It is the breakfast-hour, and M. Forgues and his companion stop in front of the first house they reach as they enter the village and utter the traditional _Ave Maria_, thus requesting the hospitality of the owner. In response, from the shadow of the verandah in which he is seated comes a tall, superb-looking, bearded man, who replies, "_Sin peccado concebida"_ ("conceived without sin"), which indicates that the hospitality asked for is granted. When the Paraguayan gives this response to the invocation of the traveler, the latter may consider himself at home; and so is it on this occasion with M. Forgues. His host proves to have been one of that body of the Paraguayan army, eight or ten thousand strong, which, besieged by the Brazilians in the town of Uruguayana in 1865, at the very beginning of the war, became prisoners when the town was surrendered. They fared far better than their unfortunate fellow-soldiers, for, sent to Brazil, they remained there four years before they were exchanged. In addition to this, they returned to their own country more instructed and more civilized than when they left it. It is to this long relief from the perils of battle, by which the troops drawn from the department of Itape were so generally spared the fate that overtook their comrades in the field, that are due the evident prosperity and the large male adult population of the district, as M. Forgues observed it. His host of the rancho is as gracious in manners and as affable as it is possible to be, and serves up for breakfast a soup of Indian corn, a chicken fricasee and some delicious bread of crusty _chipa_--a frugal meal assuredly, and one entirely out of keeping with the richness of the service of silver plate which burdens the table, and which, worth fully two thousand francs, includes three large plates, an enormous dish and several massive mugs. The spoons and the forks, however, are of more modest material, for the former are made of horn and the latter of iron. [Illustration: A JAGUAR TRAP.] After a brief siesta M. Forgues and his companion resume their journey toward Villa Rica. Under a shed on the roadside they see a dozen women, all talking at the same time, and engaged in grating manioc-roots in pails of water. The mixture thus obtained composes the dough of manioc. This dough is very white, and is made into small balls which are pressed between the hands--an operation which, when completed, constitutes the entire process of making a coarse kind of bread, not at all of delicate flavor, called _galetta_, which is furnished to laborers of both sexes. Under another shed a young girl with a complexion like bronze is seated before a loom weaving, with a light and elegant shuttle, a hammock out of the cotton thread of the country.