UP THE PARAGUAY 39 



marshes. Caymans were common, and differed from the 

 crocodiles we had seen in Africa in two points: they were 

 not alarmed by the report of a rifle when fired at, and 

 they lay with the head raised instead of stretched along 

 the sand. 



For three days, as we steamed northward toward the 

 Tropic of Capricorn, and then passed it, we were within 

 the Republic of Paraguay. On our right, to the east, there 

 was a fairly well-settled country, where bananas and or- 

 anges were cultivated and other crops of hot countries 

 raised. On the banks we passed an occasional small town, 

 or saw a ranch-house close to the river's brink, or stopped 

 for wood at some little settlement. Across the river to the 

 west lay the level, swampy, fertile wastes known as the 

 Chaco, still given over either to the wild Indians or to 

 cattle-ranching on a gigantic scale. The broad river ran 

 in curves between mud-banks where terraces marked suc- 

 cessive periods of flood. A belt of forest stood on each 

 bank, but it was only a couple of hundred yards wide. 

 Back of it was the open country; on the Chaco side this 

 was a vast plain of grass dotted with tall, graceful palms. 

 In places the belt of forest vanished and the palm-dotted 

 prairie came to the river's edge. The Chaco is an ideal 

 cattle country, and not really unhealthy. It will be cov- 

 ered with ranches at a not distant day. But mosquitoes 

 and many other winged insect pests swarm over it. Cherrie 

 and Miller had spent a week there collecting mammals and 

 birds prior to my arrival at Asuncion. They were veter- 

 ans of the tropics, hardened to the insect plagues of Guiana 

 and the Orinoco. But they reported that never had they 

 been so tortured as in the Chaco. The sand-flies crawled 



