Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/340



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curious to say, it was not occupied by either combatant. The Paraguayan telegraph-posts, of fine hard wood, still linger on the bank, each having its lightning-conductor protruding from the top — a " wrinkle " offered to the Brazilian lines. Both combatants adopted in this point the practice of Napoleon III., as we did during the Indian Mutiny, when telegraphic lines accompanied the Com- mander-in-Chief. Marshal-President Lopez passed the greater part of his days, like Lord Panmure, sending and receiving messages about the most trivial matters. On the western side remain a pleasure-house and a garden, built for the Brazilian officers in June, 1868, as a relief to the grimness of their occupations. Here also was the usual watch-tower — a signalling system well known to Paraguay, as in China and Japan. It is the guerite of the Cossacks, the Portuguese mangrulho, and the Spanish mangruUo, locally pronounced " mangrujo." The rough contrivance, varying from forty to sixty feet in height, is composed of four or more thin tree- trunks, planted perpendicularly, and supplied with platforms or stages of cross-pieces, mostly palms, the whole being bound together with the inevitable raw hide. The look-outs are ascended by notched palm- trunks, or ladders, which, after a little neglect, become dangerous. A few are solidly made of squared timbers, roofed over. In so flat a country the mangruUo acts well. Before the war it formed a part of the national espionage, and, like the dauk of Hindostan, long before telegrams were invented, it could transmit, in a few hours, a message from the frontier to the capital. The President being alone entitled to buy and sell without permission, it was necessary to keep a sharp watch upon exports and imports. The mangruUo — like the andrumara, or elevated four-poster, sometimes horizontal at other times sloping, as in Unya- muezi — was also used to sleep above the mean level of