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Updated: June 25, 2025
Caymans were common, and differed from the crocodiles we had seen in Africa in two points: they were not alarmed by the report of a rifle when fired at, and they lay with the head raised instead of stretched along the sand. For three days, as we steamed northward toward the Tropic of Capricorn, and then passed it, we were within the Republic of Paraguay.
The range of the animal is very extensive. It is known from Paraguay to the Great Lakes of North America. In no part of either continent is it to be seen every day, because it is for the most part not only nocturnal in its activity, but one of those fierce creatures that, fortunately, do not exist in large numbers.
Under his auspices, churches on a magnificent scale have been erected, schools for elementary instruction founded, and every rational means taken to spread the knowledge of religious truth, while he has carried his solitary mission into remote and almost inaccessible regions, or gathered his Indian disciples into communities, like the good Las Casas in Cumana, or the Jesuits in California and Paraguay.
In 1859 the Paraguay was made free by treaty, and in December, 1866, the Emperor of Brazil by imperial decree declared the Amazon to be open to the frontier of Brazil to the merchant ships of all nations.
Among the most notable of them was a Portuguese, Ricardo Franco, who spent forty years at the work, during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the opening years of the nineteenth centuries. He ascended for long distances the Xingu and the Tapajos, and went up the Madeira and Guapore, crossing to the head-waters of the Paraguay and partially exploring there also.
The Dictator's full title was "Jefe Supremo y General de los Exercitos de la Republica del Paraguay"; his familiar title, and the one he most encouraged, was "Supremo." With the power once in his hands, Francisco Solano Lopez changed his tactics as completely and as abruptly as had Francia in his day. Tyranny once more became the accepted order of things.
By the time he is four years old there is scarcely a colt in all the Argentine that he will not fearlessly mount; at six, he whirls a miniature lasso around the horns of every goat or ram he meets. At twenty-one he is in his glory. Then we must look for him in the pulperías, the bar-rooms of the Pampas, whither he repairs on Sundays and fiestas, to get drunk on aguardiente or on Paraguay rum.
With these they hooked into the branches and dragged themselves up along the bank, in addition to poling where the depth permitted it. The river was as big as the Paraguay at Corumba; but, in striking contrast to the Paraguay, there were few water-birds. We ran some rather stiff rapids, the Infernino, without unloading, in the morning.
But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never have cared to show himself in the streets of Assuncion; for, like all true naturalists, he had no affection for city life. Assuncion, however, being the only shipping port in Paraguay, he had no choice but repair thither whenever his collections became large enough to call for exportation.
It used to be said that there were five women to every man in Paraguay and from all reports conditions have not greatly changed yet. It is almost dangerous for an unmarried man to show his head. The country is naturally divided into two parts, eastern and western.
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