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.

[Illustration: 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
so