means have been redeemed from the waters and made the source of millions of revenue to the owners.
Thirty-nine individuals possessed the lands of Chivilcoi in 1858; now twenty thousand happy, prosperous farming people occupy the country, and enjoy all the conveniences of civilized life. There are no immense fortunes made, but great riches are distributed to all, and are increasing rapidly and wonderfully. The cultivation of the Isles of the Parana, another enterprise of our author, resulted as brilliantly as the surveying of land in Chivilcoi. He often escaped from the burning debates of the Chambers, the press, and the schools, to the enchanting region at the mouth of the Parana, which is a delta of thirty miles by twenty, of islands, of a fertility unexampled perhaps in the world. In sailing up those channels bordered with the most luxuriant natural vegetation, he saw with the eye of a San Juan agriculturist, that if redeemed from the waters, they might become a source of immense wealth to the province. It did not take long for a brilliant thought to come to a white heat in his mind, and securing to himself from government the right to take possession of them, he seized his most romantic pen, and began to kindle the public with descriptions of their beauty, and of their immense agricultural future, if they could be cultivated judiciously—already a rural Venice whose canals Nature had supplied. By hundreds people put their hands to the work of clearing the rubbish, planting trees on the borders of the channels, etc. Dr. Francia, the tyrant of Paraguay, spent four hundred thousand francs in the enterprise. Not only Colonel Sarmiento, but all the persons interested,
