Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/167



TO THE COLONIA AND BUENOS AIRES. 137

the size to 170 miles, and travellers dispute whether it be sea or river. Equally respectable is its length, 2150 miles, 3368 being the stature of the Amazons ; and some day both will be connected by canals with the mouth of the Orinoco. What we enter now is the first of four distinct sections â€” namely, the Grand Estuary, between the true mouth whose lips are Monte Video and the Punto de las Piedas (seventy- flve miles), and Buenos Aires, distant only thirty miles to La Colonia. In succession we shall ascend the Minor Estuary, the Riverine Delta, and lastly, the River Proper.

The Guarani name dating from prehistoric ages was Parana, or sea-like.* You must pronounce this word '^ Parana,^^ and not with Southey,

" Thou too, Parana, thy sad witness bear."

Par parenthese it is curious that that walking encyclopaedia never took the trouble to learn the pronunciation of words which he wrote and pronounced a hundred times. For in- stance, for " Guarani^' we read in the tale of Quiara and

Monnema â€”

" A feeble native of Guarani race,"

which is hideous.

D. Juan Diaz de Solis, the discoverer of the Parana in 1515, ti'uly and picturesquely called it "Mar Dulce;""' after his murder it became Rio de Solis. The magnificent misnomer Rio de la Plata, where no such metal exists, was given they say by Cabot, who higher up stream found silver ornaments worn by the savages. Of course the term is disputed. M. C. Beck Bernard opines that it was so called by the crew of De Solis, who saw spangles of mica floating

wrongly translate it "powerful as the sea;" and others '* Paraanaraa, pariente del mar," Para is one of those general Guarani words that extend throughout the eastern moiety of the Columbian continent.
 * Para, the sea, and na, for ana, comparative affix, "like." Some