the land, and exploration will be costly, if not perilous.
The remainder of the republic is an expanse of drowned Savannahs lying between the two mighty rivers, and it is believed that the western half, drained by the Paraguay, is on a lower plane than that discharging into the Parana. The ground much resembles the Gran Chaco, an alluvial detritus from the Andes, filling up the great basin of Pampas formation. Here is supposed to grow the Abati Guaniba or wild maize,* and this is said to be the home of the Ombii Fig, as the mountains are of the Araucaria (Braziliensis) pine. I need not now describe the features of the land to which my diary will lead me.
As regards her political distribution, Paraguay consisted
Old writers give four kinds of maize in these regions: — 1. Abati
nata, a very hard grain. 2. Abati moroti, in Tupi " Marity" (means shining), a soft and white grain. 3. Abati mini, a small grain