Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/308



278 A WEEK AT CORRIENTES.

of time. The wavy hair argues that some of them are mixed breeds. they wear rugs and blankets^ earrings and necklaces of beads; many are ornamented with the real tattoo^ which cannot be effaced. A few affect black patches round the eyes ; these " dos ochitos^^ are signs of mourning. Christianity is evidenced by the crosses which the mis- sionaries teach them to prick along and across their noses.

The rest of the city we may easily see. The Liberty Square (Plaza 25 de Maio)^ which has altered little during the last two centuries^ is a grassy manzana^ whose blighted palms and short posts surround a sixty-feet column. This supports a diminutive female armed with a lance and blackened as to the eyes^, with a suite of plaster heroes in yellow epaulettes and broad blue ribbons across their breasts. The old cathedral is a savage caricature of the leaning monster at Tuscan Pisa. A bell- tower, seventy feet high, rises by the side of a low little bare ; it is evidently senior to the fane, and was built to call the people nowhere, be- cause conspicuous and likely to collect subscriptions. There is nought to interest you in the Cabildo, municipality, law court, and prison : the substantial building, once plastered white, now peeled and scaly, dates from 1812, when Deputy- Governor Lazuriaga ruled. A fine view of the river may be had from the Belvidere that tops the tall solid square turret : this structure, not of " Moorish build," is provided with balcony, machicolis, and finials at the corners, which suggest pepper-castors or donkeys^ ears. Perhaps they are emblematical — " burro" (ass) " as a Correntine alcalde" is a saying fathered upon General Artigas — no fool, but a great knave. Further to the west is an old Jesuit convent, now the Casas de Gobierno, the offices for the usual three great departments of State, of Treasury, and of War. Here are the Governor and Ministers, the Gefe Politico (Chief Magis-