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"We do," replies Gaspar, speaking for both. "In a dead right line, thank the sun for that; and I only wish we could have had it to direct us a little longer, instead of leaving us in the lurch as it has done. But go on, senorito! I oughtn't to have interrupted you." "Well," proceeds the young Paraguayan, "there's no reason why we shouldn't still travel in that same right line since we can."
The more surely from the fact that the whole system of Paraguayan polity under Dr Francia's regime was one of treachery and espionage, every individual in the land finding it to his profit to do dirty service for "El Supremo" as they styled their despotic chief. On the other side there was the river, but still more difficult would it be to make escape in that direction.
Can it be that the interrupted treaty of peace has been renewed, and friendship re-established between Naraguana and the Paraguayan Dictator? Even now, Valdez may be on a visit to the Tovas tribe on that very errand a commissioner to arrange new terms of intercourse and amity? It certainly appears as if something of the kind had occurred.
The dead are always interred in the family garden, and these marked the site of the graves. When the people can afford it, a priest is brought to perform the sad rite of burial, but the Paraguayan Pai is proverbially drunken and lazy. Once after a church feast, which was largely given up to drinking, the priest fell over on the floor in a state of intoxication.
In the early forenoon we stopped at a little Paraguayan hamlet, nestling in the green growth under a group of low hills by the river- brink. On one of these hills stood a picturesque old stone fort, known as Fort Bourbon in the Spanish, the colonial, days. Now the Paraguayan flag floats over it, and it is garrisoned by a handful of Paraguayan soldiers.
His personality was viewed with confidence in Europe, and so long as he occupied the throne the very important question of foreign loans presented few difficulties. The influence of the Emperor was especially notable at the conclusion of the Paraguayan War, when the finances of Brazil were in an exhausted condition.
The report of his prosperity had reached the ears of Francia, Paraguay's then despot and dictator, who, with other strange theories of government, held the doctrine that the cultivation of "yerba" was a right exclusively Paraguayan in other words, belonging solely to himself.
During the later years of his office a comparatively undisturbed era obtained, and he held the reins of the Paraguayan Government with a firm hand till his death, which occurred at the age of seventy-one. On Irala's death, it was only natural that those elements of discord and jealousy which his strong personality had kept in check should break out, and cause no little confusion and strife.
The captive gives a start of surprise, the light of hope and joy, long absent from her eyes, rekindling in them, as another light breaks upon her. "Of whom does Nacena speak?" "Of your brother the fair-haired youth, your cousin the dark Paraguayan, and the gaucho who has guided them hither. All three are close to the tolderia, on the other side of the hill as I've said, expecting you.
His host in the town, a prosperous shopkeeper, invites him to dinner, and at the table he meets the mistress of the house, a tall, handsome Paraguayan woman, who receives him and his fellow-traveler with polished courtesy. She belongs to the class of the posterity of the old Spanish colonists.
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