the captain to the steamer, where, seated on the deck, he listens with horror to the stories told by a citizen of divers murders committed in the town and vicinity, one of the victims, a French pioneer, having been slain lately at his _quinta_, or small farm, just on the other side of the river, by the fierce Indians of Gran Chaco, whose camp-fires, about six miles distant, even while they are conversing, light up one-fourth of the horizon in that direction. M. Forgues, introduced to General Vedia, who commands the Argentine forces in Paraguay, is invited by that officer to go with him to Villa Occidental, a town situated a few miles above Asuncion on the river, and capital of the new province of Gran Chaco, claimed by the Argentine Confederation. He accepts. The voyage is made in a small Argentine gunboat, with its guard of thirty Argentine soldiers dressed in gray linen, with green facings to their coats, and armed with Minie rifles. This detachment is on its way to Villa Occidental to relieve the guard at that place, which has been on duty for eight days protecting the infant capital of Gran Chaco against the incursions of the Indians of the province. Around them are grouped a number of Paraguayan women, clad in the costume of the country--a chemise and a white rebozo--which gives them a certain statuesque appearance. The general and M. Forgues are received with military honors at Villa Occidental by the commandant of the place and his garrison of three soldiers. A walk of ten minutes brings them to the spot, a short distance out of the village, where twenty years ago was established a colony of Frenchmen who had been sent out from France by the late President Lopez at the time of the dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, his father. The elder Lopez, it appears, desired agriculturists from France, and the younger Lopez, who was then in that country, despatched to him two or three hundred bootblacks, organ-grinders, street vagabonds, etc. whom he had collected on the quays of Bordeaux and in the suburbs of Paris. Carlos Antonio was at first grieved to see the class of immigrants that had been forwarded as tillers of the soil, but he became furious when he discovered that his unwelcome colonists had brought with them certain dangerous ideas of liberty which threatened to excite a mutinous spirit among his docile Paraguayans. He therefore assembled them at a spot near Villa Occidental, and placed them under the control of the governor of the province of Gran Chaco, in spite of the protests of the French consul. Here they were treated with the utmost cruelty. They were bastinadoed and otherwise punished for the most trivial offences. Many died under these inflictions. Of the few survivors some endeavored to escape through the forests of Gran Chaco to Bolivia and Peru. Three were caught, brought back and tortured, while the others, of whom no tidings were ever received afterward, probably perished of hunger or were killed