Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/49

 one-half of the surface of the republic, and is, like the old Imam of Muskat, the strongest and the most active of merchants. The country is, in fact, a great estancia of which the chief magistrate acts proprietor. The so-called public property supported about 300,000 head of cattle, and thus the army was easily rationed; it also bred poor horses for the cavalry, the Paraguayan being an equestrian race, but not so notably as the Guacho of the Pampas, the Centaur of the south. An absolute Government, a supreme authority, buys from its subjects at the price which best suits it; sells the produce, and employs means to maintain a certain level of fortunes; thus the Krumen of the West African coast temper riches ("too plenty sass"), which would give the individual power and influence unpleasant or injurious to his brother man. The rudimental agriculture, in which a wooden plough is used to turn up the loose soil, is limited to procuring subsistence, and even before the war began it was considered rather women's work than men's. The permanent military organization and the excessive armaments always carried off hands, whose absence, combined with drought and insects, rendered a surplus impossible. The following are the exports, and there is always a ready market for them down stream:—

In 1846, when the present tariff of import dues was settled, Yerba or Paraguay tea was made a monopoly of Government, who bought it from individuals for $1 (f.) per arroba (251bs.), and sold it to the exporting merchants for $6 (f.) The "herb" was in fact gold in the presidential pocket, its superior excellence made it in demand throughout South America, and it promised to be an inexhaustible mine of wealth. By means of it only, Paraguay,