24 Dr. Francia, the Dictator of Paraguay. [^TAN. 



completing the work. All classes were obliged to labour on this grand 

 operation ; and a city at last rose upon the ruins of the old one, more 

 beautiful and salubrious than the one it had replaced, and worthy, in 

 every respect, of becoming at some future period the capital of a mighty 

 republic, founded by the hand of a tyrant. 



Thus finding himself unopposed from any quarter, a change came 

 over his tyrannical spirit, and a gleam of sunshine broke on the horizon 

 of his oppressed country. The death of his favourite secretary, by 

 suicide, sensibly affected him, and in some degree wrought a favourable 

 change on his mind. But however softened might have become his 

 general severity, an excess of his constitutional malady every now and 

 then awoke new terrors. In one of his fits, he ordered the centinel on 

 guard to shoot any one who should fix his eyes upon the house he 

 inhabited. " If you miss," said he, in giving this ruthless order, " I 

 shall not miss you," presenting at the astonished sentinel a loaded fire- 

 lock. This order spread consternation through the city ; and those 

 who were obliged to pass his residence, walked with their eyes fixed on 

 the ground. 



Imagination can scarcely conceive the horrors of the prisons of 

 Assumption at this period. In these abodes of human wretchedness 

 were seen mingled in one undistinguished mass, Indians and mulattoes, 

 blacks and whites no distinction of rank, no gradation of crime was 

 observed. The condemned and the accused, the bandit and the patriot, 

 the debtor and the murderer, were all linked together in the same fet- 

 ters. The female prisoners were separated from the others by a slight 

 railing and here the picture assumes, if possible, a darker shade. 

 Young women of rank, in the full bloom of youth and beauty, were 

 associated with the most abandoned females of the capital, exposed 

 to the insults of the other sex, and loaded with irons as well as the 

 men ; even pregnancy brought no mitigation to the horrors of their 

 situation. But comparatively happy was the fate of these miserable 

 beings to that of the state prisoners, the especial objects of the dictator's 

 hate. The limits of this paper do not admit of our giving a general idea 

 of the present government of Paraguay, and of the machinery of its 

 organization, contenting ourselves with observing, that the police, of 

 which the system of passports forms the most marked feature, is perhaps 

 the most perfect of its kind in the world one from which the celebrated 

 Fouche might have taken a lesson. We shall finish our portrait of this 

 extraordinary man, by rapidly presenting to the reader the most striking 

 details of his private life, accompanied by a few singular traits of feeling 

 and character. 



Francia occupies one of the largest edifices in Assumption, erected by 

 the Jesuits a short time previous to their expulsion. This structure he re- 

 paired and embellished, and detached it from the surrounding houses. 

 Here he lives in complete solitude, with four slaves a negro, one male 

 and two female mulattoes whom he treats with great mildness. The dawn 

 of day rarely finds him on his couch. As soon as he rises the negro 

 brings him a chafing dish, and an earthen pitcher of water, which is 

 heated in his presence ; he then prepares with his own hand the matte ; 

 after which he walks in a gallery, smoking a segar, taking the precau- 

 tion to previously unrol it, lest it might contain something deleterious 

 a precaution he does not neglect, even though the segar should be 

 manufactured by the hands of his own sister. At six o'clock the barber 



