UP THE PARAGUAY 59 



modern guns have been mounted, and there is a garrison 

 of Brazihan troops. The white fort is perched on the hill- 

 side, where it clings and rises, terrace above terrace, with 

 bastion and parapet and crenellated wall. At the foot of 

 the hill, on the riverine plain, stretches the old-time village 

 with its roofs of palm. In the village dwell several hun- 

 dred souls, almost entirely the officers and soldiers and their 

 families. There is one long street. The one-story, daub- 

 and-wattle houses have low eaves and steep sloping roofs 

 of palm-leaves or of split palm-trunks. Under one or two 

 old but small trees there are rude benches; and for a part of 

 the length of the street there is a rough stone sidewalk. 

 A little graveyard, some of the tombs very old, stands at 

 one end. As we passed down the street the wives and the 

 swarming children of the garrison were at the doors and 

 windows; there were women and girls with skins as fair 

 as any in the northland, and others that were predomi- 

 nantly negro. Most were of intervening shades. All this 

 was paralleled among the men; and the fusion of the colors 

 was going on steadily. 



Around the village black vultures were gathered. Not 

 long before reaching it we passed some rounded green trees, 

 their tops covered with the showy wood-ibis; at the same 

 time we saw behind them, farther inland, other trees crowded 

 with the more delicate forms of the shining white egrets. 



The river now widened so that in places it looked like 

 a long lake; it wound in every direction through the 

 endless marshy plain, whose surface was broken here and 

 there by low mountains. The splendor of the sunset I 

 never saw surpassed. We were steaming east toward 

 clouds of storm. The river ran, a broad highway of mol- 



