Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/171



TO THE rOLONIA AND BUENOS AIRES. 141

valuable too was the now pauper village in times when Spain limited her three vast inland viceroyalties to three ships per annum, and when Portugal and England â€” such then was the precedence â€” did all the contraband trade of half a New World. Even in 1729 the port of S. Gabriel Island sheltered a score of English, Portuguese, and French interlopers.

Muratori ("A Relation of the Missions of Paraguay," now done into English from the French translation. Lon- don : 1759. 8vo, pp. 166â€”7) tells in quaint language how the Portuguese, under D. Emanuel de Lobos, seized (1679) the port where Colonia afterwards arose, and building a fort, duped D. Joseph de Barro (Jose de Barros) Governor of Buenos Aires. The latter receiving orders to dislodge the enemy, summoned from the Reductions, 600 miles distant, the Corregidores of Indians, and the latter in eleven days mustered 3300 men, 4000 horses, 4000 mules, and 200 oxen for dragging the guns. The Spanish General D. Jose de Vera, with 300 regulars, invested the land side, and proposed when the enemy showed fight to trample them under foot by a stampede of riderless horses : the farcical project was deprecated probably by some savage with common sense, possibly by some one who remembered the Carthaginians and their elephants. The walls, however, were scaled, and the place was captured by dint of num- bers, the Spaniards losing only six men and thirty Indians. Lobos was made prisoner, and 200 of the Mamelukes were slain by the Redskins, who did not understand prayers for quarter. D. Emilio Galban (Galvao), the Portuguese Commander, fell, and men " saw with wonder and surprise his lady fighting sword in hand by his side -." she also re- fused to surrender, and was duly killed.

This only began the history of Colonia. In 1681 it again hoisted the Quinas, and it was evacuated in 1705. Again it was secured to Portugal by the Treaty of Utrecht (March 26, 1713), the same which gave peace to Europe, and