Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/326



296 FROM CORRIENTES TO HUMAITA.

Asuncion and back has lately been done in ten days. I had once formed the project of riding from Sao Panlo to Cuyaba^ and I found that^ with fast mules^ the journey would have occupied me two and a half months.

Even during peaceful days the Paraguayans prepared for an attack along the line of their river, and the general idea is that the Allies fell into the trap prepared for them, thrust their heads into the lion^s jaws, and entered the den at a point where the approach had long been prepared to receive them. The public has persistently asserted that the attack should have been via Candelaria and Itapua, at the south- eastern angle of the Lower Parana, some 250 miles above the confluence, and within a few marches of the Brazilian frontier. From this point the invader could easily have made Villa Kica, and, having struck at the heart of the country, he would have been master of Asuncion. We may quote the high authority of Lieut. -Col. Thompson (Chap. XIV.) for believing that had General Porto Alegre or Osorio entered Paraguay via Encarnacion, " the war must have been ended." On the other hand, I heard a very diflPerent account from President Mitre, the biographer of D. Manuel Belgrano, who was possibly somewhat biassed by the defeat which his hero sustained on the Itapua line (January 18, 1811). He observed that the direct route to Villa Rica lay through a swamp and desert, where even provisions must have been transported by land j and that to give up the advantage of a double attack by land and water, especially with ironclads, which had not been dreamed of when Humaita and other works were thrown up, would have been the merest folly. My present belief is that the Allies knew far too well the strength of the Para- guayan army and the valour of its soldiers to have attacked the small Republic without the aid of a fleet ; and moreover, that had they done so their raw levies would have been annihilated.