Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/293



FROM ROZARIO TO CORRIENTES. 263

The Amazonas received forty-one caunou balls, the Ivutry twenty-two, and the Guardia Nacional (the flag-ship of the Argentine Admiral Muratori) twenty-seven. Presently, when Leonidas Estigarribia had surrendered Uruguayana (September 18, 1865), the Brazilian army marched upon Corrientes, and General Resquin with his Paraguayans retired (November 4) towards the Paso la Patria. It is said that here he left some quaker guns, which succeeded in keeping the enemy at bay ; for five days the latter knew nothing of the evacuation till informed of it by an Italian schooner going down from Corrientes. In the point of push- ing their successes the Brazilians have ever failed ; they are like the losing order* of gambler, who will back his ill- luck but who fears to run his good-luck.

Presently we passed the chain of scarped and detached bluffs, supporting the upsloping green bank. Amongst them is the Barranca de Bella Vista; it well deserves its name, but it must not be compared, as a late writer has done, with Genoa the Superb, nor with famed Palermo, nor with sweet Messina and hoary Etna in the background, nor even with the oft-sung and little-deserving Bay of Dublin. Over the lines of riverine trees we see the hamlet, a streak of white houses crowning the ridge, and sprinkled over the hill side amidst clumps of tropical forest and black blocks of orange trees, dotted like a tall tea plantation. This " Norfolk Island of Corrientes'^ began its career in 1826 as a settlement of convicts, sent by General Ferre. Here the Brazilian fleet running down the river suffered severely from the flying batteries of the Paraguayan General Bruguez; they had placed their infantry on the decks and in the tops, where they could be swept away by grape and rifle bullets. Similarly situated is " Empedrado," another small Correntino town, commanding a glorious view of the Gran Chaco, and distant thirty-six miles from Corrientes, the