The people are gentle and mild-spoken. White-robed women lead strings of donkeys along the streets, bearing huge panniers full of vegetables, among which frequently play the women's babies. The panniers are about a yard deep, and may often be seen full to the brim with live fowls pinioned by the legs. Other women go around with large wicker trays on their heads, selling _chipá_, the native bread, made from Indian corn, or _mandioca_ root, the staple food of the country. Wheat is not grown in Paraguay, and any flour used is imported. These daughters of Eve often wear nothing more than a robe-de-chambre, and invariably smoke cigars six or eight inches long. Their figure is erect and stately, and the laughing eyes full of mischief and merriment; but they fade into old age at forty. Until then they seem proud as children of their brass jewellery and red coral beads. The Paraguayans are the happiest race of people I have met; care seems undreamed of by them. In the post-office of the capital I have sometimes been unable to procure stamps, and "_Dypore_" (We have none) has been the civil answer of the clerk. When they _had_ stamps they were not provided with mucilage, but a brush and pot of paste were handed the buyer. If you ask for a one cent stamp the clerk will cut a two cent stamp and give you a half. They have, however, stamps the tenth part of a cent in value, and a bank note in circulation whose face value is less than a cent. There are only four numerals in the Guarani language: 1, _petei_; 2,_moncoi_; 3,_bohapy_; 4,_irundú_. It is not possible to express five or six. No wonder, therefore, that when I bought five 40-cent stamps, I found the clerk was unable to count the sum, and I had to come to the rescue and tell him it was $2.00. At least eighty per cent. of the people are unable to read. When they do, it is of course in Spanish, A young man to whom I gave the Gospel of John carefully looked at it, and then, turning to me, said: "Is this a history of that wonderful lawyer we have been hearing about?" To those interested in the dissemination of Scriptures, let me state that no single Gospel has as yet been translated into Guarani. A tentative edition of the "Sermon on the Mount" has recently been issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society, a copy of which I had the honor to be the first to present to the head executive. Gentle simplicity is the chief characteristic of the people. If the traveller relates the most ordinary events that pass in the outside world, they will join in the exclamation of surprise-"_Bá-eh-picó! Bá-eh-picó!_"