Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1893. PARAGUAY PILGRIMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4515, 5 September 1893, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1893. PARAGUAY PILGRIMS.

Occasionally soino blessed spot is discovered on the face of the globe which attracts irresistibly the biggest fools in a community and which is so remote that those who go there cannot possibly return totlio former home which they have surrendered, The last spot of this kind which has been presented to the good people of this quarter of the globle asafools paradise, is Paraguay, end settlers in Australia and New Zealand may be thaukful that the republic of South America is relieving them of certain persons who are on tbe whole not wortji keeping. Fine things are being said about Paroguay, its soil is richer than ours, it is as big as New Zealand, has about a tenth of our population and land must bo cheap thorn, The climate is said to be temperate, excepting in the summer time, and then it is. too hot for any creatures excepting Indians and snakes, It is a country where the domestic poultry is superseded by the wild ostrich, and the pig and the cat by bears and tigers, It has some reputation for vipers, and quite a name for insect pests of a venomous character. However, bands of people from Australia and a few from New Zealand aro' said to be emigrating to this Paraguayan paradise. We will not say to its sh.ires for it has none, but to its swamps and forests. It is a pity that people in a country like this cinnot see their way to make both ends meet, especially when all clinm'.ic and industrial conditions are in their favour, How they will get on in a land where the cbmatio and industrial conditions are dead against them is a conundrum which they will only attempt to solve by actual experience. The fanatics in the Forty-mile Bueh who think of a pilgrimage to Paraguay koarcely realise what living in a tropical country meariß, probably do not believe that tbe pilgrims who go there will never be able to return, and will, likely enough, be prematurely cut off by a rigorous climate or by hardships incidental to an oxiftonco in an un» civilispd country. The only men who can go with advantage to a country like Paraguay are men with considerable capital, who can afford to employ Indians to slave for them, and who by their wealth csn make their immediate surroundings tolerable. Paraguay was intended for blaok, not white people, and were it all that it is to be, it would have been populated long ago by our American cousins, It does not do to look for fools amongst them, and so Australia and New Zealand have been selected for the honour of manning a Para, gnayan mission,