UP THE PARAGUAY 55 



When at last the wood was aboard we resumed our 

 journey. The river was Hke glass. In the white moon- 

 light the palms on the edge of the banks stood mirrored 

 in the still water. We sat forward and as we rounded the 

 curves the long silver reaches of the great stream stretched 

 ahead of us, and the ghostly outlines of hills rose in the 

 distance. Here and there prairie fires burned, and the red 

 glow warred with the moon's radiance. 



Next morning was overcast. Occasionally we passed a 

 wood-yard, or factory, or cabin, now on the eastern, the 

 Brazilian, now on the western, the Paraguayan, bank. The 

 Paraguay was known to men of European birth, bore sol- 

 diers and priests and merchants as they sailed and rowed 

 up and down the current of its stream, and beheld little 

 towns and forts rise on its banks, long before the Mississippi 

 had become the white man's highway. Now, along its 

 upper course, the settlements are much like those on the 

 Mississippi at the end of the first quarter of the last cen- 

 tury; and in the not distant future it will witness a burst 

 of growth and prosperity much like that which the Missis- 

 sippi saw when the old men of to-day were very young. 



In the early forenoon we stopped at a little Paraguayan 

 hamlet, nestling in the green growth under a group of low 

 hills by the river-brink. On one of these hills stood a pic- 

 turesque old stone fort, known as Fort Bourbon in the 

 Spanish, the colonial, days. Now the Paraguayan flag 

 floats over it, and it is garrisoned by a handful of Para- 

 guayan soldiers. Here Father Zahm baptized two children, 

 the youngest of a large family of fair-skinned, light-haired 

 small people, whose father was a Paraguayan and the 

 mother an "Oriental," or Uruguayan. No priest had 



