Oranges And Bananas Can Be Bought
At Six Cents A Hundred, Two Millions Of Cattle Fatten On Its Rich
Pasture Lands; But, Of All The Countries The Writer Has Travelled In,
Mexico Comes First As A Land Of Beggars, And Poor Paraguay Comes
Second.
CHAPTER VIII.
ASUNCION.
Being in England in 1900 for change and rest, I was introduced to an
eccentric old gentleman of miserly tendencies, but possessed of
$5,000,000. Hearing of my wanderings in South America, he told me
that he owned a tract of land thirteen miles square in Paraguay, and
would like to know something of its value. The outcome of this visit
was that I was commissioned by him to go to that country and explore
his possession, so I proceeded once more to my old field of labor.
Arriving at the mouth of the River Plate, after five weeks of sea-
tossing, I was, with the rest, looking forward to our arrival in
Buenos Ayres, when a steam tug came puffing alongside, and we were
informed that as the ship had touched at the infected port of Bahia,
all passengers must be fumigated, and that we must submit to three
weeks' quarantine on Flores Island. The Port doctor has sent a whole
ship-load to the island for so trifling a cause as that a sailor had
a broken collar-bone, so we knew that for us there was nothing but
submission. Disembarking from the ocean steamer on to lighters, we
gave a last look at the coveted land, "so near and yet so far," and
were towed away to three small islands in the centre of the river,
about fifty miles distant.
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