Note 106 — Chapter XIV · PARAGUAY.

The chief provisions are the following:—British subjects are free to navigate the banks of the rivers of Paraguay. British traders may settle and carry on commerce in any of their towns, instead of being restricted to Assumption, as hitherto. Finally, they may marry the daughters of the country—a privilege from which they have until now been debarred. Similar treaties have been made with France, the United States, and Sardinia. This treaty (said an eminent ‘Economical’ authority at the time it was made known in England,) will help to forward the designs of Bolivia to promote the free navigation of the rivers that run from her territory into the Plate. Could that navigation be opened, it would be something like spreading the advantages conferred by the Mississippi on North America over South America. The Plate is formed by the junction of the Parana and the Uruguay. From the Plate to Assumption, the Parana, with its branch the Paraguay, is navigable for 800 miles in the dry season by vessels drawing six feet of water, and in the rainy season by vessels drawing twice as much. Beyond that 800 miles, it is navigable as a canal for 600 miles, almost to its sources in the mountains of Brazil, not far from one of the streams navigable into the heart of Bolivia upwards of 1,000 miles from the Atlantic. The Uruguay is navigable for 300 miles from its junction with the Parana, and there the navigation is stopped by a ledge of rocks which does not affect the level of the stream. Were this impediment removed—and the governments of Brazil and Buenos Ayres are bound by treaty to remove it—the river would be navigable for 300 miles further. Thus together there is an interior navigation from the Plate of at least 1,600 miles, and probably when the country shall be fully explored for many hundred more miles, opening up for the use of the closely-pressed people of Europe some of the finest countries of the globe. The great empire of the south, extending through more than thirty degrees of latitude, and in its widest part through thirty degrees of longitude, with a population of about 5,000,000, and a portion of them slaves, is increasing in people and wealth much faster than the countries on the Plate. It is extending its trade year by year, and may in the end absorb and incorporate the neighbouring republics; but it is yet far from that consummation. Unless, therefore, some more European life be infused into the countries on the Plate, unless spare hands from England, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, each of which has already supplied some of the scattered population on the Plate, go thither, and bring those countries more into contact with Europe, they are likely to remain only half tenanted for ages.