The United States Commissioner James B. Bowlin presented his credentials to Paraguayan president Carlos Antonio Lopez in Asuncion. The next day he began negotiations on a friendship, commerce, and navigation treaty with the land-locked republic. These resulted with the signing of the treaty in the capital on February 4, ratification by Paraguay a week later, and the eventual United States ratification in the Senate on February 27, 1860. (By John Osborne)