From honey let us proceed to salt, which is in great request both
amongst the savages and almost all beasts, though they are scarce ever
able to procure it: for notwithstanding that some parts of Paraguay
abound in salt either natural, or artificial, yet none of either kind
can be obtained throughout immense tracts of land, unless it be brought
at a great expense from other places. All the Guarany towns are
destitute of chalk, and salt, both of which are forced to be conveyed in
ships, or waggons, from the remote colonies of the Spaniards, are often
purchased at an exorbitant price, often not to be procured. In the
Cordoban territories, and elsewhere, the lakes which have been exhausted
by a long drought do indeed afford coagulated salt; but during time of
drought it is very difficult to reach those lakes, as the plains,
through which you must pass, deny water both to the carriers, and to the
oxen, by whom the salt is conveyed in waggons to the cities. In rainy
seasons, when those lakes are full, no salt is coagulated, which being
frequently the case, salt is in consequence often scarce and dear. In
many places under the jurisdiction of the cities Asumpcion, and St.
Iago, nitre collected in the plains, or salt water boiled in small pans,
is converted into salt. At the town of Concepcion the salt boiled in the
little town of Sta. Lucia was sometimes too bitter to be eaten: that
salt made in the Indian town Lambare, and in Cochinoco where it borders
on Peru, is much esteemed, because it is hard as a stone, very white,
and fit for medicinal purposes. The people of Buenos-Ayres sometimes
convey salt in ships by the South Sea, sometimes in waggons by land from
the lakes, where there is an immense accumulation of native salt, and of
snow. These lakes, as they are situated towards the straits of Magellan,
many days' journey from the city, can never be reached without much
expense, and seldom without some danger. Great troops of Spaniards were
often cruelly murdered on the way by the southern savages, who scarce
left one alive to announce the massacre to the city. On considering
these difficulties you will not much wonder that salt is generally
scarce in Paraguay, and often not to be procured. The Guaranies eat
their meat and all their other provisions without a grain of salt; but a
single spoonful was given on Sundays by the free bounty of the priest,
to every father of a family, to last the whole week: yet even this
little portion was expensive to the towns, of which some contained a
thousand inhabitants, others seven or eight hundred. For as an arroba (a
Spanish weight of twenty-five pounds) of salt often cost four crowns, or
eight Austrian florens, a pound was worth about twenty of our cruitzers.
The savages who live in hidden wilds generally eat their food without
salt, as there are no salt-pits there; and this is, in my opinion, the
reason that so many of them are afflicted with cutaneous disorders.
Others burn a shrub which the Spaniards call _la vidriera_, the ashes of
which they used instead of salt, to season their meat with and to
prepare medicines.