This market is a real live place, with its crowds of dark-haired women and children, the former clad in white or brightly coloured dresses and wearing graceful mantillas or shawls of varied hues, squatting upon the ground, surrounded by a medley of wares in the shape of fruits, meats, sweets, and vegetables. Many of the groups that wear the black mantillas over their heads and falling in long, graceful folds around their shoulders, reminded me very much of the funeral parties that mourn round the coffins outside the country churches in Mexico; but the bright colours of the fruits and flowers, and the blue of the sky, seemed to gain in intensity from these little touches of funereal black. Here and there patient kine stand waiting to yield up their supply of milk to passing customers, whilst their muzzled calves strive in vain to obtain their rightful nourishment. Panniered donkeys and mules are ranged in rows along the railings that surround the inner square, women of all ages pass gracefully to and fro amidst the crowd, their purchases or wares poised easily upon their heads, and altogether the scene presents an animation that is in strong contrast with the listlessness of the rest of the town. Not a few of the young girls and maidens are very pretty, with slender, graceful figures, jet-black hair, and lustrous eyes, fringed with long lashes, their complexions ranging from light saffron to darkest olive shades, although a few of them possess a really European appearance. Their costumes are simple and inexpensive, although many of the poorest wear ornaments in the way of earrings and necklaces, of native workmanship, made of silver and often of gold. I noticed, however, that some were wearing the cheaper forms of jewellery of foreign manufacture, and that the cut and fashions of modern modes were obtaining popularity amongst the better-to-do market women. Young children of both sexes run about in a perfectly nude state, even in the town, and in the country this is practically a universal custom. The Paraguayans are all rather short, but strongly knit and wiry. They betray little evidence of Spanish blood, and although there must be in the towns many whose origin is Indo-Spanish, the Indo predominates. The language spoken by the masses is the Guarani, an Indian dialect which is common over a large district in the heart of the continent. The upper classes betray a marked Spanish origin, both in their appearance and speech, and are a little better educated; but most of the people of real Spanish descent were killed during the war, and few, if any, remain to-day who can boast a purely European origin, excepting always the small number of foreigners, English, Italians, Germans, Portuguese, and Spaniards, who have found their way into the country during the last century, and settled there, and those who continue to flow in year after year from many climes, making their new homes in this beautiful country.