Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/306



276 A WEEK AT CORRIENTES.

heavy chins reveal the savage type. Amongst them hob- bled an old " Minas " negro, probably of Moslem origin, carrying a grimy little San Balthazar in plaster. Each she- devotee took the doll^ crossed herself with it^ kissed its feet_, and rewarded it with a few oranges^ cigars,, or corn cobs ; those who would not lend to the saint were treated by the old beggar to a sharp word and a vicious sneer. The hard- staring foreigners^ French and English^ Yankees and Ger- manSj and the ruffian Italians, only laughed at the place where his negro beard should have been.

In the open day turbulent boys and half-^*^ china '^ children roll with the dogs about the sand under a sun that peels your nose. Black soldiers will loaf about till some fine day the market will be closed, the pulperias will be shut to insure sobriety, and four or five hundred of them will be marched off to put down the ^'^rebelde i malvado Caceres^^ (the rebel and villain Caceres) " i su complice i automata Evaristo Lopez .^^ I found out that a revolution was going on only by asking about a picquet of cavalry stationed in the church porch. The Most Excellent Seiior Governor had called out the National Guard at the instance of D. Nicolas Ocampo and D. Raymundo F. Reguera. Corrientes Province became a prey to civil war when ci-usading against Kosas, and apparently has never recovered tranquillity. The latter of the two worthies above mentioned is the ex-President who defended Goya against the Paraguayans : he can sign his name, but he signs it " Baristo.^"* The first, D. Nicanor Caceres, also made a name when retiring from the invader ; his literary attainments rival those of his accomplice ; and resembling a certain king,

" He quite scorned the fetters of four-and-twenty letters, And it saved him a vast deal of trouble."

President Sarmiento says of Tucuman, " it is well to men- tion that the Assembly of Representatives was composed of