Note 109 — Chapter XIV · PARAGUAY.

Prolific as are so many portions of South America, there is no one area of anything like the same magnitude to be compared for a moment with Paraguay. Here are cultivated, with an easy success to which the wants of the inhabitants are the only limit, cotton, sugar, indigo, cochineal, and the finest tobacco in the world; dyes of great value abound, as also various wild plants of the hemp kind, capable of being converted to the greatest utility; resinous trees, amongst them several producing the Indian-rubber and gutta-percha gums; copaiba, rhubarb, and medicinal plants of equal virtue, its sarsaparilla being superior to all others, and its bark having still as high a repute among pharmaceutical savants as when first introduced thence into Europe by the Jesuits towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Plantations of coffee have lately been commenced, and answer excellently. Fruits and grain embrace nearly all that are indigenous to the temperate and the torrid zone; and the cattle may be multiplied to an indefinite extent if advantage be taken for that purpose of the illimitable pasturage—an important consideration just now, bearing in mind the sources of our supply of hides and tallow, whether from the North of Europe or South America itself. Direct European intercourse, by means of the Malmesbury treaty, not only promises to be productive of the utmost good to Paraguay proper, but, through Paraguay, to the remotest provinces of the Confederation, and beyond, to the spurs of the Andes. The Vermejo, already twice explored, puts Paraguay in communication with the vast provinces of Salta, Jujui, and Tucuman; and if, as there is good reason to believe, the Pilcomayo is navigable considerably above Paraguay, her commerce would go straight to the heart of Bolivia. By the river Paraguay itself ships of 200 tons can ascend to Cuiaba, the capital of the Brazilian province of Matto-Grosso; while the interior of Paraguay is interlaced all over with navigable streams emptying themselves into the great fluvial artery after which the province is named—thus facilitating the transport, in the manner of the Chinese canals, of its produce to the markets of Assumption and the thriving town of Pilar.