Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._ MAY, 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY. TWO PAPERS.--I. [Illustration: DIAMOND CLIFF: SUNSET.] The lot of the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which penetrates through doors that do not fasten and windows that do not fit as snugly as they should. The continual and monotonous drip of the rain, which ripples in streams or falls drop by drop on the pavement of the yards or of the street, is also highly depressing to the spirits when one is held an involuntary prisoner in the ground-floors of the houses, and must perforce listen to it for hours. If, led by inclination or compelled by necessity, you go into the street, you find the space between the sidewalks transformed into a miniature river. In some of the streets the pavements are more than three feet high, and pedestrians walk on them as on the tow-path of a canal, passing from one side of the torrent to the other on small wooden crossings. The comfort that is derived elsewhere in inclement weather from fires may not be hoped for in Buenos Ayres, for the bed-rooms are rarely provided with fireplaces, and in cases where they do possess them the chimneys are liable to smoke dreadfully when the north-west wind sweeps over the city. The natives, accustomed to these features of the rainy season in La Plata, look with indifference on the forlorn condition of the stranger within their gates, and the foreigner, thus left to struggle against the coalition of the elements with the thoughtless or selfish indifference of the native population, must resign himself with patience and resignation until the three months of watery affliction shall have passed away. It was at a time when the reign of Pluvius was at its height, and Buenos Ayres daily wept blinding tears, as it were, from every roof and gable for its sins, that M. X----, the head of a commercial house in the city, put a most welcome question to one of the attaches of the establishment, M. Forgues, a Frenchman, who just then was suffering from the grievous burden of ennui. "See here," he said: "I want somebody to go up into Paraguay to collect an outstanding debt. Are you the man for my purpose?"