note-worthy. Mounted police, with great sun helmets and white drill clothes, are in evidence at the railway stations, and, although uniformed and bearing swords and revolvers, they seldom wear socks or boots, but content themselves with the simple alpagatos or straw shoes which are common throughout the country. The poncho is very popular with most of the inhabitants of the plains, a really serviceable and sensible form of covering. At Mercedes a few sun-bleached coaches betray the existence of some important town in the vicinity, although it is not visible from the railway station. Trains laden with hot, uncomfortable cattle and sheep are drawn up in sidings to permit the passenger trains to pass. Carts drawn by oxen and horses lumber along the dusty roads. Much of the country in the north of Corrientes is swampy, and an abundance of bird life clusters around the margin of the shallow lakes. Storks wade through the pools, plover, snipe, pigeon, and rooks hover in the air, and palm trees grow here and there in little clumps, giving a tropical touch to a landscape which but for them has no special feature, save that of monotony. When violent storms of wind, rain, and lightning visit these camps--and their terrific force is indescribable--the whole horizon from east to west is lit up by flashes of blinding intensity, following one another in such rapid succession that they merge together and form long periods of illumination, varied at intervals by streaks of forked lightning which stab the earth with destructive force. Deaths from lightning are not uncommon in this quarter of the continent, the continual roll of loud thunder is deafening, like the near report of a battery of heavy ordnance--the rain descends in torrents, an awe-inspiring deluge, which converts great tracts of the low-lying land into shallow lakes. Corrientes, the capital of the State, could hardly be described as a fine city or town. It is undergoing some improvements, which will render it a little less destructive to carriage springs and trying to weak ankles. The streets until recently were frightful, one mass of rugged boulders that would baffle the ingenuity of the sure-footed mule to negotiate. The authorities are at work, endeavouring to make the roads and streets passable, but during the operations, which have been started all over the town simultaneously, confusion reigns. The town lies on the western bank of the Parana River, a little below the point where it meets the [Illustration: IGEASU FALLS ON THE ALTO PARANA.]