Pedro's government is to intervene
Paraguay between Brazil and the Argentine Confederation in order to
prevent a clashing of interests between his empire and its late ally.
In the mean time, Paraguay is loaded with heavy debts, contracted
under Brazilian auspices since the war, in the shape of loans and
obligations which must weigh her down for a long time. To illustrate
the attitude of Brazil toward the conquered state one incident, and a
recent one, will suffice. In the autumn of 1874 the boundary
commission, composed of Brazilian and Paraguayan officers, set out for
the final survey of the new boundary-line between Paraguay and Brazil.
The commission had been engaged on this duty for two years, and last
November it brought its work to a close. The line fixed by the
Brazilians follows the Apa River from its junction with the Paraguay
to its source, and thence extends along the summit of the cordillera
to the falls of the Parana--the Salto de la Guayra of the Paraguayans
and the Siete Quedas of the Brazilians. The Brazilian commissioners
took advantage of the fact that the Apa River has two forks, and chose
the south fork as the boundary. This selection added a few hundred
square miles to the territory of the Brazilian province of Matto
Grosso, but, in spite of the protests and objections of Paraguay, the
boundary treaty has been made on the basis of the Brazilian idea of
what is right between the two governments. The liberty of opinion
accorded to Paraguay by Brazil is merely the liberty which a cat
grants to a captive mouse, to run about within reach of its sheathed
claws.

A TALE OF THE CONSCRIPTION.

One afternoon, some years ago, I was walking along a narrow old road
which leads from Le Crotay, a fishing-village in Picardy, to the town
of St. Valery-sur-Somme. It was in the month of February, and one of
those luckless days on which cold, wind and rain all seem banded in
league against the comfort of mankind: the sky, dull and lowering,
presented to the eye nothing but a bleak, cheerless desert of gray,
relieved only by troops of dark, inky clouds, which would at moments,
as though flying the fury of a raging storm, roll pell-mell through
the air like an army in rout, pouring down at the same time through
the thick, black fog that covered land and sea like a pall a deluge of
cold, heavy water, which occasional blasts of a violent north-west
wind would lash into whistling, pelting and drenching gusts. It w