The men salute the party by removing their hats, and the women with a Buen dia ("Good-day"), uttered with a gracious smile.  The whole of this forest is peopled like the environs of Paris.  Rancho succeeds rancho at short distances apart, and each shelters under its blackened thatched roof many women and children, of whose number its small dimensions give no idea.  In the towns the houses need to be large to protect their occupants from the heat, but in this forest the people live in the open air chiefly, entering their hovels only to sleep, be it during the day or the night.  In strange contrast with the humble aspect of the houses is the heavy silver pitcher, weighing at least two pounds, from which M. Forgues is given to drink by the owner of one of the huts of whom he has asked water.

[Illustration:  Itape:  Palace and church.]

Leaving these cheerful forest-homes behind him, our traveler fords the Tebicuari-mi, which rises in the cordillera where are gathered the yerba-leaves from which is made the mate.  The water at Paso de Itape, as the ford is called, is shallow enough to permit the party to walk their horses through it, although usually the passage is made on the flat-boat and the two long canoes which are tied to the bank near by.  The ford derives its name from the village of Itape, which lies a short distance beyond—­a pleasant, prosperous hamlet with cultivated lands surrounding it, and built in a square, with its church and its bell-tower in the centre.  The space at the entrance of the sacred edifice is covered with sweet, fine grass, and contented-looking oxen and horses browse at the foot of the wall.

[Illustration:  Interior of the church at Villa Rica]

It is the breakfast-hour, and M. Forgues and his companion stop in front of the first house they reach as they enter the village and utter the traditional Ave Maria, thus requesting the hospitality of the owner.  In response, from the shadow of the verandah in which he is seated comes a tall, superb-looking, bearded man, who replies, “Sin peccado concebida" ("conceived without sin"), which indicates that the hospitality asked for is granted.  When the Paraguayan gives this response to the invocation of the traveler, the latter may consider himself at home; and so is it on this occasion with M. Forgues.  His host proves to have been one of that body of the Paraguayan army, eight or ten thousand strong, which, besieged by the Brazilians in the town of Uruguayana in 1865, at the very beginning of the war, became prisoners when the town was surrendered.  They fared far better than their unfortunate fellow-soldiers, for, sent to Brazil, they remained there four years before they were exchanged.  In addition to this, they returned to their own country more instructed and more civilized than when they left it.  It is to this long relief from the perils of battle, by which the