Some peculiarities will probably long be preserved, such amongst other as the iron gratings, or rather railings, which protect the windows, and which, on more than one occasion, have proved the best safeguards of the inhabitants: it requires some time for a European to become reconciled to their appearance, which ill accords with the _beau-idéal_ of republican liberty and public safety; yet when painted green they are rather ornamental than otherwise, particularly when hung, as they frequently are, with festoons of the beautiful air-plants of Paraguay, which there live and blossom even on cold iron, and one does get reconciled to them, I believe, from a speedy conviction of their necessity in the present state of society in those countries:--in the hot nights of summer, too, it is some comfort to be able to leave a window open without risk of intrusion; though some of the light-fingered gentry have made this not quite so safe as it used to be. I have known more than one instance of a clever thief running off with the clothes of the sleeping inmates, fished through the gratings by means of one of the long canes of the country, with a hook at the end of it:--in one well-known case, a gentleman's watch was thus hooked out of its pocket at his bed's head, and he was but just roused by his frightened wife in time to catch a last glimpse of the chain and seals as they seemingly danced out of the window. It will hardly be credited that water is an expensive article within fifty yards of the Plata, but so it is; nothing can be worse than the ordinary supply of it. That obtained from the wells is brackish and bad, and there are no public cisterns or reservoirs, although the city is so slightly elevated above the river, that nothing would be easier than to keep it continually provided by the most ordinary artificial means. As it is, those who can afford it go to a great expense in constructing large tanks under the pavement of their court-yards, into which the rainwater collected from the flat-terraced roofs of their houses is conducted by pipes; and in general a sufficiency may thus be secured for the ordinary purposes of the family; but the lower orders, who cannot afford to go to such an expense, depend for a more scanty supply upon the itinerant water-carriers, who, at a certain time of day, are to be seen lazily perambulating the streets with huge butts filled at the river, mounted on the monstrous cart-wheels of the country, and drawn by a yoke of oxen; a clumsy and expensive contrivance altogether, which makes even water dear within a stone's throw of the largest river in the world. Taken at the very edge, it is seldom of the purest, and generally requires to stand twenty-four hours before it deposits its muddy sediment, and becomes sufficiently cleared to be drinkable; it is then excellent, and may be kept for any time. I have drunk it myself on board ship, after it had been two voyages to England and back, and never tasted better.