Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/263



IP THE PARANA RIVER TO ROZARIO. 233

large and small. Amongst the hawks appears the ^^Carancha/' the Brazilian " Caracara/^ an ignoble but clever and versatile bird, ranking with the eagle, but feeding like the carrion crow ; ready to fish, to combine in hunting away the black vulture, in pulling down a crane, and in carrying off a chicken ; it will dig its dying talons so deeply into the offending hand that the shank must be cut off before it loosens hold. And everywhere the skeleton trees are whitened by the roosting of '^ Cuervo,^^ the turkey-buzzard.

No eastern limits has the delta nor occidental either till 4.15 P.M., when looking to the west we descry sign of a true coast, low but rising above the trees, and rolling far away to the south. This "barranca" or bank, which, hem- ming in the stream, controls its floods, is straight-lined, with level summit, here green, there bare, and its wall-like surface is in places broken by blue clumps of trees. The water-cut talus or slope seems formed of sand or clay, with here and there patches of bush : it appears in the form of cliffs and headlands, scarps and slopes, double and compound dis- tances, which refresh the eye wearied by the flatness of the rushy grassy sea stretching in all other directions. As we pass the " Cancha '^ or Reach of S. Pedro, at the head of the first or smallest delta, we see from the hurricane-deck the glittering steeple, and the tall whitewashed ridge-roofed church of Baradero ; the name " place, where ships go aground (barar}, or are careened," suggests the Varadouro of the Brazil. The hamlet has its bit of history. In 1 580 D. Juan de Garay, the founder or restorer of Buenos Aires, divided amongst his followers, after killing the Chief Taboba, the lands taken from the warlike Querandis. It now owns a Swiss colony, concerning which I may refer you to Mr. Hutchinson.

After this came Obligado, memorable for the chain or rather for the three chains. Here Dictator Rosas opposed the English and French squadrons by a resilient structure