hands of the host, a glass of cana.  The breakfast-table is decked with flowers, and under it grunts and roots about among the feet of the guests a very tame tapir as large as a decently-sized pig.  The hard and dry Spanish wine used at the entertainment is drunk out of large beer-glasses.  The mistress of the house and the officers of the Paraguayan guard that composes the political chief’s escort act as waiters.  After many toasts have been offered and honored, M. Forgues, mustering up his few words of Spanish-Guaranian, drinks to the health of the pretty girls of Villa Rica amid the enthusiastic hurrahs of the guests, one of whom, with exclamations of Bueno! bravo! and the like, leaves his seat to scatter flowers over our traveler’s head, wishing him at the same time every prosperity.  At this moment a bass drum and a clarionet intervene in the clamor with a delicious French melody, “Ah! zut alors si Nadar est malade!” and the company retire to the ball-room to dance, and also, women as well as men, to smoke immense cigars.

Yakaguazu, a large square village near Villa Rica, is visited by M. Forgues.  It contains eighty or ninety houses, and a church which is the counterpart of that at Itape.  There is a school in the place attended by one hundred and twenty-five pupils, who secure a patriotic but limited education with nothing in the way of a printed text-book but a lot of surplus copies of the constitution of Paraguay.  Their teacher informs M. Forgues that of the three hundred and sixty-five school-children in his district, three hundred are orphans.

[Illustration:  VILLAGE OF CARAPEGUA.]

Continuing his journey the next day, with his host of Yakaguazu added to the party, M. Forgues reaches the dwelling of an old and very rich Paraguayan, Vicente Fleytas, whose farm, happily spared the ravages of war, is a fair sample of what the farms of the country were in the days of Lopez.  Fleytas lives in patriarchal style, and he entertains his visitors most hospitably.  At night, seated under the verandah, they smoke, or eat delicious oranges which the wife and daughters of old Vicente peel in a large silver dish, and the hours of sleep are passed in hammocks, the doors of the house having first been closed carefully to keep out any wandering jaguars that may be prowling around.  In regard to these fierce animals, M. Forgues says that enough of them are to be met with in the forests of Paraguay to affright the bravest man, but it is more difficult to avoid them than to see them.  They are sometimes caught in traps resembling enormous rat-traps and baited with raw meat.  The skin of the jaguar sells for eight dollars, and consequently the man who is so lucky as to catch one in his trap rejoices greatly.  The next night a ball is given at the patriarch’s in honor of our traveler.  During the day they ride around the neighborhood and personally invite to the entertainment the guests to the number of seventy-four, of whom seventy are