Note 107 — Chapter XIV · PARAGUAY.

When Rosas, in his protest, announced that he was preparing great military and naval armaments, with a view of invading and incorporating her in the Argentine Confederation, Paraguay speedily raised an effective army of more than 30,000 men; and calculating that force at the moderate rate of two per cent. on the entire population, the result is above a million, which, as already stated, is more than double the population of the Argentine provinces and the State of Uruguay united—a fact which explains why it is that Paraguay imports more than all the interior provinces of the Confederation, including the province, though not the port, of Buenos Ayres itself.

The town of Conception has been resuscitated from its decay by the government founding the town of St. Salvador, on the Paraguay, and covering all the fords by a line of small fortified posts. New works and branches of industry have been commenced, and quarries of calcareous stone, an article which Paraguay, before Francia’s time, imported, are now worked. The Encyclopædia Britannica, now being published, puts down the population of Assumption, the capital, at 12,000, which is certainly considerably under the real number. With an activity and zeal which would do honour to governments better furnished with resources and auxiliary means, the consular government undertook to open new roads, by cutting through the forests to an extraordinary extent, in order to facilitate transit and the trade to the exterior. The road which was opened across the mountain called Caro is twelve leagues in length and fifty feet broad. That which traverses Mount Palomares is thirteen leagues long, and of the same breadth as the first; and Mount Caagazu has been cut by a road six leagues long and thirty-six feet wide. There is also now approaching completion a road which is passable for carriages from Villa-Rica to the bank of the Parana. Bridges have been constructed over several water-courses and dangerous ravines, and where the breadth of the rivers has been too great, commodious ferries have been established at the expense of the government. In the district of Rosario, where there are many grazing estates, the proprietors were frequently exposed to excessive droughts, which occasioned the dispersion, mixture, and loss of the herds. The government has had a canal opened from five to six leagues long, and which, serving as a reservoir to many brooks, will retain water even in the most terrible droughts. A similar route has been carried out in the department of San Estanislao. The government has resolved on founding other new towns, and has overcome the obstacles opposed to the development of others already existing, such as Villa Franca, which, situated at the bottom of a plain, suffered much in the rainy season. It opened drains for the stagnant waters, and the soil has been much improved.

There is one arrangement which does the greatest honour to the liberalism and equity of the consular government. We may, properly speaking, say that there are no slaves in Paraguay; the number is not quite certain, but, from the statement of a recent traveller, there would not appear to be more than one thousand in the whole of the territory of the Republic. The consular government, in order to put a stop to slavery in a natural manner, although it be on so small a scale, has declared every child born of slaves to be free, and has prohibited, by a decree, all fresh importations.