In 1899 The Dollar Was Worth Only Twelve Cents, And For Five Gold Dollars I Have Received In Exchange As Many As Forty-Six Of Theirs.

Yet there is a great future for Paraguay.

It has been called the Paradise of South America, and although the writer has visited sixteen different countries of the world, he thinks of Paraguay with tender longing. It is perhaps the richest land on earth naturally, and produces so much mate that one year's production would make a cup of tea for every man, woman and child on the globe. Oranges and bananas can be bought at six cents a hundred, two millions of cattle fatten on its rich pasture lands; but, of all the countries the writer has travelled in, Mexico comes first as a land of beggars, and poor Paraguay comes second.

CHAPTER VIII.

ASUNCION.

Being in England in 1900 for change and rest, I was introduced to an eccentric old gentleman of miserly tendencies, but possessed of $5,000,000. Hearing of my wanderings in South America, he told me that he owned a tract of land thirteen miles square in Paraguay, and would like to know something of its value. The outcome of this visit was that I was commissioned by him to go to that country and explore his possession, so I proceeded once more to my old field of labor. Arriving at the mouth of the River Plate, after five weeks of sea- tossing, I was, with the rest, looking forward to our arrival in Buenos Ayres, when a steam tug came puffing alongside, and we were informed that as the ship had touched at the infected port of Bahia, all passengers must be fumigated, and that we must submit to three weeks' quarantine on Flores Island. The Port doctor has sent a whole ship-load to the island for so trifling a cause as that a sailor had a broken collar-bone, so we knew that for us there was nothing but submission. Disembarking from the ocean steamer on to lighters, we gave a last look at the coveted land, "so near and yet so far," and were towed away to three small islands in the centre of the river, about fifty miles distant. One island is set apart as a burial ground, one is for infected patients, and the other, at which we were landed, is for suspects. On that desert island, with no other land in sight than the sister isles, we were given time to chew the cud of bitter reflection. They gave us little else to chew! The food served up to us consisted of strings of dried beef, called charqui, which was brought from the mainland in dirty canvas bags. This was often supplemented by boiled seaweed. Being accustomed to self- preservation, I was able to augment this diet with fish caught while sitting on the barren rocks of our sea-girt prison. Prison it certainly was, for sentries, armed with Remingtons, herded us like sheep.

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