4i6 



ET MERCADO CENTRAL, ASUNCION, PARAGUAY. 



hide panniers somewhat more capacious than bushel 

 baskets, which are used for holding fruit, vegetables and 

 other things strapped across the back ; a rope tied around 

 the muzzle for a bridle and a sheepskin thrown wool out- 

 wards across the panniers upon which the woman, ac- 

 companied sometimes by two or three youngsters, rides. 

 When he has his whole load upon his back one can see 

 scarcely anything of the donkey but two long ears pro- 

 jecting in front, a short tail with hardly any hair upon 

 it wagging behind, and the lower part of his slim legs : 

 often his panniers are filled with sticks of fuel which 

 stand up above his back like a picket fence, and some- 

 times a boy sits astride the sheepskin buried up before 

 and behind with bundles of green pasto or alfalfa which 

 he sells for forage to the city folks who keep riding 

 horses. When his owner is not using him the patient 

 donkey streches himself upon the sand as well as his 

 panniers will admit, and never remonstrates at his 

 hard lot except in that long drawn, gasping bray which 

 is a fit utterance of the breaking heart that he carries 

 within his tender bosom. 



I will defy the world to match the Paraguayan country 

 wagons which may be seen upon this plaza, or wending 

 their way toward it in the early morning hours. The 

 bodies are springless, mounted upon two wheels from 

 six to eight feet in diameter, and drawn by bullocks 

 which are always hitched to the tongue by cords fastened 

 around the horns, and draw the load by the head, and 

 not according to our fashion by a shoulder yoke. A very 

 common sight is a heavily laden wagon drawn by six 

 wide horned oxen which follow a woman or girl walking 

 in front of them, or, perhaps, there is only a single ox 

 hitched to a wagon not much bigger than a hand cart 

 These vehicles which are employed throughout the 

 country where there are no railways for the transpor- 

 tation of merchandise, are usually roofed over with a 

 semi-cylindrical covering of zinc, bamboo slats or hides. 

 Not unfrequently the roof consists of a single hide 

 which scarcely serves to cover half the cart, or maybe 

 there is only a make shift of poles thrust up the sides, 

 over which a piece of old carpet or a poncho is thrown. 

 Theinterior is usually filled with some kind of marketable 

 commodity, such as oranges, vegetables, melons or 

 poultry, and oftentimes the whole family of the owner 

 may be observed peeping out of the front or back. Not 

 the least noticeable among the odd carriages which find 

 their way to this plaza are carts with huge wooden wheels 

 that grind out the most ear-piercing music as they slowly 

 roll over the sandy streets. I used to object to this kind 

 of music when I was new to the country, but I soon 

 found it went against the Paraguayan conscience ever to 

 grease the axles, and I was politely given to understand 

 that my musical education must have been sadly neg- 

 lected. 



After you have sufficiently inspected the comical 

 donkeys, the elegant ox-chariots, the piles of fuel, bales 

 of hay, bags of charcoal, the rush mats and other things 

 which are exhibited upon this common, — and perhaps 

 have essayed to get the sun which is just pouring his 



morning beams into the plaza to form a picture of the 

 curious groups upon the plate of your camera, as I once 

 did, — and if you are at all nervous about photographing 

 in the midst of a hundred people crowding about you 

 and regarding you, your instrument and your proceedings 

 with the liveliest curiosity, when you are dead sure to 

 make a failure of it — after all this you will please step 

 with me into the adjacent market. 



"Step with me" I say, but that is not so easy as it 

 might seem, as the piazza is thronged with people, and 

 its floor is literally spread with all kinds of market mer- 

 chandise. Women are squatting upon the bricks the 

 whole length of each side, every woman with her little 

 store of garden stuff before her so that one can scarcely 

 find room to tread without stumbling over a vegetable 

 heap or its owner. Women, women, women everywhere, 

 bare headed, bare footed, bare bosomed, with rarely a 

 man in sight unless it be some looker on from abroad, 

 who, with his natty European costume, his silk hat, kid 

 gloves, shining shoes and dudish cane stares about as if 



The Asuncion Market. 



he had wandered by accident into a menagerie, and is 

 stared at in return as though he had dropped from a 

 distant planet Women, who outnumber the men in 

 Paraguay four to one, have usurped the entire market 

 business, and it is one of the few mercantile employments 

 that they are considered capable of performing ; they do 

 all the vegetable raising, all the selling and all the buy- 

 ing. Some of the hucksters traverse the streets with 

 baskets of produce for sale ; but most of them rent a 

 space upon the benches or the floor of the market, even 

 if it be no more than a foot square. There is the small 

 dealer who exposes merely a half dozen potatoes, or a 

 little pile of shelled beans, or two or three bunches of 

 herbslikesummersavory. Shepays, daily, a real for that 

 privilege, small as it is, and she has to pay it promptly 

 every day, too, or else her place is taken by some one 

 else. No credit for rents or sales is ever given here ; it is 

 all a strictly cash business. Of course many of the more 

 ambitious sales-women occupy more room and do busi- 

 ness on a larger scale — and so you will see on this piazza 

 a whole cart load of golden oranges or a big pile of sugar 

 cane, the joints of which Paraguayan ladies are fond of 

 sucking between their sips of water. About everything 

 which can be grown in the soil around Asuncion, fruit, 

 vegetables and flowers, is exhibited in the course of the 



