PARAGUAY AND ITS PEOPLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6489, 18 May 1899, Page 4

PARAGUAY AND ITS PEOPLE.

(*y. FRAXTv a. CARPENTER.) (Chicago Intev-Ocaan.) Paraguay is the paradise of South .America,. Its climate is delightful, it:* , ecmi-tropical vegetation jus luxuriant as that of. the Garden of Eden, and it has about three Eves to every Adam. I have never been in a country where there are so many women. . They swarm. They trot by the scores through tlie streets of tho cities. They walk by you and with you on the highways and byways and they are so many that you find it hard to get out of their sight. The women of Paraguay are so much in the majority that they do the work of the country. They are the buyers and sellers of every community, and outside the cities' the men are the drones. Any bachelor in the United States can find a wife in Paraguay if he wants one. The sexes were once about equally divided,- but Paraguay, had a war' which killed off the men.. It was just before the close of our trouble between the north and the south. At that time Paraguay was about the richest country in South. America, and its wealth and influence angered the Argentine, Uruguay and Brazil. They combined against it and their joint army attacked the Paraguayans. The straggle lasted five years, but it ended in the wiping out, as it were, of the Paraguayan men. It is said that one hundred thousand of them died in battle and that thousands of women and children were starved to death. • It is hard to get accurate figures in any South American country, but, according to tho best estimates, the population of Paraguay was cut down by this war so that there was only one man to six women, while another statistician gives it that three-fourfchs of all the people in Paraguay, numbering about 800,000, were de'stroyed. When the war ended there were only 20.0,000 left, of whom about 25,000 were men and 106,000 were women over ' fifteen years of age. The rest were, children. Paraguay thus became a land of women, and nature seems to be keeping it so. Since the war I am told that more girls have been born eVery year than, boys, In Asuncion the girl births exceed theVbqy births by more than five- to the' hundred, and outride the city the percentage of girl babies is 'greater. •■' . .' THE WOMKN OF THE HIGHKK CLASS. .. ■Most of the women in Paraguay are poor. Many of them are hewers of wood and draw-; : . urs of water ; but there are some who are : rich. There are class distinctions here,, as .everywhere, and the people of the better class dress and- act much the same as those of other parts of the continent. Paraguayan h'gh-class ladies wear clothes not unlike tho:e of our American girls. They wear bonnets and hats, when out on tha stress, an: 1 a few of thenx actually import their dresses from Paris! They speak Spanish when in society— at least, when on dress parade— ar.d some are so well educated that (hey are able to read both English and Frerch Such women are usstally interested in politics, and, through their husbands', have much influence upon visit is done by,, j the ■Government. They are •goodhouse- : keepers, excellent wives, and nVorl may.' say, . the equals of their sisters of any part of 1 the continent. ' . : Many of the Paraguayan wot en are very i co d-kokin;,'. This is «> of all classes, and •.!. espownlly so of'tntf young. .A Paraguayan mrlcbn is a '.rifle under rai;dle height, She

is as straight as an arrow, jind as limber as a willow tree branch. Her complexion is of the Jersey cream order, and of ten ■ of . the reddish brown of the Guarani Indians. She has, as a rule, more or less Indian blood iii her veins. When the Spaniards came [ here this country was inhabited by the gentle and semi-civilised Guaranis. The two races intermarried. Their descendants took •wives from the same tribes, so that to-day there are comparatively few Paraguayans who have not a large proportion of Guarani blood. The Indian mixture has resulted in the adoption of many Indian customs, and the language most spoken by the people to-day is the .Guarani. In the country districts little else is used, and in the schools of Asuncion there are notices on the walls that scholars must not speak Guarani during school ■ hours. The' Guarani i3 a soft language, and the Paraguayan girls have sweet voices. ORANGES AND ORANGE GERLS. Paraguay is a land of oranges. ■ It is perhaps" the only place, in the world where Ihe orange grows wild. There are oranges in every thicket and in almost- every forost. The Villages are built in orange groves* 'and there are so many oranges that they often rot on live ground. The fruit is deliciou.-:. It is the best I believe of its kind in the world. It is eaten by everyone, and the orange girls are among fihe picturesque features of Paraguay. You may meet women peddling oranges at the stations. You find them surrounded by piles of golden fi-uib in every market and all along the Paraguay River they arc to be seen carrying oranges from' the 'land to the boats, which are to take them to • the markets of . the south . It is estimated' that' sixty million oranges are, ib» a ."""" ■■'•} '; down the Paraguay invar- to I>.:anos Ayres, and the loading of this fruit is one of the great sights of the voyage. As we came up to Asuncion we saw ui. every town mountains of oranges on tho shores with hundreds of Paraguay girls kneeling before them and putting them in baskets, while other hundreds were carrying .-them on the steamers. There are a hiuidred women at this work now, and the ship is already so loaded with, oranges that a wire netting has been stretched around ifc outside like a fence- and the fruit piled up within. The deck is so filled with oranges in fact, that the sailors are moving about on boards which have been nailed up above it. • • ■ ' • Stop and take a look at the girls. They arc passing to and from the bank over that roadway of boards 500ft long, which has been built upon trestles out to the steamers. Each has a round basket carefully poised en her head, and above these the golden oranges rise. The girls are dressed in. white gowiis, and the breeze which sweeps up the river wraps their thin skirts about their lithe forms. And still they walk, without touching their burdens, and the shaking uf the planks and jthe breeze from': the river iio not disturb them. THEY ABE BUSINESS WOMEN. The Paraguayan girls remind me of the girls of Japan. They look not unlike them. The features of* many Pai'aguayans are half-Japanese, and their luxuriant black hair is of the same character as that one sees in Japan. The Japanese women are good business women. This is also true of the Paraguayans. If you would see smart women traders, come and spend an hour ■with me in the market of Asuncion. It is situated in the heart of the city. . It covers an- entire square, and it looks more -like a monastery ,than "a place for buying and sellirig.Mts. roof extends out over cloisters ten, feet- wide,- ;iincl under" it there is a tier of cells .running about a hollow court and forming the walls of Ihe market house proper: The court, the cells, and the cloisters are filled with women. There are/hundreds of rhem all in their bare feet and many of them squatting on the bricks with their wares "before them. , Others stand behind butcher counters, and others have little tables covered with vegetables, laces, jewellery, clothing or shoes. Stop a bit and see how they sell. There are no scules or measures. That vegetable woman has a stock of green peas. She has arranged them in piles, about a pint to, the pile, and sells by eye measure. That 'butcher' worn' an behind her is cutting off iveat in great strips. The customers judge ■wha£ it is worth by its size, and all meat is sold by the chunk. CARBT HEA.VT THINGS ON THEIR HEADS. The head and not the arms is the place of burden of the Paraguayan women. If we stand a moment at the corner of the market we can see all sorts of curious tilings coming and going on the heads of women. There conies a girl now at a two-forty pace 'with a demijohn on her crown and a load of wood an her arms. Her black face is wrapped in a black shawl, and her blacklegs show oxit under her white skirt halfway below her knees. There is another woman with a while sheet 11.11 riinrt her head and shoulders. Notice that platter filled with . oranges and vegetables upon her head. There is a -great piece of raw meat on its top,. She walks alonff without touching her burden, and that is the case with all the women about us. Here domes a young girl with a bundle of sticks perfectly balanced on the trip of her cranium and with her lianas at lier. sides. She has bought as much firewood as you could hold in your arms, and she i:carrying it home. Behind her: comes a young. .mother with a similar bundle and a baby in her arms. See she has stopped to make a purchase of that orange peddler, over the way. Notice how carefully she stoops doAvn without bending her bacir. There, she has picked up half a dozen oranges and stuck them in among the firewood, and is walking off-: without trouble. And so we go in and out through the crowd, jostling and being jostled by women with bags of potatoes, baskets of corn, firewood and bottles, on ■ the tops of tiheir heads. We beg pardon at every step, fov we fear that a push may throw a basket of eggs to the ground, .or a chunk of raw red meat: "on some woman's head may be thrown off on our. clothes. . There is no danger, however, for every - woman 1 can handle her burden on her head quite as well as though she were carrying.it in her arms. The market is a good" place to see how little it costs for a poor- Paraguay family to live. Everything is sold in small!-quan-tities, and it cannot coat much for the average woman to keep house? The clothes of the poor arc exceedingly scanty. All the women go barefooted and all go bareheaded. It does not cost much to dress them, and a full suit can be bought- for 2do! in gold. Nearly all wear shawl? about tliexr chocohite or cream-coloured faoes. • HOUSKIIHKPING IN- I'AKAGtTAT. The common people here have indeed. but few wants. They do not seem to care much for money, and think: one- who works like ■a foreigner is very foolish indeed. I venture that the av,eras>e familv of Par-aguay-does not spend as. much in. a. year as •the. '-family- of our labouring class spends." a month. The* houses outside the cities- are huts of poles chinked with mud and Jbofcd with brown, thatch. "They have dirt .floors, and_ there, are, as a rule, neitheii .fences nor gardens/. The, ttsun.l hut is noV ..mo'r.« than fifteen feet^sQiaare, but it often ' lias- an open shed' of tluj same size joinei 1 if.v.ii: As it is warm, the': shed is freauentlv thf;- most comfortable part of the bouse •* .•There is little furaiture.: A hammock or ; so, one- or- 'two cot beds made of canvas and stretcher*,, a table nndti couple of chairs 1 ?6rn> a goo<i houselraeping outfit. The ' cooking. is- often done over an open fire in , the shed, and cook stoves tiro not commo'i ;'The chief meals are breakfast at eleven <fnd dinner at six, with a cup of mate or Paraguayan tea in the morning. The food is chiefly punchero, a soup of Ijoiled beef and -Vegetables/ and mamuoea, a kind of, a. po-tato-like root, which is dried and "round into a flour. The soup is often eaten first and the boiled beef and vegetables brought in as a second course. But little' coffee"'or ■tea, is drunk at meals, and U lc 01% liquor /•used by the common peopled a villainous '^tm mude pf-.sflgar callpd canyji.. ,

The Quintessence 01 Cinnamon has lam. bp,ea recognised as having a Powerful i 21 fl we j~*"> over the bacilli of consumption' Pnd tvphokl cud further experiments resulted i a v£o j>erfooting of an octual rismcdy for consumptio" This is Tqwnend's eo'.«bratoa Cii; nnft , Qn