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.
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 young women, some of them very handsome. The music is of the modest kind that might be expected from a clarionet and a guitar. The majority of the participants come to the house with their chairs on their heads. The dances are the polka, the waltz, quadrilles, including the Lancers, and two or three native dances called La Polomila, the Dondon Karapé and La Santa Fé, which are accompanied with graceful poses, while the women, as they dance, snap their fingers in imitation of castanets. While the dance is in progress the good and hospitable Vicente remains outside to fire off his gun at intervals with the view of frightening away the jaguars, one of these animals having been killed only eight days before in the very room wherein the revelers are enjoying themselves. Before taking leave of the brave Fleytas, M. Forgues is regaled with several jaguar stories which doubtless admirably prepare him for the remainder of his journey through forest and jungle.
The next morning he bids the patriarch farewell. On the women and children of the family, grouped in front of the house, he bestows a benediction with the utterance of a "Peace be with you!" Then with his Swiss acquaintance he rides away, to return not to Villa Rica, but to Paraguari, on his way to Asuncion. His course lies nearly due west, and for six leagues he rides through a beautiful country, but on a road so muddy that the horses sink up to the saddle-girths. He tarries for dinner at the estancia of another Paraguayan, Don Matias Ramirez—not as rich a man, but as hospitable a host, as Don Vicente—who spreads before his guests for dinner a simple repast of boiled turnips and small manioc doughnuts. But before reaching the estancia our traveler has had the good fortune to shoot three large birds of the pheasant variety called mutus, and thus the humble board of Don Matias is graced with meat, a rare commodity in those parts.
After a short siesta—as much an institution in Paraguay as dinner itself—M. Forgues pushes forward, furnished with a youthful guide mounted on a mule whom Don Matias has bidden accompany him. For six hours the route lies through a virgin forest composed of orange, cedar and other trees, mingled with dense thorny thickets, trunks of decayed trees and a twisted network of climbers. The passage through this forest is attended with many vexatious incidents, owing to the difficulty experienced in making a way through the undergrowth and thickly-growing climbers. After having his spectacles, his maps, his gun and his hat jerked from him, M. Forgues himself is pulled from his horse. The horses are attacked by a multitude of small yellow flies, which sting them unmercifully in the nostrils, the ears and in whatever part of their bodies the animals cannot reach with their tails, so that, maddened with pain, they break into a fierce gallop to avoid the pest, carrying their riders in their course along the edge of a hole in the ground in which swarms about a bushel of small snakes of a bright green color. When the party finally emerge from this beautiful but inhospitable forest, their clothes are hanging in rags about their persons, and their faces and hands are covered with scratches caused by the thorns.
Their next troublesome experience, although not so long continued, is almost as exhausting, for when the forest is left behind they enter on a marshy waste, through which they are compelled to ride for two hours. Finally, worn out with fatigue, hunger and thirst, they arrive at an estancia, where sleeping accommodations are offered them in the shape of the under side of a cart, nourishment in the shape of fire wherewith to cook a mutus, and assistance comes in the persons of two servants, whose service consists in aiding M. Forgues and his companion to devour, without thanks, salt or manioc, the frugal supper. After that, "Good-night to you!" At daybreak our traveler takes his departure from his churlish—or, it may be, hungry—entertainers, tending in the direction of the foundry of Ibicuy, where in the days of Lopez was smelted the iron ore of San Miguel. Before the war this foundry was a small model establishment with a handsome tile-covered roof, and was thoroughly equipped for the purpose to which it was devoted. All the machinery was destroyed by the Brazilians, and the foundry was left a wreck. Near by is the estancia of Margarita Rivarola, where our traveler and his companion stop to breakfast. Margarita is a poor widow with a beautiful daughter. She is a cousin of a former president of the republic, but so destitute did M. Forgues find her that she and her daughter led an existence bordering on starvation. As in the case of his entertainment at the dwelling of Don Matias, he fortunately brings his breakfast with him. He had killed that morning an ara, a beautiful bird, but not so pleasant to the taste, and this constitutes the meal.
Leaving this spot, and traveling five leagues farther in the direction of Paraguari, M. Forgues and his companion reach the village of Mbuyapey at eight o'clock at night. Here they meet with an adventure. As they enter the village three men, composing the guard of the place and armed with rusty pikes of the Lopez period, challenge them and order them to halt. An interview is held in the darkness, and after a thousand explanations they are permitted to pass. Early next morning they are aroused from sleep by a tumult at their window. Through the grating a number of boys are glaring in on them, capering and uttering a variety of ejaculations. The secret of this popular demonstration is soon explained, for almost at the same moment the door is opened abruptly and the magistrate of the place makes his appearance, asking in Spanish to see their passports and the passports of their horses. The dispute thickens. Finally, M. Forgues, toying with his revolver, proclaims that he and his companion are Frenchmen, and not Paraguayans, that no passports are necessary to travel in the country, and that they cannot be interfered with with impunity. At this a change comes over the magistrate. He begs a thousand pardons, and justifies his course as being merely in the interest of good order, while declaring his belief in the entire respectability of our traveler and his friend. Even in this solitary and almost deserted village a school flourishes (and here it may be remarked in passing that so diffused is public instruction in Paraguay that it is a rare thing to meet with a Paraguayan who cannot sign his name), and when M. Forgues and his companion ride away they are followed by the benign smiles of the magistrate and the bewildered looks of the scholars.
In this departure from the retired hamlet of Mbuyapey our traveler falls into the great highway that passes through the Missiones between Asuncion and Encarnacion on the Parana, in the south-eastern corner of Paraguay.
