Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/331



FROM CORRIENTES TO HUMAITA. 301

Yet he abandoned it precipitately the moment his enemy- landed upon Paraguayan ground. The invaders established in this place their hospitals and bazars^ of which no traces now remain, and it became the base of operations for two years.

The landing was effected on the 16th of April (1866), by Generals Osorio and Flores. They chose the mouth of the Paraguay river, a few hundred yards above the confluence, and they immediately entrenched some 10,000 men. Learning this, and finding himself outflanked, Marshal-President Lopez hastened to abandon Itapirii and Paso la Patria, whose trenches he might have held for months, if not for years. Upon this subject both Paraguayans and Argentines agree.

We now dash amongst floating trees and rippling isles of grass and reed up the Paraguay river, which suddenly nar- rows from a mile and a half to 400 yards, and appears to be a small influent. The cause is the Isla del Atajo, the '^stopper^^ (of the current), a long thin island to our left, disposed, as usual, with its length down stream. It is a flat steep covered with lush verdure, light green and dark green, and the trees of good hard wood are colligated by bush-ropes. A gentle grassy slope, some sixty to seventy feet high in the centre of its eastern side, leads to a cottage with posts and verandah, the old Guardia Cerrito, and its watch-tower.

A little beyond the mound, and situated upon a barren muddy bank, which was flooded in November, 1868, is the Cerrito Station, where the Brazilians built hospitals, store- houses, coalsheds, and workshops for repairing engines. Of old it was claimed by the Argentine Confederation, but the Paraguayans seized it and made it a guardia. The clearing shows a scattered village of huts and long lines of thatched wattle and dab ; the best are of boarding, roofed with zinc or straw. There is a whitewashed chapel^ and the Hotel