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Updated: May 27, 2025
Their large dark eyes are shaded with heavy eyebrows, and their hair is as black as the crow's wing, but very coarse, notwithstanding the constant attention which its owners devote to it. Add to this, and spoiling all, an immense cigar in each mouth, for the Paraguayan women all smoke incessantly. Even children of tender years smoke, and the only ones exempt from the habit are babes at the breast.
When it is realized that, roughly, only one Paraguayan out of five was left of the entire population at the end of the five years' war, the extent of the deep horrors of that period may begin to be understood, although its full tragedy can scarcely be imagined by the dwellers in more settled and peaceful countries.
The hard and dry Spanish wine used at the entertainment is drunk out of large beer-glasses. The mistress of the house and the officers of the Paraguayan guard that composes the political chief's escort act as waiters.
The Paraguayan caymans are not ordinarily dangerous to man; but they do sometimes become man-eaters and should be destroyed whenever the opportunity offers. The huge caymans and crocodiles of the Amazon are far more dangerous, and the colonel knew of repeated instances where men, women and children had become their victims.
On one of these occasions the head chief of the Tovas tribe, by name Naraguana, having imbibed too freely of guarape, and in some way got separated from his people, became the butt of some Paraguayan boys, who were behaving towards him just as the idle lads of London or the gamins of Paris would to one appearing intoxicated in the streets.
I was able to procure the skins of two of these giant serpents. The leader of the "forest gang," a Paraguayan, wore round his neck a cotton scapular bought from the priest before he started on the expedition. This was supposed to save him from all dangers, seen and unseen. Poor man, he was a good Roman Catholic, and often counted his beads, but he was an inveterate liar and thief.
At the mouth of the river is the island of Cerrito, formerly the Paraguayan Gibraltar, and now the Gibraltar of the Brazilians, who maintain there a garrison and an arsenal for the equipment of their navy. After passing the Cerrito the Paraguay winds in its course and becomes narrow the width not exceeding twelve hundred feet and of greater depth than the Parana.
Without a word of protest, or objection, the young Paraguayan does as requested, and is soon inside the holiday shirt; his own having been laid aside, as also his jaqueta, calzoneras, and every other article of dress worn by him.
One of the few really wise moves which Lopez had made during the war was the wholesale planting of orange-trees, the growth of which was wont to flourish to an extraordinary degree in Paraguayan soil. The numerous new groves now proved, to a certain extent, the salvation of the population, and the fruit was eagerly devoured.
With these two pieces de resistance nothing remains but to make a cup of "Paraguay tea," for which Gaspar has provided all the materials, viz., an iron kettle for boiling water, cups of cocoa-nut shell termed mates for this is the name of the vessel, not the beverage and certain tubes, the bombillas, to serve as spoons; the Paraguayan tea being imbibed, not in the ordinary way, but sucked up through these bombillas.
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