bedfellow, and to be bitten by mosquitoes of a peculiarly virulent kind through the cords of his hammock.

AN EARLY LESSON IN SMOKING.

At early dawn our traveler is up and his toilet is made. Before the door silently file the women of the colony on their way to the bank of the river. Each bears on her head a large jug of red clay ornamented with fanciful designs, the clay resembling that of which the bowl of an Arab's pipe is made. When these jugs are empty the women carry them in a pretty way inclining to one side, as the French soldier wears his képi. This gives to their walk an air of ease and nonchalance that is extremely graceful. They are draped after a charming fashion in a piece of white cotton called the rebozo, which is scrupulously clean, and they walk one behind the other in bare feet and with elastic step. Their garment consists of a white cotton chemise embroidered around the neck and at the top of the sleeves with black worsted. It is cut very low in the neck, leaving a part of the breast bare, and descends to a point below the knee. A cotton cord tied around the waist keeps the chemise to the figure, and serves as girdle and corset at the same time. The space between the top of the chemise and the belt is used as a receptacle for cigars, money, and generally for all the small objects that elsewhere people carry in their pockets. The rebozo is worn over the head and shoulders, with the ends thrown back over the left shoulder. As they thus pass in single file, the customary mode of walking with the Guaranian women, nothing can be more coquettish than the pose of the jugs on their heads. They resemble an ancient bas-relief. Some of them have admirable figures, and nearly all have fine teeth. Though the type of the race is not a handsome one, owing to the high cheek-bones and square chin, many individuals are pretty. Their large dark eyes are shaded with heavy eyebrows, and their hair is as black as the crow's wing, but very coarse, notwithstanding the constant attention which its owners devote to it. Add to this, and spoiling all, an immense cigar in each mouth, for the Paraguayan women all smoke incessantly. Even children of tender years smoke, and the only ones exempt from the habit are babes at the breast. Indeed, M. Forgues remembers to have seen a Guaranian mother, with her little one straddling her hip, endeavoring to quiet the child's cries by placing between its lips the half-chewed end of her cigar. Among the women of this class marriages are rare. Their principal characteristics are attachment to the companions whom they have chosen, a scrupulous cleanliness, great reserve in speaking, superstition, industry and intelligence.

The general awakes. Horses are brought bridled and saddled for a ride, and the two set out in the direction of the mouth of the Rio Confuso, about five miles distant from the village. The road crosses a vast plain shaded here and there with a few palms of small growth. After half an hour's ride they reach a saw-mill, the property of an eccentric Italian named Perucchino, who had served in his time as an officer of the Italian volunteers of Montevideo under Garibaldi, at the period of the latter's residence in South America. Perucchino receives them with evvivas, gestures, and with even more than the usual demonstrations of the Italian character, and invites them into his house, before which are planted three cannon mounted on a large piece of timber. His bed-room is an arsenal, supplied with enough old muskets, veterans of the war of independence, rusty swords and pikes, to arm fifteen men. He loves noise, and in proof thereof, after killing two chickens for breakfast with two separate discharges of a dangerous-looking double-barreled rifle—dangerous to him who fires it—he announces that the meal is ready with a discharge of one of the cannon at the door—a noisy proclamation which causes M. Forgues to jump in his seat. The breakfast, consisting of chicken and corn and rice omelettes, washed down with heavy Spanish wine, disappears as if by magic under the eager appetites of the guests. Perucchino has been dwelling in this solitude of Gran Chaco for three years with his wife, a Spanish woman. With two fellow-countrymen to assist him, he has worked indefatigably, and at the time of this visit his considerable property has greatly improved. In two years more, when his fields of corn, tobacco and sugar-cane shall begin to yield a return, the ex-beggar of Montevideo will be in the enjoyment of a yearly income of fifteen thousand francs.

At noon M. Forgues and the general return to Villa Occidental under a burning sun, and in the evening they embark for Asuncion on the gunboat, accompanied by the relieved garrison of thirty men. M. Forgues regretfully leaves this little colony, so peaceful and verdurous. As he is about to embark some one runs after him and overtakes him. It is Auriguau, who asks him for his traveling-bag and his pipe, and takes possession, without asking, of his tobacco, promising him in return a present of an entire museum of curiosities, among which are enumerated tiger robes, dried butterflies and some enormous snakes, and in addition a complete collection of all the woods of Gran Chaco, the total approximate value of which is about forty thousand francs.

ROAD TO TRINIDAD.

The return journey is along the Chaco side of the Paraguay. Here and there on the sandbanks amid which the boat threads its way are sunk two or three hulls of vessels covered with a rich growth of vegetation. They represent so many incipient islands. It is amusing to observe the soldiers and their wives busily employed in extinguishing the burning cinders and sparks—small beginnings of conflagrations—which have been deposited in their hair and on their clothing and bundles from the wood-fed furnaces of the gunboat.

The scenery in the vicinity of Asuncion is very fine, and possesses a special feature of its own with the dark shadows of the trees falling on a reddish-yellow sand. Immense avenues lead out in a straight line from the city. They are from seventy to eighty feet wide, but the sand is so deep in them and in the streets that men and horses sink in it above the ankle. Since the war the people have had very few horses, and have been compelled to import them; and it very often happens that newly-arrived saddle and draught horses die from exhaustion consequent on their efforts to gallop in the streets and country roads. One of the most charming of these avenues leads to the church of the Trinidad in the outskirts of the town.

Sugar-cane grows to perfection in this part of Paraguay, but as the methods employed in the manufacture of sugar are of the most rudimentary kind, resulting in the loss of eighty per cent. of the juice the cane contains, and as the sugar is made chiefly by private individuals for their own use, and rarely reaches the market, this industry, which should be a great source of revenue to the country, languishes. The sugar used in Asuncion comes from Europe and Brazil. The cost of machinery probably has been the obstacle to the establishment of a sugar-house of sufficient importance to supply the people with all the sugar of home manufacture they may require. The cane when cut is ground between three large cylinders made of a hard wood—a process which, instead of extracting the juice from the cane, leaves two-thirds of it in the half-crushed stalk. The portion thus expressed flows through a sort of