vices of Protestantism; but nowhere among them have missionary efforts been so successful as in Paraguay. Here the good Jesuit fathers, secured by royal edicts from all interference on the part of other authorities, whether secular or religious, came among the Indians as protectors. In the settlements which the Spaniards had already made, they denounced the oppression to which the natives were subjected, and protested against that iniquitous slave-trade which was carried on by parties from the frontiers of Brazil, who captured the defenceless Indians in order to sell them to the Portuguese. They obtained at length a concession of the region between the Spanish settlements and Brazil, that they might found in it missions for the reduction of the Indians to civilization. To carry out this purpose, they built, in each instance, a church, and grouped around it the dwellings of their converts. Among these they established a routine of duties, monastic in its regularity. "All the Missions," says one of our authorities, "presented a uniform aspect. In the centre of the square rose, supported by three roofs, the dome of the church; to the right was the college, the dwelling of the fathers, and general storehouse of the community, with its cloisters, its courts, its gardens, its blooming orchards; to the left the cemetery, whose crosses were hidden under orange-thickets. The village formed a rectangle, the streets of which crossed each other from north to south and from east to west; while around extended the grounds set apart to each family, the pastures, and the large farms of the community." The arrangements At dawn it of the day were guided by the church bell. called the whole population to hear mass; that duty done, they went to their several labors; each followed the occupation he had chosen, but none was idle, and all alike partook the fruits of the common industry. At noon the bell called them to a two hours' rest, and in the evening again to their devotions. "In grateful adoration then they raise The evening hymn. How solemn in the wild Such are the words of Southey in his "Tale of Paraguay." This tale is one of the simplest of Southey's poems, and its pretty little story, scarcely altered at all from the narrative of the Jesuit Dobrizhoffer, illustrates the gentle, obedient, believing spirit of the Paraguayan Indians, - far different from that of their stern, obtuse, irreclaimable brethren of the northern continent. Among such a people the labors of the missionaries found a rich reward. The desert bloomed around them; and its simple children, if the civilization to which they attained was not of the highest type, were yet orderly, industrious, and happy in this world, and possessed of an undoubting faith in what had been taught them of the world to come. The settlements were not without enemies. The slave-hunters from Brazil, "border ruffians," not Portuguese alone, but the offscouring of every Christian land, broke up by force the missions nearest them. "The Jesuits of La Guayra fled with their flocks; they descended the Parana on a flotilla of seven hundred balsas, - rafts supported on two canoes fastened together. Having arrived at the falls, where the river for twenty-five leagues plunges from one abyss to another, they lost three hundred balsas, and were compelled to open a passage through the virgin forests, through networks of tangled vines, among rocks and precipices, where beds of fern concealed unfathomable fissures into which entire families fell and were seen no more. They labored through the day, singing hymns as they went; and at night, having prepared their shelter on the back of the river, they intoned together the psalm of exile, mingling with the roll of the cataracts and the roar of the tempest in the forest the sacred notes, Super flumina Babylonis."* This was in the earlier period of the enterprise. Later, the fathers taught their converts to use the arms of civilized warfare; and on Sunday, according to Spanish custom, when the pomp of worship had given place to festivity, dances, bullfights, and games of strength or skill, the soldiers were reviewed by the Jesuit fathers, some of whom probably, like the founder of their order, had been warriors of this world before they became champions of the cross. Such was the control in which they held their subjects, that, we are told, a colonel, returning at the head of his regiment from a gallant and difficult achievement, bent himself, at a sign from the priest, to receive the chastisement of blows for some offence, and said, kissing the hand which had struck him, "God bless you, my father, for you have made me perceive my fault!" Thus, for a century and a half, did the Jesuits govern these grown-up children, making them happy in their childishness, but keeping them children still. Strange, that the downfall of the order should take its origin from the scene of its highest and most honorable success! In 1750, in a new arrangement of boundaries, Spain surrendered seven of the Missions to Portugal; and the fathers and their flocks were most unjustly ordered to abandon their homes. The Indians resisted, and the fathers, rightly or wrongly, were thought to have encour aged them in insubordination. Other changes followed, connected with the political intrigues of Europe. The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal and France; and, in 1766, Charles III. of Spain decreed their expulsion from his dominions. In Paraguay the decree excited amazement and rage among the Indians, and only the noble conduct of the fathers, who exerted all their influence to pacify those loving subjects from whom they were compelled to part, prevented a civil war. It is a proof of the purity of their administration, that not more than nine thousand dollars were found in their coffers. The state of these once flourishing Missions a few years since is thus sadly described by M. Page in the article from which we have already quoted : "Now, in place of those well-cultivated fields, of those millions of cattle, of those villages grouped around the temples whose cupolas and colonnades glittered with gold, is to be seen only a desert covered with briers, wild animals, and scattered ruins man has fled." The Missions of the Jesuits, it will be understood from the above statement, were far from comprising the whole population of Paraguay. A portion of them indeed were situated without the present limits of that country, in Corrientes, now one of the states of the Argentine Republic. On the other hand, the Commanderies of Paraguay - portions of territory distributed to European settlers with control over the Indian inhabitants had been assigned before the Jesuit plan of instruction and government was adopted. That plan found its place in the eastern portion of the country, bordering on the Parana, while the secular settlements were on the western, around Assumption on the Paraguay. In these settlements the Indians formed the mass of the population, though less completely than in those of the Jesuits; the Spaniards became blended with them, and thus arose a Creole element, destined eventually to possess controlling power. At the present day the population is principally Indian; the Guarani language, described as sweet and sonorous, is far more used than the Spanish; and with most of the men the only garment is the poncho, simply a large cloth, with a hole in the middle to admit the head. The situation of the country may be compared to that of the region which forms our States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; the main branch of the Parana being represented by the Ohio River, and the Paraguay by the Mississippi above the junction. The territory in extent is about equal to Ohio and Indiana; somewhat larger than the whole of New England, and nearly twice as large as the kingdom of Portugal. Its population has been extravagantly estimated at a million and a half. More probable statements represent it as amounting, before the present war, to about six hundred thousand. In Paraguay, as in Buenos Ayres, the first steps towards independence were taken in the cause of loyalty. When, in 1808, Charles IV. had abdicated the throne of Spain, and Napoleon attempted to seize it, the messenger sent by the latter with despatches to the Viceroy of the Provinces of La Plata was obliged instantly to re-embark, and rulers and people took the oath of allegiance to Ferdinand VII. Next came the displacement of the Viceroy Liniers by the Junta of Seville, and that of his successor Cisneros by the people of Buenos Ayres. The royal authority, thus set aside in fact, was not long retained in name; and under the guidance of a Junta, consisting entirely of Creoles, the country entered on the stormy career of an immature republic. Meantime a royal governor, Don Bernardo de Velasco, still ruled in Paraguay; and, with a little more firmness, he might have continued to rule. The Junta of Buenos Ayres sent troops against him, but the people whom he governed obeyed his orders, and marched to meet the invaders. Not, it is said, from want of courage, but from deference to treacherous advisers, Velasco withdrew in secret from the field; but the Paraguayans, though at first thrown into confusion by the defection of their leader, afterwards rallied, and won a battle without him. In revolutionary times, men who commit such errors do not long keep their places. Velasco was soon deposed, and a Junta organized, with three ordinary men as president and assessors, and a great man Don José Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, Doctor of Laws as secretary. This able man was restrained by few scruples and found few difficulties in gratifying his ambition. The Paraguayans were mostly as ignorant as children of the meaning of the words "liberty" and "republic"; but one of their officers explained to them that liberty meant faith, hope, and charity; and Francia had, among his few books, Rollin's History of Rome, from which his countrymen were informed that the great republic which had conquered the world was ruled by consuls. Consuls therefore were chosen, - Don Fulgencio Yegros and Francia; but the latter soon discovered in his Roman History a title which pleased him better. It did not need any refined intriguing, to deal with the simple Guarani drovers who formed the Congress of Paraguay, and it was quickly determined that there should be a dictator. Yegros would have been elected, but Francia wearied the voters into compliance with his wishes, by postponing the election from day to day, and at length surrounding their place of meeting with a respectful but formidable guard of honor. So the Consul Yegros was "relieved,” as we courteously say in the case of a military commander; and Doctor Francia was chosen Dictator for three years. He took that office in 1814, and he held it for more than a quarter of a century. Old age did not relax his vigorous grasp he died in 1840, at eighty-five, still holding the reins of He was a stern man, a ruler of the old school, who knew nothing of governing by love, or of preparing the people power. |
