In addition to these leaves, a small quantity of
tobacco, a few hides, hard woods and demijohns of a primitive kind of
rum constitute the exportations of a country in which cotton and
indigo grow wild, and where sugar and rice could be made to yield
large revenues.
[Illustration: FOUNDRY AT IBICUY, DESTROYED DURING THE WAR.]
The lack of money and of banking facilities in Paraguay has made the
process of buying and selling, in reality, but not professedly, a
matter of exchange of commodities. For instance, a shopkeeper will
barter his imported cotton stuffs, his demijohns of wine, his candles,
etc. for the tobacco grown by the natives. The merchants also endeavor
to buy as much tobacco as possible, when the crop is first in, for
specie. Usually, large profits are derived from this course, as the
planters have pretty well exhausted their receipts for the crop of the
previous year, and hence are disposed at that time to sell at a
sacrifice. The money thus obtained returns to the merchant in the
usual way of business, and thus the latter is enabled to buy more
tobacco. The result is, that in the end the merchant gets the
planter's cash as well as his tobacco.
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