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:
