VARIOUS KINDS OF VEGETABLES.
Besides lentils, beans, fasels, and other kinds of vegetables, there is an infinite variety of melons, gourds, and cucumbers, brought from England, Italy, Germany, and Africa, into Paraguay, which, dressed in various ways, serve excellently both to fill the stomach and delight the palate. The curuguà, a kind of gourd, is of great size. Hanging from its stalk, it creeps like ivy along the neighbouring hedges and trees. This gourd is a by no means unpleasant dish, and a celebrated medicine for persons afflicted with the tertian ague. After being kept at home for many months, it fills the room with a delightful fragrance, which virtue the seeds likewise possess. Melons of almost too great sweetness grow every where here, but, unless plucked as soon as ripe, immediately get bitter and are filled with most offensive bugs. Water-melons are very plentiful and of great size. The soil of St. Iago del Estero, which is sandy, produces exceedingly sweet and enormously large melons. Their pulp, which is sometimes red, sometimes yellow, and always cold, greatly refreshes the mouth when parched with heat, and the other parts of the body, without injuring the stomach. They will keep great part of a year, if suspended in any open airy place. Rainy weather is extremely injurious to the young melons, for they absorb so much water that they either burst before they are ripe, or when ripe quickly putrify.