Eight months on the Gran Chaco of the Argentine Republic / by Giovanni Pelleschi.

  • Juan Pelleschi
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eight months on the Gran Chaco of the Argentine Republic / by Giovanni Pelleschi. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER II. HUMAItI THE VBRMEJO—THE TOBAS. To proceed. We are not yet at the Yermejo/ hut in the Paraguay; a red streak on our right tells us at twenty' leagues distance that we are approaching it. As we advance we pass by Curupaity, memorable for its vigorous defence in the last war, and we touch at the village of Humaita—ranking as a city in the very poor Republic of Paraguay—with its church, formerly a solid building, but now shattered to pieces by the shells of the besiegers. Here we came suddenly on a crowd of women muiiied^ m tipoys, who solicited our custom, offering cigars made of chipa. They addressed us in the second person singular with “ thee and “ thou.” I must confess that it is pleasant to be so addressed. They have transferred this form of locution from Guarani, their mother tongue, to the Castilian language. There is a classic and poetic savour about it, suitable to a sovereign people and to the passion of love, and it carries the mind back to Arcadian ages and to the Republicans of Greece and Rome, who, I may inform such of my readers as are unaware of the fact, always used “ thou ” in every class of society, as the Arabs, the Turks and the Indian races in all parts of the world do at the present day. With regard to the Guarani language, when first heard it seems like music itself, so full is it of cadence, reinmd- ing the hearer of the rhythm of Latin verse, but afterwards it becomes monotonous and fatiguing. This pronunciation pre- vails not only in Paraguay, but also in the Argentine missions, where I heard it, and such cadence or rhythm is an integral i,art of the language, which takes numberl^s variations m order to retain it, thus making it extremely difficult to acquire. 1 Vermojo—vermilion. The town receives its name from the colour of its river, especially in the shallows.
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