house contains a piano—a fact of which the stranger strolling through the place is kept constantly aware. Many of the streets are paved and macadamized.

A BLANCO INSURGENT.

Parana is the chief city of the province of Entre Rios, the people of which are possessed of a fierce spirit of independence, and, like the Basques of Spain, claiming the right to administer their domestic affairs in their own way, they are often in insurrection against the central government at Buenos Ayres, which resorts to force to check their "separatist" tendencies. Within four years two or three efforts at revolution have been made on the part of the people of Entre Rios under Lopez Jordan, their principal leader, General Mitre, and others. One year previous to the journey we are now describing our traveler had gone from Buenos Ayres to Parana on business. In consequence of a municipal election having gone in favor of the government candidates by a majority of thirty votes, a fresh insurrection had just broken out in the city, and when M. Forgues reached his destination he found the national troops in possession of Parana, which was closely besieged by the Blancos or "Whites," as the insurgents were called from their trappings, to distinguish them from the Colorados or "Reds," which was the name given to the Buenos Ayres party. On the occasion of this visit he had need to seek the insurgent camp in furtherance of his mission, which was to obtain possession of eight thousand hides that were within the insurgents' lines. He returned to Parana, after successfully conducting the negotiations, with a sketch of one of the mounted Blancos, a picturesque, stately fellow, with the proud bearing of a brigand, having enormous spurs on his heels, a white band around his hat, and armed with a lance and a long cavalry sword.

A SALADERO ON THE PARANA.

Immediately opposite Parana, on the other side of the river, which in this part is very wide, is the city of Santa Fé, the point of export for all the region occupied by the foreign agricultural colonies of the confederation—to wit, the Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans and Belgians. The chief industry in which these colonists are engaged is the cultivation of wheat, of which enormous quantities are raised and converted into flour on the spot, as there are several steam flour-mills in the district. The flour is shipped from Santa Fé and sold in Rosario or Buenos Ayres. These colonists number about thirteen thousand. Santa Fé is a remarkably indolent town—the most indolent in the world, says M. Forgues. Its chief features are its great plaza, its church and the palace of the governor of Gran Chaco. Back of the country occupied by the colonists begins the land of the Chaco Indians. They enjoy the reputation of being savages, but as an example of the delicate line of demarkation in La Plata between the extreme of civilization and the extreme of savage life our traveler relates that riding thirty leagues to visit a tribe of wild Indians, he found the chief with a poncho of Manchester manufacture on his shoulders, a pair of gaiters from Latour, Rue Montorgueil, Paris, on his feet, and a hospitable glass of Hamburg gin in his hand.

VIEW OF PARANA FROM THE RIVER.

Leaving Parana, the steamer passes, at a short distance above the city, the saladero of Messrs. Carbo y Carril, a picturesque spot situated on a cliff. From this point a fine view is obtained of Parana in the distance, stretching along its high barranca, with its white houses and belfries in bold relief against the blue sky, and borrowing from the elevation on which it stands a delusively majestic aspect.

As the Republica ascends the river the cliffs continue to be the prevailing feature of the shore-scenery. A Brazilian passenger steamer, one of a line of steamers which ply between Cuyaba in the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso and Montevideo, is met descending the stream. This line, established by the government of Brazil to maintain communication between its central South American possessions and the large cities of the coast, receives an imperial subsidy of nine thousand francs a month. A saladero is passed, and then a village. The river is thick with trees with twisted roots and short branches, floating downward to the ocean. Then the appearance of the banks changes: the cliffs gradually slope to a level with the river, and vegetation begins to line the shore, first in the shape of bushes, next of undergrowth, and finally of lofty forest trees, some of them dead, and with a wall of tangled foliage overhead.

Passing Esquina, a hamlet at the mouth of the Rio Corrientes, vast volumes of smoke rising behind the trees on the right bank proclaim that the Indians of Gran Chaco are "burning a forest in order to roast a quarter of venison." Here the steamer's course lies among islands covered partly with undergrowth and partly with forests. In the shadow of the tall trees on one of the most lovely of these islands is seen from the deck a quaint, barefooted company consisting of two men, a woman and three small children, who have just stepped ashore from two boats made from the hollowed-out trunks of trees. Two dogs accompany them. The adults of the party are clothed in rags. These people are monteros, and are members of a tribe of gypsies who haunt the islands of the Parana. They live a life of lordly independence, subsisting as best they can, sleeping when fatigued wherever they may be when drowsiness overtakes them, eating whatever comes to hand, drinking the water of the river in the absence of anything stronger, and keeping themselves warm by firing a forest from time to time. At the moment the Republica hurries past they are preparing their evening meal, the material for which, a carpincho, a sort of aquatic hog, lies at their feet. The chief of the gypsy party stares at the steamer with bewildered eyes, and at the noise made by the paddles a great terror seizes on a colony of monkeys in the branches of the trees.

The town of La Goya, with a population of five thousand, is the next place of importance reached. A few miles above this point is a famous saladero, that of El Rincon de los Sotos (the "Fool's Corner"), which belongs to a fellow-countryman of M. Forgues, and which, after the saladero of Baron Liebig in Uruguay, is the most extensive in the valley of the Rio de la Plata. Here are slaughtered as many as fifteen hundred head of cattle a day. Nor far distant from it is the landing-place for the animals, a pretty spot which M. Forgues sketched en passant.

The Republica is approaching Corrientes, the last of the Argentine towns on the left bank of the Parana, and situated eighteen miles below the point at which the Paraguay unites with that stream. Now alligators appear, stretched lazily on the sand and basking in the sun, with their ugly black bodies resembling logs partly submerged. The river assumes a new aspect, widening into great sheets of water dotted with flat islands lying far apart, and in its lake-like proportions justifying the Guaranian meaning of its name—"like the sea." So far-reaching indeed are these expanses of water that when a brisk