Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/311



A WEEK AT CORRIENTES. 281

aud upon anotlier a neat woman mourns in Italian marble.

Three squares to the south lies the Alameda^ sometimes used as a raee-course, but being a sheet of water ankle-deep in rainy weather^ it is not a favourite promenade. Here is a built-up obelisk, the effeet of El Pueblo Correntino^s piety in 1828. The base shows a cross surrounded by flames, with the date April 3, 1588 ; on one side is inscribed " Dextera Domini facit virtu tem " (Psalm cxvii. 16) ; the other face bears a long legend alluding to an event of the Conquista- dores days. The city was founded in 1587-88 by D. Alonzo de Vera, distinguished as "El Tupi" from his ugly name- sake, whose cognomen was Cara de Perro — dog's face. He called it after his uncle the Gobernador, " Ciudad de San Juan (Torres) de Vera de las Siete Corrientes," either from the seven points of rock jutting out into the Parana, or because the mighty river there formed seven great currents. Others say that Alonzo and Juan were brothers. The first settlement, which numbered only twenty-eight fighting men, was attacked in force by the Guaycurus; the Spaniards covered themselves with a palisade and a mud bastion about half a mile from the barranca under whose shelter lay their ship. Outside the fort was a tall cross of hard green wood, to which the besieged addressed their prayers; this the Indians, believing it to be a charm, carried away and tried in vain to burn. They then attacked the stockade, and were dispersed by a terrible storm, whereupon the Cacique and his six thousand followers begged to be baptized. Excavations made in 1856 found remnants of the old clay entrenchment and an Indian arrow-head, which, says a pious Catholic tra- veller, " seems to confirm the tradition." Moreover, a bit of the said miraculous cross is preserved in a neighbour- ing chapel; and if this cannot convince you, nothing will.