Besides lentils, beans, fasels, and other kinds of vegetables, there is an infinite variety of melons, gourds, and cucumbers, brought from England, Italy, Germany, and Africa, into Paraguay, which, dressed in various ways, serve excellently both to fill the stomach and delight the palate. The curuguà, a kind of gourd, is of great size. Hanging from its stalk, it creeps like ivy along the neighbouring hedges and trees. This gourd is a by no means unpleasant dish, and a celebrated medicine for persons afflicted with the tertian ague. After being kept at home for many months, it fills the room with a delightful fragrance, which virtue the seeds likewise possess. Melons of almost too great sweetness grow every where here, but, unless plucked as soon as ripe, immediately get bitter and are filled with most offensive bugs. Water-melons are very plentiful and of great size. The soil of St. Iago del Estero, which is sandy, produces exceedingly sweet and enormously large melons. Their pulp, which is sometimes red, sometimes yellow, and always cold, greatly refreshes the mouth when parched with heat, and the other parts of the body, without injuring the stomach. They will keep great part of a year, if suspended in any open airy place. Rainy weather is extremely injurious to the young melons, for they absorb so much water that they either burst before they are ripe, or when ripe quickly putrify. LETTUCE. Lettuce grows in the winter months, if rightly cultivated, but very seldom in the summer, unless it be planted on the banks of rivers; for in a garden, by reason of the excessive heat of the sun, it soon blossoms, and turns to seed. European rapes grow successfully the first year they are planted, but degenerate to black and very pungent radishes the next. THE RADISH. Indeed the soil of Paraguay seems peculiarly favourable to radishes, which grow every where to an amazing size, and are very pernicious to wheat, by choking up the fields like tares. MUSTARD SEED. Mustard seed, a wholesome seasoning for food, is always to be seen in the more careful gardens. NASTURTIUM. The European nasturtium is almost unknown to the whole of Paraguay; though the garden, or water-nasturtium, grows spontaneously in moist places. SAFFRON. The European saffron is found in no part of Paraguay. The American, which is saffron in name and appearance only, is not used for seasoning food, but for dying things of a yellow colour. ASPARAGUS. Asparagus grows wild in the plains, but is very bitter, and slenderer than a thread; if cultivated in gardens, it would become quite gigantic. ONIONS AND GARLICK. Onions and garlick are diligently cultivated with great care and expense by the Spaniards, and are even eaten raw with avidity by hungry persons.