Paraguay is in the longitudinal center of South America, and, with the exception of Bolivia, is the only country on the continent that does not border on the sea. Next to Uruguay it is the smallest of the South American republics, possessing a territory of 196,000 square miles. Until the break with Spain, in 1813, it was, like Uruguay, part and parcel of La Plata colony, under the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Buenos Aires, and was known as the Province of Paraguay. As will be observed from a glance at the map, it is hedged in by Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina, and is separated from its twin sister, Uruguay, by an arm of the mother country (Misiones Territory) that reaches up into Brazil between the ParanÁ and Uruguay rivers.

For a proper acquaintance with the country it must be conceived as a dual personality, for it is divided longitudinally by the river Paraguay into western Paraguay, or the Chaco, and eastern Paraguay, or Paraguay proper. It is in the latter region that the republic has its being and in which the visitor’s interest is naturally centered. El Chaco is a vast, thickly wooded, and, for the most part, savage and unexplored section that was awarded to Paraguay by our President Hayes as arbitrator of its boundary dispute with Argentina; in gratitude the government named the chief settlement in the territory Villa Hayes. The region is now given over almost wholly to the immigrant Swiss, German, Italian and other communities that have been started on the west bank of the river, and to nomadic bands of still uncivilized Indians.

With a climate similar to that of southern California, Paraguay, throughout its entire extent, is blessed with abundant rain the year round. It is well watered and quite thickly wooded, and thus protected from the intense heat usual in low-lying countries.

Eastern Paraguay resembles Uruguay in its rolling, fertile areas, but is more mountainous. On the northern frontier is the range known as the Quinze Puntas. Inclosing the country on the east are the Cordilleras of Amambay and MbaracayÚ, while down the center, from north to south, run a broken series of lesser sierras and the range called CaaguazÚ, forming a ridge or backbone that subdivides this half of Paraguay into the two great basins drained by the ParanÁ River on the east and the Paraguay on the west.

Almost the whole of Paraguay proper has forests of valuable woods with occasional clear places, where settlers have made serviceable the marvelous fertility and luxuriance of the soil. For centuries this region has been the barrier between the two distinct phases of Spanish civilization in South America—the golden empire of Peru and the agricultural colonies on the Plata and its tributaries—just as Uruguay has been the buffer state between the Portuguese and Spanish peoples. These phases have merged but little and to-day present a most interesting contrast.

From the time of Cabot’s fortified settlement of AsunciÓn (now the capital of Paraguay) at the junction of the Paraguay and Pilcomayo rivers, in 1536, whence his lieutenant, Domingo Irala, made his vain attempt to penetrate into Peru, down to the present, Paraguay has been isolated to a considerable degree from the march of progress. The six hundred adventurers who followed the fortunes of Irala stayed on the land, intermarried with the Guarany Indians and bred the mixed race that was the foundation of the nation of to-day; and the Indians developed, along with the mestizos, to a status unique in South America. Evading the abject slavery that decimated the aboriginal races throughout the Andean region, the Guaranies were taught the arts of the soil and war by the Jesuits, and, during the hundred and fifty years of the latter’s sway, achieved a stage of development corresponding to that of the peasantry of France.

The story of the Jesuit missions which occupied the ParanÁ basin, is an important and thrilling chapter in Latin-American history. Early in its life, the Society turned its attention to the evangelization of South America; it was the genius of its founder, Ignatius Loyola, that perfected the organization to accomplish this. In 1550 the Jesuit Fathers began their work on the Brazilian coast settlements, but were driven farther and farther inland by the Portuguese as it became apparent that their policy of education and uplift would put an end to the enslavement of the natives which was the basis of the economic scheme of the colonists. Eventually, some time about 1586, the Jesuits entered the Paraguay region, won the confidence of the Guaranies and purposed to “reduce” the tribes of the whole Plata country. They met with the same opposition from the Spanish colonists and their stronghold became restricted to the secluded and isolated region mentioned—the ParanÁ basin and Misiones territory of Argentina.

Here, for over a hundred years, under the protection of the official sanction won from the Spanish King, Philip III, they worked among their proselytes. They learned and perfected the native dialects; taught the men to cultivate the soil, and the women to spin and weave cotton; induced them to clear the forests and to build and live in towns, and even organized them into an effective militia, which more than once enabled them to preserve the integrity of the remarkable state—a state unique in a way, since it was virtually under the direct control of the General of the Order, although within the territorial sovereignty of Spain. This “republic” lasted until 1769, when the famous decree of the King of Spain banished the Jesuits from all his dominions; but the effects of their presence are still noticeable throughout Paraguay and Misiones.

It is a matter of wonder to this day how the Jesuit Fathers, even taking into consideration their unquenchable zeal and marvelous energy and determination, ever succeeded in reaching so isolated a territory and in traversing it in every direction, as they did, in pursuit of their campaign. Even to-day it is well-nigh impossible to reach the heart of the region—the great cataract of Guayra, which, hundreds of miles from the habitations of man, isolated by jagged mountains, fiercely swirling waters and the wild tangle of underbrush that make headway through the awesome tropical forest very difficult, constitutes one of the most majestic of nature’s wonder-works in South America. Situated about a hundred miles up the ParanÁ River from the better known IguazÚ Falls, the Guayra cataract lies on the frontier with Brazil. A volume of water twice as large as that which thunders over Niagara is forced through a gorge two hundred feet wide from a stream two and a half miles in width. The roar of its plunge of fifty-six feet to the lower levels, adds the essential note to this tremendous symphony of primeval nature. Outside the Arctic regions, one explorer declares, no part of the world is less accessible than the ParanÁ above the Great Cataract.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits the ParanÁ basin reverted to forest and the nation pursued its checkered career in the section drained by the Paraguay. This river intersects the republic from north to south and is navigable through its entire course by ocean steamers, which pass up from Buenos Aires through the ParanÁ, and past Corrientes, where the two great streams join forces.

On the left bank of the Paraguay, at the point of its confluence with the equally great Pilcomayo, the traveler comes to the ancient city of AsunciÓn, the capital of the country. Here was the seat of the colonial authority over Plata settlements until Buenos Aires grew into importance. It has a population of 52,000, and is now thriving and prosperous, rapidly taking on the cosmopolitanism that characterizes the other ports of South America. The capital, and indeed the whole country has but recently entered into a new life, a life as sharply contrasted with its period of political storm and stress as the transition was sudden.

For, during the first sixty years after the country had attained its freedom from Spain, Paraguay’s progress was stifled by a succession of tyrants—remarkable men, all three of them, but men who, as a result of their rule, well-nigh cost her her national existence. The first of these, Dr. JosÉ RodrÍguez Gaspar Francia, had been the dominating figure in the revolutionary junta, and afterward, with his confrÈre, General Yegros, had been appointed Consul and invested with the supreme power. “He was a lawyer,” Dawson tells us, “who had become a sort of demigod to the lower classes by his fearless advocacy of their rights, and inspired almost superstitious reverence by his reputation for learning and disinterestedness.” A year later, the historian continues—

“He forced Yegros out, and, with general consent, assumed the position of sole executive, and, in 1816, was formally declared supreme and perpetual dictator. For the next twenty-five years he was the government of Paraguay. History does not record another instance in which a single man so dominated and controlled a people. A solitary, mysterious figure, of whose thoughts, purposes, and real character little is known, the worst acts of his life were the most picturesque and alone have been recorded. Although the great Carlyle includes him among the heroes whose memory mankind should worship, the opinion of his detractors is likely to triumph. Francia will go down to history as a bloody-minded, implacable despot, whose influences and purposes were wholly evil. After reading all that has been written about this singular character, my mind inclines more to the judgment of Carlyle. I feel that the vivid imagination of the great Scotchman has pierced the clouds which enshrouded the spirit of a great and lonely man, and has seen the soul of Francia as he was. Cruel, suspicious, ruthless, heartless as he undeniably became, his acts will not bear the interpretation that his purposes were selfish or that he was animated by mere vulgar ambition....

“He absorbed in his own person all the functions of government; he had no confidants and no assistants; he allowed no Paraguayan to approach him on terms of equality. When he died, a careful search failed to reveal any records of the immense amount of governmental business he had transacted during thirty years. The orders for executions were simply messages signed by him and returned to be destroyed as soon as they had been carried out. The longer he lived, the more completely did he apply his system of absolutism, the more confident he became that he alone could govern the people for their good. He adopted a policy of commercial isolation, and intercourse with the outside world was absolutely forbidden. He neither sent nor received consuls nor ministers to foreign nations. Foreign vessels were excluded from the Paraguay River and allowed to visit only one port in the southeastern corner of the country. He was the sole foreign merchant. The communistic system inherited from the Jesuits was developed and extended to the secular parts of the country.... Dreading interference by Spain, Brazil, or Buenos Aires, he improved the military forces and began the organization of the whole population into a militia. His policy, however, was peaceful....

“As he grew older he became more solitary and ferocious. Always a gloomy and peculiar man, absorbed in his studies and making no account of the ordinary pleasures and interests of mankind, he had reached the age of fifty-five and assumed supreme power without marrying.... His severities against the educated classes increased; he ordered wholesale executions and seven hundred political prisoners filled the jails when he died. He feared assassination and occupied several houses, letting no one know where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and, when walking the streets, kept his guards at a distance before and behind him. Woe to the enemy or suspect who attracted his attention! Such was the terror inspired by this dreadful old man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan literally dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was ‘El Supremo,’ and, after he was dead, for generations he was referred to simply as ‘El Defunto.’... He did not rise by any sycophantic arts. Indeed, he never veiled the contempt he felt for the party schemers and officials around him. When he had supreme power in his hands, he used it for no selfish indulgences. His life was austere and abstemious; but, though parsimonious for himself, he was lavish for the public.... In his manners and life, he was absolutely modest; he received any one who chose to see him. If he was terrible, it was to the wealthy and powerful; the humblest Indian received a hearing and justice. During his reign Paraguay remained undisturbed, wrapped in a profound peace; the population rapidly increased, and, though commerce and manufactures did not flourish, nor the new ideas that were transforming the face of the civilized world penetrate, food and clothing were plentiful and cheap and the Paraguayans prospered in their own humble fashion.”

Following the reign of Francia came a long period of open intercourse with the neighboring states and foreign countries under the dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, and some measure of progress was made, but still there was no development of republican institutions. His death made room for his son Francisco, who was a man of thirty-five at the time of his accession, and, having spent some time in Europe, had returned permeated with the vices of the great capitals and a consuming ambition for military renown. A very different character of man morally, he is said to have been, from the first of his line. He is described as vain, licentious, gluttonous, and unscrupulous to the last degree, though good-looking and an eloquent speaker. “He began his reign like a Mohammedan sultan,” says Dawson, “ridding himself of his father’s most trusted counselors, imprisoning and executing the most intelligent and powerful citizens.... He ordered his best friends to execution; he tortured his mother and sisters and murdered his brothers. The only natural affection he ever evinced was a fondness for a woman he had picked up in Paris, and for her children. He seems to have treated her well to the last, but his numerous other mistresses and their children he heartlessly abandoned.”

He soon raised an army of more than eighty thousand, the largest that had ever been assembled since the conquest, and, by assuming the aggressive in certain boundary disputes with Brazil and Argentina and interfering in civil disturbances that were going on in Uruguay, involved the country in war with these three powers, which, alarmed at his Napoleonic aspirations, promptly formed an alliance for the purpose of resisting him. This war lasted five years and for Paraguay was one long succession of appalling disasters. Before the first battle was fought her population numbered more than 1,300,000; when Lopez was finally defeated and killed in 1870, but 221,079 remained, of whom only 28,746 were men. “No modern nation has ever come so near to complete annihilation,” says Dawson. “Not less than 225,000 Paraguayan men—the fathers and bread-winners, the farmers and laborers—had perished in battle, by disease or exposure or starvation. One hundred thousand adult women had died of hardship and hunger, and there were less than 90,000 children under fifteen in the country. The surviving women outnumbered the men five to one; ... but the integrity of Paraguay and her continuance as an independent power had been mutually guaranteed by Brazil and Argentina when they began the war against Lopez, and neither of them could afford to let the other take possession of her territory, so the country was left substantially intact.”

AsunciÓn shows on its face the two phases—the modern business houses, residences and public service improvements of the new era, and the ruined districts and wrecks such as those of cathedral, presidential palace and old public buildings that emphasize the lessons of the old. To-day the visitor looks with a shudder at the ruins of the uncompleted mausoleum in which the last tyrant expected his remains to rest and at the two-million-dollar palace where, in rooms hung with rare laces and crimson satin, his unspeakable orgies were held; he turns with relief toward the modernism now beginning to be apparent which proves the substantial worth of a people which can arise from such a past and prosper. The survivors of the old rÉgime have been severely tested for fitness to enjoy the fruits of their well-favored country.

The republic—no longer such in name only—is governed under an enlightened constitution modeled after our own. The present administration has opened wide the doors to immigration and foreign capital, and the artificial barrier erected by her political system of the nineteenth century no longer exists as the complement to the natural barriers that have stood for four centuries between the northern and southern countries of South America.

Those who may be so fortunate as to obtain control of Paraguay’s highways, the Paraguay and Pilcomayo, and supplement them by extending its 155 miles of railway into a system that will develop the vast agricultural and mineral empire of central and southern Brazil and Bolivia, and carry the produce to the Argentine seaboard, will gain a prize unequaled in the railroad world, and make of Paraguay a country of first importance on the continent.

Throughout the country the forests are being cleared to make room for potreros (cattle ranches) and the growing agricultural industries. Yerbales are coming more and more under the scientific culture which greatly enhances the value of the country’s leading product, yerba matÉ, or Paraguay tea.

Paraguay is the namesake and chief producer of the famous yerba matÉ or Paraguay tea, which is the national drink—the cup of ceremony and popular tipple throughout the central part of South America below the coffee belt; that is, on the Argentine Campo, in Uruguay, Paraguay, the lower part of Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. So well adapted is the beverage to the climate that the German colonists forsake their beer and the European-Latins their sweet cordials for the stimulating and non-alcoholic native product.

The yerba leaf is prepared by steeping in boiling water, as in the case of the tea with which the rest of the world is familiar. The matÉ is the dried gourd in which the tea is brewed. Into the aperture left by removing the stem, a tube (the bombilla), made of reed or bone, is inserted and through this the drinker sucks the refreshing brew. Whenever the occasion offers “Toma usted matÉ?” is almost a form of greeting in the yerba matÉ countries, so universal is its popularity. Among the rich the matÉ and bombilla are fashioned in costly metals, but elsewhere the gourd and reed serve their purpose with equal, if not greater, satisfaction.

The ilex paraguayensis, to give the herb its botanical name, is an evergreen tree or shrub from twelve to twenty-five feet high, with bright green leaves clustered in a bushy mass that cause it from a distance to resemble the orange tree. Although much of the yerba matÉ is still obtained from the immense natural forests, the ever-increasing demand has made cultivation a necessity. Many plantations have been successfully laid out, and crops of leaves have recently been gathered with commercially profitable results. The scientific methods now being adopted in the yerbales (yerba plantations) of Paraguay to supplant the destructive system of the past will insure for this growing industry a rich return to the owners.

The drink is taken without the addition of condiment and for the most part hot, like the Japanese sake. It is stimulating and sustaining, and soothes instead of irritating the nervous system. Unlike the concoctions made from the coca leaf (cocaine), sugar cane (rum), pulque, sake, vodka and other stimulants stumbled upon by native peoples and become destructive habits, yerba matÉ has no deleterious effects either immediate or after prolonged use.

Dr. Lenglet, President of the International League of Pure Food, says of it:

“The noteworthy point of the effect of matÉ on the system is its stimulating action on the cerebro-spinal organs. Taken with sugar the first thing in the morning it is very wholesome. It gives great capacity to undergo fatigue and invigorates the brain, and although it prevents feeling hungry, one does not enjoy one’s meals any the less. It does not appear to affect the intestinal organs; the nervous system is, nevertheless, insensible to the organic losses caused by the want of nourishment which are made known by hunger.

“In matÉ is found one of the most important means to obtain a maximum of strength and energy. It can be compared to a reservoir of vitality.”