Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/341



TO humaitA. 311

mosquitoes, and for that purpose one was attached to every guardia.

The guardias, or guard-houses, were regularly established in 1849, and in 1853 eight of them lay along the eastern bank of the Paraguay, besides those on the southern side of the Apa River, or northern frontier. They formed a com- plete cordon militairey equally useful as resguardo, or coast- guard, and as obstacles to Indian raids from the Gran Chaco. In 1853 the western frontier numbered eight, but since the war they have multiplied exceedingly. The Guardia was a strong stockade surrounding a patch of maize, manioc, oranges, and other useful vegetation ; there was also a rancho for an officer and his guard, some thirty ^'quarteleros.-'-' Between every two were "piquetes/^ or smaller establishments of a sergeant and fifteen men. Both were expected to patrol by water and land, and to communicate daily with one another in canoes, so as to watch Paraguayans and strangers. Most of the strong points fought during the war were, of old, guardias and piquetes.

On the right bank lay remnants of the canoes which had the audacity to assault the Lima Barros and the Cabral ironclads on the night of March 2, 1868. These desperate attempts, showing a heroic and barbarous devotion, were often repeated, but never successfully. After the canoe attack upon the ironclad Bar7'oso and the Monitor Rio Grande, off Tayi (July 9, 1868), the Brazilians thought it safer to throw a boom across the stream. The peculiar shape is derived from the old Payaguas, and even foreign ships of war seemed to take to them kindly. Two planks, twenty or thirty feet long, form the gunwales, and are fitted with a flooring, which is strengthened by lines and cross-pieces. The stem and stern, blunt-muzzled as a punt, describe the arc of a circle, and thus only a small central section touches the water, gliding and skimming the surface, and easily