In A Paraguayan Town.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 469, 7 May 1890, Page 2

In A Paraguayan Town.

Before the time of the infamous tyrant Lopez 11., Paraguay was Uko trie cultivated garden. It is now for the greater part little better than a jungle infested with wild beasts. In the tyrant's cgnel and insane wars nearly aJI the moo were slain. It i«. now a land of women and children, and once flourishing oicieS are falling into ruin, and so scantily populated as only ta make this desolation and de'eay the more marked, So terrible were the wars that the population is now only one-sixth Of what it waa twenty years ago. Describing a scene in a Paraguayan town, Mr Knight says : Nutnor-' ous women passed us, each clad in the snowy white robe of tho country, barefooted, and bearing something on her head, a jar o£ water, a pumpkin, a bundle of cigars. I have never seen aParaguayan woman without somo burden, be it only a box of matches, thus placed : I don’t think she considers herself dressed or decent without one. Every cme of those fair damsels was smoking a long native cigar, also quite indispensable to tho women of this race, while the smallest femalo children of throe years old hliaO toddle at their mother’s heels are inveterate devotees of “ye holy herbe,” as old Purohase calls it. Few Paraguayans are really remarlcablo for the beauty of tlv -ir features } bub their figures, the modelling of their small hands and feet, are such as no other land can, I believe, show. They stalk through tbe streets with a soft? supple, panther-lift tread that is most beautiful. For they do not indulge in high-heeled boots and in stays, but atop out aa Eve horeolf might have dose, quite unimpeded by their simple dress, wlnoh is merely a short tunic tied round at the waist,. and adorned with the protty native lace. These tunics havo short sleeves and very low necks, and reveal the statuesque shoulders and breast rather more than would be considered delicate in Eurojje, Nearly all the Paraguayan women have large dark add fine eyes, and I think they know this. Wlmt I particularly remarked was the jovial, gay nature of this ami.ib.le and innocent race, 00 unlike the sombre dignity of the Argentine character. 'I lies a Paraguayan women seem to be always happy and laughing, and their kiuduesa and good -nature towards each other w very deseernible. The few men wo* met possessed tho same jovial, kindly nature, I>ufe they ore more indolent and selfish than thq ever-sprightly women, who, being now so much in the majority, du all the worjt in the country, and pamper and support the nobler sox. Thus the men become considerably spoilt, and degenerate into lazy drones, dependent on the generous fair t < which cannot bub prove smlly detrimental 1 to the nobility of this once fihe race. -* “ Cruiso of tho Falcon ”