Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/329



FROM CORRIENTES TO HUMAITA. 299

doors, and marble altars, which are now all destroyed. The " fighting men " are upon the war-path, and the "campesinos" or country folks have been driven northwards by the retreating Paraguayans. Everywhere the land is wild of man ; you will presently see that such has been the system from the confluence to the capital. The same tactic was adopted in 1811 by Colonel D. Bernardo Velasco when op- posing the advance of Belgrano. All the " chapels,^^ rem- nants of Jesuit rule now reduced to mud-walled hamlets, were connected by threads of path, and he who stepped off these sunk waist-deep in unhealthy morass and boggy pool. A glance at any map upon a large scale will explain to you how it was that two years were spent in battling over nine square miles of ground. This swamp fighting was an essen- tial part of "Indian" warfare. The Spaniards, under Men- doza, their Adelantado, suffered severely on February 2, 1535, from being entangled, by the wild Querandis, in a marsh near Buenos Aires.

This reach of the Parana is called in old maps Quatro Bocas. Looking up the sea-like mouth we see about the centre of the stream, where it narrows, a dark dot, the Isleta dez de Abril, alias do Coronel Carvalho. Here the Brazilians had erected an 8-gun battery, the better to destroy Guardia Carracha, also known as ^^ Fort Itapiru.^' It was attacked on April 10, 1866, by the Paraguayans under Lieut. -Colonel, afterwards General, Diaz, a noted lance, who was at last killed by the shell fired by an ironclad whilst he was recon- noitering for a canoe attack. The fight was fierce; fifteen out of twenty-six canoes were sunk, and of 1200 Paraguayans only 400 wounded men returned. It was the first of the many reckless actions in which Marshal- President Lopez frittered away his devoted forces. Opposite it, and hidden by a long point of yellow sand, on the northern river-bank, were the ruins of Fort Itapiru — the weak or rotten