disposed as to bar the passage. As the Paraguayan women hold
cleanliness to be one of the cardinal virtues, they religiously avoid
these defiling brushes for fear of soiling their garments. The cars
are built on the most approved American model. The train, furthermore,
has two platform-cars attached to it, which are reserved exclusively
for the gratuitous use of the poor, who are permitted to ride on them
with as much as they can carry in the way of bundles and other goods.
Sometimes the platforms are so crowded that they are lost to sight
under the passengers' heads and legs. Another feature of railway
travel in Paraguay--for a foreigner a sensation--is to observe a
woman clad in the Arcadian simplicity of a single garment enter a car
and take a seat opposite you or alongside of you with the most
unconstrained air imaginable.

[Illustration: THE QUINTA DE LA MISERIA.]

The train on its way to Paraguari passes Trinidad and many other
stations. The station-houses are all small structures covered with
tile roofs. At Luque, a village where the passengers stop for
refreshments, the women of the place flock at the windows and offer
for sale embroideries of their own invention worked on tulle or on a
special kind of netting, while the venders of lunches appear, not with
the traditional fried oysters, fried chickens or sandwiches of our own
favored land, but with bottles of fresh milk and _chiapa_, a kind of
bread made from manioc, among the ingredients of which are starch and
eggs, and for which Luque is famous. The engineer of the train, an
Englishman, is a person who is as important in his way as is the
Brazilian minister in his. At Luque he descends from his locomotive to
chat with a friend on the platform. Time--or what would be "time"
elsewhere--is up, but our Englishman continues to talk,