Some parts of Paraguay produce yellow cotton, but this is very uncommon; for in every other place throughout the country the cotton is as white as snow, and grows on shrubs which are reared from seed sown in little plots of ground, and yield fruit many years. If any plant withers, or grows old, fresh seed is sown, and another succeeds which bears fruit the first year. Cotton loves a sunny elevated situation, exposed to the winds on every side, and full of stones. However favourable the soil may naturally be to the production of cotton, it always requires exquisite culture. It must be ploughed, and weeded over and over again, to clear it of thistles, tares, and grass. The furrows and ditches, into each of which three or four fresh cotton seeds are placed, must be dug in a right line, and at such a distance from one another that the oxen and ploughmen may have room to pass through the intermediate spaces. The same field, indeed, must be fresh ploughed every year, and, at the approach of spring, the plants, which have been stripped of their leaves in the winter, are cut like vines, and quickly covered with new foliage. The poorer sort amongst the Spaniards of Paraguay wear cotton shirts; the richer, linen ones. They prefer paying an inordinate price for linen webs brought from Europe to the trouble of cultivating flax. RICE. During the first years that I spent in Paraguay, rice was so scarce that, as it was brought from other countries, it hardly ever appeared at our table. It was never sown, and none would go of their own accord to gather or carry away rice, which grows at a great distance on the northern shores of the Paraguay; justly fearing the Payaguas, who infested those places. Instructed, at length, by the Portugueze Brazilians, we began to sow rice, and the crop was more than could be consumed. But as it is very difficult to take the grains of rice out of the ear, the Indians preferred eating maize, which is pounded in mortars with little trouble. Let no one entertain a notion that the sowing and cultivation of rice require any particular artifices; for it is sown and reaped exactly in the same manner as European wheat, with this difference only, that the seeds must be committed to the earth at the commencement of spring, and in a moist situation. Many have affirmed positively that rice will only grow in marshy places; but we found that which was sown in woods, or rather in ground that had formerly been wooded, to yield a more abundant harvest than what was sown in a marshy situation. For a place that has been previously occupied by trees, retains, for a long time, its native humidity, and the ashes of the trees that have been cut down and burnt on the spot, incredibly fertilize the soil. In places of this kind the Guaranies used to sow tobacco, maize, and most other things except cotton, with great success. But, good heavens! how have I lost myself in this labyrinth of trees,