Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/40

 tinct types. The few hundred "Whites" forming the aristocracy of the land, are descended from the blue blood of Spain and Biscay through Guarani and other redskin women, and they have kept themselves tolerably pure by intermarriage,, or by connexion with Europeans. The nobility, therefore, is Spanish; the mobility is not. The mulatto or "small ears" is a mixture of the white with the Indian or the Negro, the third and fourth breeds; as usual, he is held to be ignoble: an "Indian" might enter the priesthood; not so the mulatto. The same was the case in the United States, and in the Brazil—the instinct of mankind concerning such matters is everywhere the same. It is only the philanthropist who closes his ears to the voice of common sense.

It is a mistake to consider the Paraguayans as a homogeneous race. The Whites or Spaniards preponderated in and about Asuncion; whereas at Villa Rica the "Indian" element was strong. About 1600-1628, the "Mamelukes" of S. Paulo having seized and plundered the nearest Reduction of Jesus and Mary in the province of La Guayra, distant only 900 miles from their city, the people fled to Central Paraguay, and their descendants, the Villa Ricans, are still known as Guayrenos. In the southern and southeastern parts of the country the blood was much mixed with Itatins, or Itatinguays, a clan which also migrated from the banks of the Yi River to the seaboard of Brazilian S. Paulo. When independence was declared, the negroes who were household servants did not exceed 2000—others reduce them to 1000. The Consular Government decreed the womb to be free, and forbad further import. Until very lately, however, slaves were sold in Paraguay.