"Lieutenant Page of the United States Navy explored the Parana and Paraguay rivers and their tributaries in 1854, and visited some of these Indian tribes. He describes the Angaité tribe as a people of remarkable stature, many of them exceeding six feet in height, and all finely formed and athletic. The old Jesuits give wonderful accounts of the great age to which these people live; they say that if one dies at eighty he is said to have been cut off in the flower of his existence. Men of a hundred years old will mount fiery horses and subdue them, and some of these people have reached the extraordinary age of one hundred and twenty years! One of their chiefs, when asked how old he was, said he did not know, but he was married and had a son when the church at Asuncion was built. As the church was then one hundred and five years old the warrior had a ripe old age, supposing, of course, he told the truth. [Illustration: INDIANS SHOOTING FISHES.] "They are skilful with the lasso and bolas, and also with their spears and bows. The whites try to prevent their obtaining fire-arms, but somehow they manage to get them through traders, and are not slow in learning how to use them. They shoot fishes in the streams with their bows and arrows, and though a fish may be three or four feet under water they rarely fail to pierce him. As with most Indian tribes, the men engage in hunting and breaking horses, and leave all the drudgery to the women. "Passing the mouth of the Parana, we ascended the Paraguay River to Asuncion, the capital of the republic and its principal city. It has suffered terribly in the wars which Paraguay has waged with her neighbors, but is now fairly prosperous; if the country will not go to war again Asuncion may hope for a satisfactory future, as it has a good position, and is connected with the interior by a line of railway nearly two hundred miles long. We have heard many stories about the war which lasted from 1865 to 1870, and was very near making a complete ruin of Paraguay. Perhaps this is a good place to say something about it. "General Lopez, who was then president and commander-in-chief of the armies, revived some old disputes with Brazil and the Argentine Republic concerning the boundaries between Paraguay and those countries. He began hostilities by capturing a Brazilian steamer which was passing Asuncion on a peaceful mission, and seizing two Argentine steamers near Corrientes. Then he surrounded that town with his army and threatened its capture, and he sent assistance to some revolutionists in Uruguay who were trying to overthrow the government of that country.