Paraguari comprises fifty or sixty houses worthy
of the appellation, built around a square. In the outskirts are
numerous mud-huts, all well populated with women and children. Its
inhabitants number about three thousand, and in its quality as
terminus of an unfinished railroad it has that flavor of desperadoism
which usually attaches to positions of that kind. Here gather
malefactors, generally of foreign birth, from Asuncion and
elsewhere--refugees from the central authority and the metropolitan
police--who are more free in Paraguari to prey on whomsoever chance
may throw in their way. Of the sixty houses, twelve are _tiendas_,
shops in which are sold at retail English cotton goods, Hamburg gins,
etc., in exchange for the products of the country--hides, tobacco,
_mate_ and other commodities.
The Paraguayan is an inveterate gambler, and in Paraguari two at least
of the houses are devoted to public play. They are crowded nightly,
and often the stakes amount to five hundred or a thousand francs.
Quarrels frequently arise over the play, and then the knife is brought
into requisition, but the affrays are due more to the presence of the
Italian, Argentine and Brazilian adventurers who flock there than to
the Paraguayans, who are not, naturally, a quarrelsome race.
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