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264 FROM ROZARIO TO CORRIENTES.

capital. At this place General Robles^ who with 3000 men had occupied Corrientes (April 18) ;, and had taken Goya (3rd June), retired immediately after the battle of Riachuelo, and (23rd July) was arrested by General Barrios^ the minister of war_, and sent up to Humaita in close confinement. The Paraguayan army was taught to believe that he had made an agreement to deliver them up ; others asserted that his offence was wasting time at Goya and Bella Vista^ instead of attacking the Argentine General Paunero^ who was only sixteen to twenty leagues to the south ; others that he doubted the success of the cause^ and blamed the measures of Marshal-President Lopez. He was shot by the sentence of a secret court martial^ at Paso Pucu_, after the sentence had been read to the army formed in three sides of a square. He must not be confounded — as some newspapers have done — with his brother (?), Com- mandante Robles of the Tacuari steamer^ who, after the battle of Biachuelo, tore the dressings from his wounds and died a hero_, saying he preferred loss of life to loss of liberty.

We hurriedly rose from the mess-table as the Yi steamed up the eastern channel of the Parana, two to three miles below Corrientes. Here the scheme which was to place upon the brow of Marshal-President Lopez an Argentine crown of his own device was shattered by the incapacity of his officers and the rashness of his men. At this place the Parana, running north-south, and some nine miles wide, is studded with sundry islands, of which two are large and well wooded. The eastern bank, about the southern end of the longest holme, is broken by the Boca del Riachuelo, which is masked by another islet. Here the channel is some 500 yards broad, widening above and below, and the low sandy and bushy ground south of the Riachuelo, and called the Rincon de Lagrafia, is backed