The return journey is along the Chaco side of the Paraguay. Here and there on the sandbanks amid which the boat threads its way are sunk two or three hulls of vessels covered with a rich growth of vegetation. They represent so many incipient islands. It is amusing to observe the soldiers and their wives busily employed in extinguishing the burning cinders and sparks--small beginnings of conflagrations--which have been deposited in their hair and on their clothing and bundles from the wood-fed furnaces of the gunboat. The scenery in the vicinity of Asuncion is very fine, and possesses a special feature of its own with the dark shadows of the trees falling on a reddish-yellow sand. Immense avenues lead out in a straight line from the city. They are from seventy to eighty feet wide, but the sand is so deep in them and in the streets that men and horses sink in it above the ankle. Since the war the people have had very few horses, and have been compelled to import them; and it very often happens that newly-arrived saddle and draught horses die from exhaustion consequent on their efforts to gallop in the streets and country roads. One of the most charming of these avenues leads to the church of the Trinidad in the outskirts of the town. Sugar-cane grows to perfection in this part of Paraguay, but as the methods employed in the manufacture of sugar are of the most rudimentary kind, resulting in the loss of eighty per cent. of the juice the cane contains, and as the sugar is made chiefly by private individuals for their own use, and rarely reaches the market, this industry, which should be a great source of revenue to the country, languishes. The sugar used in Asuncion comes from Europe and Brazil. The cost of machinery probably has been the obstacle to the establishment of a sugar-house of sufficient importance to supply the people with all the sugar of home manufacture they may require. The cane when cut is ground between three large cylinders made of a hard wood--a process which, instead of extracting the juice from the cane, leaves two-thirds of it in the half-crushed stalk. The portion thus expressed flows through a sort of wooden trench into pails, which are emptied as fast as they become full into a large vat, under which a fire is constantly kept burning. In this receptacle it is boiled for a considerable time, but owing to the carelessness of those in charge of the vat about a third of it is spilled on the ground. What is left is reduced to a kind of sugary molasses, to which is given the name of "honey." Some of the cane-growers distill with rude alembics a sort of sweet liquor from the cane-juice, which is called _cana_. Another distillation is from the juice of oranges, and is called _cana de naranja_. In the manufacture of the latter birds of various kinds--ducks, paroquets, young chickens, etc.--are sometimes placed in the liquor to be distilled, and the curious mixture that results is known as _cana de substancia_, and is