For a proper acquaintance with the country it must be conceived as a dual personality, for it is divided longitudinally by the river Paraguay into western Paraguay, or the Chaco, and eastern Paraguay, or Paraguay proper. It is in the latter region that the republic has its being and in which the visitor’s interest is naturally centered. El Chaco is a vast, thickly wooded, and, for the most part, savage and unexplored section that was awarded to Paraguay by our President Hayes as arbitrator of its boundary dispute with Argentina; in gratitude the government named the chief settlement in the territory Villa Hayes. The region is now given over almost wholly to the immigrant Swiss, German, Italian and other communities that have been started on the west bank of the river, and to nomadic bands of still uncivilized Indians. With a climate similar to that of southern California, Paraguay, throughout its entire extent, is blessed with abundant rain the year round. It is well watered and quite thickly wooded, and thus protected from the intense heat usual in low-lying countries. Eastern Paraguay resembles Uruguay in its rolling, fertile areas, but is more mountainous. On the northern frontier is the range known as the Quinze Puntas. Inclosing the country on the east are the Cordilleras of Amambay and Mbaracayú, while down the center, from north to south, run a broken series of lesser sierras and the range called Caaguazú, forming a ridge or backbone that subdivides this half of Paraguay into the two great basins drained by the Paraná River on the east and the Paraguay on the west. Almost the whole of Paraguay proper has forests of valuable woods with occasional clear places, where settlers have made serviceable the marvelous fertility and luxuriance of the soil. For centuries this region has been the barrier between the two distinct phases of Spanish civilization in South America—the golden empire of Peru and the agricultural colonies on the Plata and its tributaries—just as Uruguay has been the buffer state between the Portuguese and Spanish peoples. These phases have merged but little and to-day present a most interesting contrast.