hours the route lies through a virgin forest composed of orange, cedar
and other trees, mingled with dense thorny thickets, trunks of decayed
trees and a twisted network of climbers. The passage through this
forest is attended with many vexatious incidents, owing to the
difficulty experienced in making a way through the undergrowth and
thickly-growing climbers. After having his spectacles, his maps, his
gun and his hat jerked from him, M. Forgues himself is pulled from his
horse. The horses are attacked by a multitude of small yellow flies,
which sting them unmercifully in the nostrils, the ears and in
whatever part of their bodies the animals cannot reach with their
tails, so that, maddened with pain, they break into a fierce gallop to
avoid the pest, carrying their riders in their course along the edge
of a hole in the ground in which swarms about a bushel of small snakes
of a bright green color. When the party finally emerge from this
beautiful but inhospitable forest, their clothes are hanging in rags
about their persons, and their faces and hands are covered with
scratches caused by the thorns.

Their next troublesome experience, although not so long continued, is
almost as exhausting, for when the forest is left behind they enter on
a marshy waste, through which they are compelled to ride for two hours.
Finally, worn out with fatigue, hunger and thirst, they arrive at an
estancia, where sleeping accommodations are offered them in the shape
of the under side of a cart, nourishment in the shape of fire wherewith
to cook a _mutus_, and assistance comes in the persons of two servants,
whose service consists in aiding M. Forgues and his companion to
devour, without thanks, salt or manioc, the frugal supper. After that,
"Good-night to you!" At daybreak our traveler takes his departure from
his churlish--or, it may be, hungry--entertainers, tending in the
direction of the foundry of Ibicuy, where in the days of Lopez was