The Times of Saturday published an awful story, received from
a correspondent at Rio Janeiro, of the poisoning of 3,000 Indians in Parana, by "persons employed by the Brazilian a'nthorities." The statement is that one Senhor Joaquin Bueno, wishing to secure certain lands to the white
men, attacked an Indian village of 3,000 inhabitants, drove out the people, and in their absence poisoned their food and wine and the water in the wells with strychnine. The inhabitants, of course, returned, and shortly after were all found lying dead. A second village of 800 people was next attacked, and the wretched natives were destroyed in a similar • way, the poison employed in this case being chlorate of mercury, or rather, as a specialist explains, corrosive sub- limate. Senhor Joaquin Bueno, it is asserted, boasts of the atrocity, declaring that when a higher race requires land, it is beneficial to remove the lower. The tale requires much further confirmation. It is not impossible, for individual cases of such crimes have been known in our own Colonies ; while it is quite conceivable that devotees of modern thought would rank Indians with monkeys. At the same time, stories of this kind grow in the telling ; there is no evidence of the good-faith of the original narrator—a correspondent of a Rio journal—or of his means of information ; and the Brazilian Government officially denies that the story is true. Pending further intelligence, therefore, the horror ought to be dis- believed.
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