Towns which flourished before the outbreak of hostilities were sacked by the emboldened Indians from the Chaco and wiped off the map, San Salvador (Holy Saviour) being a striking example. I visited the ruins of this town, where formerly dwelt about 8,000 souls. Now the streets are grass-grown, and the forest is creeping around church and barracks, threatening to bury them. I rode my horse through the high portal of the cannon-battered church, while the stillness of the scene reminded me of a city of the dead. City of the dead, truly--men and women and children who have passed on! My horse nibbled the grass growing among the broken tiles of the floor, while I, in imagination, listened to the "passing bell" in the tower above me, and under whose shade I sought repose. A traveller, describing this site, says: "It is a place of which the atmosphere is one great mass of malaria, and the heat suffocating--where the surrounding country is an uninterrupted marsh--where venomous insects and reptiles abound." San Salvador as a busy mart has ceased to exist, and the nearest approach to "the human form divine," found occasionally within its walls, is the howling monkey. Such are the consequences of war! During the last ten years Paraguay has been slowly recovering from the terrible effects of this war, but a republic composed mostly of women is severely handicapped. [Footnote: Would the suffragettes disagree with the writer here?] Paraguay is a poor land; the value of its paper currency, like that of most South American countries, fluctuates almost daily. In 1899 the dollar was worth only twelve cents, and for five gold dollars I have received in exchange as many as forty-six of theirs. Yet there is a great future for Paraguay. It has been called the Paradise of South America, and although the writer has visited sixteen different countries of the world, he thinks of Paraguay with tender longing. It is perhaps the richest land on earth naturally, and produces so much máte that one year's production would make a cup of tea for every man, woman and child on the globe. Oranges and bananas can be bought at six cents a hundred, two millions of cattle fatten on its rich pasture lands; but, of all the countries the writer has travelled in, Mexico comes first as a land of beggars, and poor Paraguay comes second. CHAPTER VIII. ASUNCION.