Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/327



FROM CORRIENTES TO HUMAITA. 297

At 9.30 A.M. yesterday, leaving Corrientes, where some twenty ships lay, we steamed past the arched causeway under which sleep the dead. The river banks were faced with dwarf clifts, detached blocks, and fallen masses of friable sandstone, showing lines of stratification and deposit. The colours were those of Sao Paulo — yellow, red, brick-red, and blood-red (Sangre de boi). Some parts were crumbling as " horse-bone " limestone, others were hard as granite, and all were more or less porous. Bits of mica appeared in it, but we vainly sought for fossils, the great want of these lands. The rock makes good building material, which cuts well and hardens readily.

Presently we were shown the site of that failure of failures, the French colony of S. Juan, and the spot where the Siete Corrientes gave a name to the city. Though the day was before fine, rain and lightning put in an appearance — it is said that here they are rarely absent. Six leagues, traversed in two hours, placed us at the glorious confluence of the Parana and Paraguay, which here equal, says Azara, a hun- dred of the biggest rivers of Europe, and yet are 250 leagues from the mouth. Compared with these majestic proportions, and this mighty sweep of waters, the meeting of the Rios de Sao Francisco and das Veluas seemed to my memory insignifi- cant. The doab or water-peninsula, which has been com- pared with Illinois, is a vast plain of wet and dry mud, such as a drained harbour bottom would represent. It is mostly below the mean level of both streams, which are here con- tained between those natural dykes their elevated banks, and these, being of friable earth, allow full freedom of per- colation. In fact, the whole country, from the Parana south to the Tebicuary north is a " no man^s land,"*^ or an " any man^s land,'^ where the " Carrisales '^ of earth and water are " pretty much mixed." In 1620 this confluence formed the limit between the old Governments of Paraguay and of the