We have already seen that Asuncion is reached by steamer, and this was, indeed, until a few years ago, when the railway was built, with a train-ferry, the only means of reaching the Paraguayan capital. "He who can afford time for an up-river journey from Buenos Ayres to Asuncion will find the experience as instructive as anything else of the kind throughout South America. It is true that the flat pastures which go to make up the earlier stretches of the landscape lack a good deal from the picturesque point of view. But it is this very distribution of the scenery which adds to the charm of the trip, for, as the sub-tropical regions begin to exert their influence, and as the banks approach each other more nearly, the charm of the surroundings increases steadily. "After a certain point has been reached there are very few hours or dozens of miles which are not productive of some new feature or other to captivate the eye of the traveller. But not until that famous wheat centre, the Argentine town of Rosario, has been reached does this phase of the journey begin. There for the first time the flat, reed-covered banks of the river fall away, to give place to definite _barrancas_, or cliffs, that boldly mark the edge of the great stream. When the grain-shoots and line of moored steamers that mark this thriving town have been passed, the sandstone cliff continues at intervals on alternate banks; the vivid scarlet of the ceibo-tree becomes more frequent; and the clumps of camelota, the floating water hyacinth, tend to increase in size. The districts, moreover, are obeying one of the primal laws of the world in that, as the blossoms, birds and butterflies increase in brilliancy, so does the human complexion tend to grow duskier. But here this applies only to the humbler people on the banks and to the fisherfolk and watermen who sit in their crude dugout canoes. The more important persons continue white-skinned, the sole distinction between them and their brethren of the lower reaches of the river being that they now begin to form the aristocracy of the land instead of standing as the mere representatives of the wealthier classes. "When the roofs and parks and gardens of Paraná have been passed and the buildings of Colastiné, the river port of Santa Fé, have been left behind, the warmer airs already give a foretaste of what is to come farther to the north. All this time the vegetation has been increasing on the banks. The wide stretches of open, treeless pastures have long ago fallen away. The country where the cattle graze is now pleasantly interspersed with clumps of indigenous trees, and the line of the banks is obscured in parts by dense clusters of verdure, in which the palms begin to occupy a more and more important space.