‘_Were its resources developed, and encouragement given to the industry of its inhabitants, it might become a comparatively wealthy part of South America, but it could never support an active trade excepting with the adjoining States. Yerba, the tea of Paraguay, its chief product, is only consumed in South America; its fine woods would not bear the expense of transport to Europe; its sugar, tobacco, cotton, and rice, on account of the distance which they would have to be conveyed from the interior, even were the Parana open, could never enter into competition with those of Brazil and the United States. If the Parana were declared open to all nations, the United States could not carry on any direct intercourse with Paraguay under its own flag. The vessels adapted for crossing the ocean would not go up the Parana, and merchandise would have to be re-embarked at the mouth of the river in craft suitable to its navigation, and owned by parties resident in the country. Mr. Graham’s observations are equally applicable to the shipping of European nations, and they cannot too often be repeated for the information of parties embarking in trade with those remote countries._’
The best answer to all this is what I have already said in the preceding chapter respecting Colonel Graham’s fellow-countryman, Mr. Hopkins; and as to ‘vessels adapted for crossing the ocean not going up the Parana,’ Sir Woodbine must surely have been well aware, even at the time Graham wrote, saying nothing of subsequent experience, of the facts borrowed from Sir W. Gore Ouseley, in the note to the illustration of Corrientes (see p. 324), respecting the ascent, not merely of the Parana, by British vessels of war, but of the Paraguay, as far as Assumption, by the French war steamer Fulton, commanded by Captain Mazeres; also that for upwards of 300 miles beyond Assumption the navigation of the Paraguay is even better than it is below the capital, as was lately exemplified, since my return to England, by the voyage of the American steamer Waterwitch, far beyond the limits previously understood to be navigable, except to the small river craft of the country.
It may be said that Colonel Graham could not have known these latter facts when he wrote what Sir Woodbine has quoted. But Sir Woodbine himself must have known them, and should not, therefore, have quoted the Colonel; and he must have known also that public notification had been given, in the following document, which I also take the liberty of printing in italics, that there had been an end put to the isolation in which Paraguay had so long been kept by Francia; and that ‘one Lopez,’ as Sir Woodbine calls the present enlightened President, had made every advance to the external world years before the world became persuaded that the system of Francia had been buried with him.