CONCLUDING PAPER.


One day--to return to our traveler and his personal experiences--M.
Forgues makes the acquaintance of a Swiss who resides at Paraguari, a
small interior town distant about twenty-five leagues from Asuncion.
His new acquaintance invites him to go with him to Paraguari, but
before complying with the invitation M. Forgues crosses the river and
rides into the territory of Gran Chaco as far as the Quinta de la
Miseria, situated about two miles and a half from the river-bank. The
owner of this farm, Mequelain, a French pioneer, his wife and three
servants, had been surprised and murdered by the Chaco Indians a short
while before the arrival of M. Forgues in Asuncion. The quinta is on
the edge of a vast plain. The unfortunate Mequelain had surrounded his
house with ditches and a small fence of posts. Besides this, he had
built a sort of observatory from which to watch the movements of the
Indians. But his precautions, as the end showed, proved useless. The
farm was occupied by new tenants at the time of M. Forgues's visit,
and the bodies of the five victims were buried in one of the ditches.
The Quinta de la Miseria derives its gloomy name from the tragic event
that had given it its melancholy prominence in the minds of the people
of Asuncion. To reach Paraguari our traveler avails himself of the
railroad which extends between that town and the capital. The
railroad-station presents a lively scene with its crowd of
savage-looking natives thronging it. In connection with this station
M. Forgues mentions a curious circumstance--that in order to prevent
the rush of the multitude to the cars on the departure of the train
the station-master has ingeniously replaced gates and fences, which
might be climbed easily, with brushes steeped in pitch and tar, so