Thousands Of Orange Trees Growing By
The Roadside, Filled With Luscious Fruit On The Lower Branches, And
On The Top With The Incomparable Orange Blossoms, Afforded Delight To
The Eye, And Notwithstanding The Heat, Kept Us Cool, For As We Rode
We Could Pluck And Eat.
Tree ferns twenty and thirty feet high waved
their feathery fronds in the gentle breeze, and wild pineapples
growing at our feet loaded the air with fragrance.
There was the graceful pepper tree, luxuriant hanging lichens, or
bamboos forty feet high, which riveted the attention and made one
think what a beautiful world God has made. Many of the shrubs and
plants afford dyes of the richest hues, Azara found four hundred new
species of the feathered tribe in the gorgeous woods and coppices of
Paraguay, and all, with the melancholy caw, caw of the toucans
overhead, spoke of a tropical land. Parrots chattered in the trees,
and sometimes a serpent glided across the red sand road.
Unfortunately, flies were so numerous and so tormenting that, even
with the help of a green branch, we could not keep off the swarms,
and around the horses' eyes were dozens of them. Several menacing
hornets also troubled us. They are there so fierce that they can
easily sting a man or a horse to death!
As night fell we came to an open glade, and there beside a clear,
gurgling brook staked out our horses and camped for the night.
Building a large fire of brushwood, we ate our supper, and then lay
down on our saddlecloths, the firmament of God with its galaxy of
stars as our covering overhead.
By next evening we reached the village of Pegwaomi. On the way we had
passed a house here and there, and had seen children ten or twelve
years of age sucking sticks of sugar-cane, but content with no other
clothing than their rosary, or an image of the Virgin round their
necks, like those the mules wear. Pegwaomi, I saw, was quite a
village, its pretty houses nestling among orange and lime trees, with
luscious bananas in the background. There was no Pai in Pegwaomi, so
I was able to hold a service in an open shed, with a roof but no
walls. The chief man of the village gave me permission to use this
novel building, and twenty-three people came to hear the stranger
speak. After the service a poor woman was very desirous of confessing
her sins to me, and she thought I was a strange preacher when I told
her of One in heaven to whom she should confess.
"Paraguay, from its first settlement, never departed from 'the age of
faith' Neither doubt nor free-thinking in regard to spiritual affairs
ever perplexed the people, but in all religious matters they accepted
the words of the fathers as the unquestionable truth. Unfortunately,
the priests were, with scarcely an exception, lazy and profligate;
yet the people were so superstitious and credulous that they feared
to disobey them, or reserve anything which they might be required to
confess." [Footnote: Washburn's "History of Paraguay."]
In the front gardens of many of the rustic houses I noticed a wooden
cross draped with broad white lace. 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. "While he
thus lay drunk, a boy crawled through the door to ask his blessing,
whereupon the priest swore horribly and waved him off, 'Not to-day,
not to-day those farces! I am drunk, very drunk!'" Such an one has
been described by Pollock: "He was a man who stole the livery of the
court of heaven to serve the devil in; in holy guise transacted
villainies that ordinary mortals durst not meddle with."
Lest it might be thought that I am strongly prejudiced, I give this
extract from a responsible historian of that unhappy land: "The
simple-minded and superstitious Paraguayans reverenced a Pai, or
father, as the immediate representative of God. They blindly and
implicitly followed the instructions given to them, and did whatever
was required at his hands. Many of the licentious brotherhood took
advantage of this superstitious confidence placed in them by the
people to an extent which, in a moral country, would not only shock
every feeling of our nature to relate, but would, in the individual
instances, appear to be incredible, and, in the aggregate, be counted
as slanderous on humanity."
During my stay in Pagwaomi, a dance was held on the sward outside one
of the houses, and the national whirl, the sarandiy, gave pleasure
to all. The females wove flowers in their hair, and made garlands of
them to adorn their waists. Others had caught fire-flies, which
nestled in the wavy tresses and lit up the semi-darkness with a soft
light, like so many green stars. Love whisperings, in the musical
Guarani, were heard by willing ears, and eyelight was thus added to
starlight. As the dancers flitted here and there in their white
garments, or came out from the shade of the orange trees, they looked
ethereal, like the inhabitants of another world one sees at times in
romantic dreams, for this village is surely a hundred years behind
the moon.
From this scene of innocent happiness I was taken to more than one
sick-bed, for it soon became known that I carried medicines.
Will the reader accompany me? Enter then - a windowless mud hut See,
lying on sheepskins and burning with fever, a young woman-almost a
girl-wailing "Che raciy!>" (I am sick!) Notice the intense
eagerness of her eyes as she gazes into mine when I commence to
minister to her.
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