Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/281



FROM ROZARIO TO CORKIENTRS. 251

meeting at an angle the swift, deep current raises an angry sea ; at niglit the breeze bites, and the cold high wind makes the cloudy sky feel as if there were " snow in the air." And so there is, the snow of the distant Patagonian Andes to the south-west : the nearest place where that meteor can be seen is the Sierra de Cordoba, called the " Argentine Alps," and not " Alps" at all.

The Convent of San Carlos, at San Lorenzo, appeared to us as a white fa9ade and tympanum facing the river, flanked by four- storied white steeples, and backed by dark dwarf dome and brown adjuncts, huts and trees. This building has of late years been sketched and described : it will be classic ground where in 1810 General San Martin fought his first fight against the Spaniards, and defeated them with a handful of cavalry. San Carlos is now occupied by about a dozen old Franciscans, whom foreigners charge wdth admitting women, and other irregularities. It caused, in combination with the Odium Theologicum, the Santa Fe Revolution of December 1867 — March 1868. Between 1864-7 the Provincial Governor was D. Nicasio Orono, lawyer, merchant, landed proprietor, and man of progres- sive ideas. He extended the limits of his little state over thirty-eight leagues of the Gran Chaco, and annexed some 500 square leagues of the most fertile soil; he persuaded the Congress to sanction, on September 26, 1867, a civil marriage ; and then he attempted to disestablish the Convent of San Carlos, to provide elsewhere for the monks, and to convert the building into an agricultural establishment and college for poor boys. The good Franciscans said no, and discoursed about the sin which shall not be forgiven. The banker, D. Mariano Cabal, saw his opportunity : at his in- stigation 1000 to 1500 gauchos, headed by Sor Jose Fidel, Colonel Patricio Rodriguez, and Lieut. -Colonel Nelson — what a name for such a miseria ! — occupied the town^ and