The Saint Paul globe., 1899-02-12

mate is delightful its semi-tropical
vegetation as luxuriant as that of the
Garden of Eden, and it has about
three Ewes to every Adam. have
never been in Il country where there
are so many women. They swarm
They trot by the scores through the
streets of the cities. They walk by
you and with you on the highways and
byways ard they are so many that you
find it hard to get out of their sight.
PARAGUAYAN MEN KILLED OFF.
The women of Paraguay are so
much in the majority that they do the
work of the country. They are the
buyers and sellers of every community,
and outside the cities the men are the
drones. Any bachelor in the United
States can find a wife in Paraguay if
he wants one, for the men are now so
few that any tWo-legged animal with
out feathers of the masculine gender
will here be greedily grabbed. The
sexes were once about equally divided,
but Paraguay had a war which killed
Oft the men. 1t was just before the
close of our trouble between the
North and the South. At that time
Paraguay was the leading country of
this part of the world. 1t was about
the richest of all South America, and
Argentine, Uruguay and Brazil. They
combined against it and their joint
army attacked the ParaguayanS. The
struggle lasted five years, but it ended
in the wiping out, as it were, of the
Paraguayan men. 1t is said that one
hundred thousand of them died in bat
tie and that thousands Of women and
children were starved to death.
1t is hard to get accurate figures in
any South American country but, ac-
cOrding to the best estimates, the popu-
1atiOn of Paraguay was cut down by
TINS war so that there was only one
man to six women. while another
statistician gives it that three-fourths
of the people in Paraguay, numbering
about 100000. were destroyed. When
the war ended there were only 100000
left of whom about 900 were men
and 100000 were women over fifteen
Years of age. The rest were children.
Paraguay thus became a land of wom-
en-, and nature seems to be keeping it
so. Since the war 1 am told that more
girls have been born every year than
boys. In Asuncion the girl births ex-
ceed the boy births by more than five
to the hundred and outside the city
the percentage of girl babies is great
er.
WOMEN OF HIGHER CLASS.
The most of the women of Paraguay
are poor. Many of them are hewers
of wood and drawers of water; but
there are some who are rich. There
are class distinctions here as every
where, and the people of the better
classes dress and act much the same
as those of other parts of the conti-
nent. Paraguayan high-class ladies
wear clothes not unlike those of our
American girls. They wear bonnets
or hats when out on the streets and a
few of them actually import their
dresses from Paris. They speak Span
lsh when in society-at least, when on
dress parade-and some are SO well
educated that they are able to read
both English and French. Such women
are usually interested in politics, and,
through their husbands, have much
influence upon what is done by the
government. They are good house
keepers, excellent wives and are l may
say, the equals of their sisters of any
part of this continent.
HOW THEY LOOK.
Many of the Paraguayan women are
very good looking. This is so of all
classes, and especially SO of the young.
A Paraguayan maiden is a trifie under
middle height. She is as straight as
an arrow and as timber as a willow
tree branch though inclined to be vo-
luptuOus in form. Her complexion is
of the Jersey cream order, often of the
reddish brown of the Guarani Indians.
she has, as a rule, more or less Indian
blood in her veins. When the Span
iards came here this country was in
habited by the gentle and semi-civl-
lied Guaranis. The two races inter-
married. Their descendants took wives
from the same tribes, so that today
there are comparatively few Para
guayanS who have not a large propor-
ton of Guarani blood. The Indian
mixture has resulted In the adoption
of many Indian customs, and the Ian
guage most spoken by the people to-
day is the Guanari. In the country
districts little else is used, and in the
schools of ASuncion there are notices
on the walls that scholars must not
speak Guarani during school hours.
The Guarani is a soft language and
the Paraguayan girls have sweet
voices. Indeed. their tones fall softly
on my ears after the parrot-like accent
which has sawed my tympanum duling
my associations with their Argentine
sisters.
PARAGUAY LACE
One of the chief industries of the
Paraguayan women is lace making.
1t is true that the lower classes do all
kinds of work, but all the women make
beautiful lace. They spin webs as del
icately as though they were spiders,
and every house is full of beautiful
ecbwebs made by it's women. They
make lace handkerchiefs, fichus and
embroideries, and weave great ham
mocks of thread so fine and so strong
that they will outlast a generation.
Jhey have patterns of their own which
they have taken from nature One of
the most beautiful is called the cobweb
pattern, the threads of which are
as deiicately joined as though made
by one of the big spiders which live
here in the semi-tropics Some of these
handkerchiefs are of silk. others of lin
en-, and some of fiber grown in the
country. 1t takes a long time to weave
them, but there are so many at work
that they are wonderfully cheap. so
that an article upon which a month or
so has been spent can be bought for s5
and upwards of our money. good
hammock will cost you $40, and a lace
shawl perhaps twice that amount.
ORANGES AND ORANGE GIRLS.
Paraguay is land of oranges. 1t is
perhaps the only place in the world
Were the orange grows wild. There
are oranges in every thicket and in al
most every forest. The villages are
pulit IN orange groves, and there are
so many oranges that they often rot
on the ground. The fruit is delicious
1t is the best 1 believe of Its kind in
the world. 1t is eaten by eyerv ono
ana the orange girls are among the
picturesque FEATURES of Paraguay You
meet women peddling oranges at the
hnr