AT PUERTO MENDEZ. 
51 
from the glare outside the doorway into the 
dusty shadowed interior. Many of them were 
naked to the waist, and the warm terra cotta of 
their bodies was powdered with yellowish dust 
from the sacks of yerba. 
Crouched on the ground was a little group of 
new arrivals, a man and woman, Paraguayans, 
with two or three children; a few bundles by 
their side. They waited patiently for orders, 
staring impassively at the scene around them. 
The woman had a sleeping child on her lap, and 
a ray of sunlight fell across its bare brown 
limbs and the faded blue of its frock. Across 
its dark head she gazed quietly into space, 
thinking of nothing, it seemed. Not fearful of 
the future, nor regretting the past; but dumbly 
patient, like some gentle animal. 
From the built-out verandah of the superin¬ 
tendent’s house, which hung like a swallow’s 
nest over the cliff, we looked down upon the 
river far below : so far that its roar could not 
reach us. Between the dark high banks it 
gleamed like an eye through half-closed lids. 
It was the middle of the day, and the little 
collection of buildings stood full in the blinding 
glare of the sun. The red uneven road that 
straggled past the sheds and yards forming the 
station was ankle-deep in dust. A bullock cart 
or two were drawn up at the side of it, the 
bullocks unyoked and feeding, whilst the drivers 
lay in the square of grateful shade made by the 
