Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/259



UP THE PARANA RIVER TO ROZARIO. 229

especially with a bad norther. In front is the gigantic Uruguay, an '^ aber/' showing almost a sea horizon, and its capes and distances are dots based apparently upon the wave. We therefore anchor off the Boca del Guazii some 170 miles from the sea.

On the next morning, a Niebla or Cerrazon, a warm fog, kept us fast to our mud-hook. In autumn — April and thereabouts — it usually lifts at 8 a.m. ; in the cold season, as at present, it lasts till 11 a.m., and longer still on the upper stream. We presently make play and enter the Boca, which is half a mile wide, presently bulging out to 3000 yards — thirty cuadras, the passengers say, for here distance is counted by squares ; and lastly, settling down to 500 yards. The soundings at the entrance show 7*50 metres; this, therefore, is evidently the main line. We cast curious looks over the smooth, currentless expanse at the far-famed Islands of the Parana. Still flooded at high tides, it is a riverine Archipelago, formed by Arroyos and Arroyitos, Riachos and Cafiadas or hollows, as harsh a view at this moment as any on the coast of Essex. The typical growths are the poplar and the weeping willow (Sauce de Lloron), both transplanted from the Old World, and right curiously they contrast. The former, here as elsewhere announcing a set- tlement, stands up in the stiffest and thinnest of perpen- dicular lines, gaunt, pruned out of all semblance to the trees of Touraine, and dark with sombre metallic green. The willow bends and droops by the tall tree's side, every line is curved and prone, every motion is soft and languid, the very music of the leaves is a whisper, not a rustle, and all are now drawing on their spring coats of light and feathery green. The " Sauce," which forms one quarter of the woody vegetation of the Arctic zone, extends from this latitude to Patagonia, where it occupies about the same rank ; further north it will make way for tropical growth. There are several