The city is built on a gradual slope, which rises from the river and extends southwards for a mile or more, its grass-grown streets having different levels, many of them descending with a startling suddenness. In order to progress in a straight line it will be found necessary to continually ascend or descend flights of steps, the difference of level being sometimes as much as twenty feet. The outlying streets are full of interesting little domestic scenes, women with their ubiquitous cigars busy at the wash-tub or hanging out the clothes to dry in the burning sun, culinary operations carried on in the open air under the shade of overhanging eaves or leafy trees. A black-draped doorway here and there intimates to the passers-by that the Great Avenger has paid his dire visit, and through the opening the mourners may be seen sitting beside their dead, and receiving the condolences of friends and relatives, a scene made gloomier by contrast with the brilliant sky against which tall palms nod their leafy crowns, gorgeously plumaged birds wing their joyous flight, and snow-white, fleecy clouds chase one another in endless succession. At midday, when the sunshine beats warm upon the sleeping town, the shops are closed, the market-place deserted, and desolation reigns in street and square, where the heat from the ground is visible by the quivering motion of the air. The glowing richness of the country roads is refreshing, after these dry, parched, city streets, and the boundless expanse of green hill and valley which stretches around is broken only by the bright silvery light of the river that winds through many and varied scenes northwards, amidst remote, unknown tropical fastnesses, and southwards towards the largest city south of the Equator. The aboriginal inhabitants of South America are always referred to by the Spanish historians and writers under the generic name of Indians, and very many tribes more or less differentiated by customs, manners, appearance, and language still inhabit the continent. The Guarani peoples who are found to-day in Paraguay are distributed over a large area, extending from the main waters of the Amazon and Madeira rivers through the heart of the continent. Amidst the forests and in the dense chaco of the Paraguay and Parana rivers many still wander in a primitive condition, whilst others but little higher in the scale of civilisation who have come under the influence of the Jesuit missionaries, occupy villages and towns scattered throughout the country. The early European invaders of the continent were relentless [Illustration: PARAGUAYAN SAVAGES.]