fire-arms, from not being well taken care of, are frequently spoiled. Add to this the frequent scarcity or damage of the various articles required for loading and charging them, and that the flint very often proves useless. Paraguay produces plenty of excellent flint, but you can never meet with any one who knows how to split it properly, and fit it for use. In our times even, whenever some hundreds of soldiers fiercely approached the stations of the savages, either the steel was rusty and would not explode, or the gunpowder so moist as to prevent its blazing, so that very few were able to discharge their guns. I could fill pages with facts of this kind, but will only relate two of the more recent ones. A handful of Abipones were overrunning the territory of St. Iago. Thirty soldiers were sent to observe their motions, but being suddenly attacked by the savages, who had lain in wait for them, were every one miserably slain. They had passed the night in the open air, and as the guns were very badly taken care of, the copious dew so moistened the gunpowder, that Vesuvius itself would not have been able to kindle it. This slaughter was effected by twenty Abiponian youths. Two hundred soldiers, headed by Fulgentio de Yegros, attacked the hordes of the Tobas. I was astonished to hear the captains, on their return from this expedition, lamenting that at the very moment of the savages' assault, they had found their muskets unmanageable, and quite useless, either from rust or wet. They had spent greatest part of the night in a field, amongst trees dropping with plenteous dew, that at day-break they might steal unobserved to the enemy's station.