Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/332



302 FROM CORRIENTES TO HUMAITA.

Brazil^ whose dwarf frontage is pierced for a door and two windows. Cranes and piers break the bank, which is here four feet high, and in the deep water alongside appear flotillas of bazar boats, and an ironclad acting sentinel.

Leaving Cerrito we sweep round to the north-west, and pass the Tres Bocas. The name has been erroneously trans- ferred by some to the confluence, by others to a place below it, where the Parana and the Parana Mi (the northern channel) meet the Paraguay. Properly speaking, Tres Bocas is in the latter river, where it is split into two by the Atajo islet, and receives in its left bank the Laguna Piris, which drains the western part of the Northern Estero bellaco. In old days the name sounded joyful to those flying from the "reign of terror." Lieutenant Day's chart (1858) shows five armed ships watching the Tres Bocas ; and opposite the Boca del Atajo was the Primera Guardia, or first guard- house. Captain Page here found the Admiral of the Navy of the Republic of Paraguay, and a squadron of five small vessels.

We run rapidly past ground whose every mile cost a month of fighting. To our right is the Laguna Piris, flow- ing from the north-east. The river-like lagoon is not re- markable, and there are many similar on the eastern bank, treacherously lurking under papyrus and water-lilies. It proved, however, most useful to the Allies by admitting their gunboats and stores.

Further east are the sites of the great actions fought on the 2nd and the 24th of May, 1866. A graceful line of rising surface, clothed in the napindii grass, which is used as 'Hie-tie,*' and scattered with fan-palms, shows the loma of Tuyu-ti — barro duro, or dry mud.^ A single

Tuju, is found in Tijuca, or Tyjuca, near Kio de Janeiro, and is usually translated " dry mud."
 * " White mud," says Lt.-Col. Thompson. The word Tuyu, pronounced