Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/258



228 UP THE PARANA RIVER TO ROZARIO.

and were consolidated by the torrential lowland and sea- board rains. Lest dust be considered an inadequate cause, he quotes the instance of a single storm at Buenos Aires which, after a few hours, covered the verdure with a cloak one inch thick.

South of the Parana de las Palmas is the Parana Mini (the Minor Parana) — a middle line very little used. It is represented in maps to be a mere branch of the third great southernmost arm, the Parana-Guazu.

On Monday (August 17) the Yi, not yet in light marching order, zigzagged and staggered across the north-western edge of the outer roads, avoiding the city bank ; turned slowly to the north-east, and lastly made northing for Martin Garcia, the historic islet. Drawing six to seven feet when at anchor and nine when driven, she ploughed up waves of liquid mud, and rollers, breakers, and billows of mire followed in her wake till she was obliged to anchor. Mr. Crawford, her engineer, swore that one should travel up such a river upon a pair of stilts. This water, heavily charged with detrital matter and arrested by the action of the sea stroke, forms the land-banks and islets of dark mud, fringing the once mighty estuary now a prairie. When we reach the true river, we shall find on both sides a glacis defining the bed, and above Corrientes the absence of a marked riverine valley will strike us as something new.

We run too far west to distinguish anything but the rolling outlines of the Ban da Oriental or eastern shore, along which we coasted when ascending the Uruguay river. These ^Homas^^ will presently reproduce themselves behind Angostura, and form the slopes where the last great battles were fought. We are compelled to steam close by the western or fortified side of Martin Garcia. After running ten miles more we are right opposite Las Bocas, the mouths of the Parana ; but we do not relish entering them at night.