osperity. 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 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 Lanc