Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/35

 Colonel du Graty conjectures the extent of the Republic to represent a total of square Spanish leagues 29,470—viz.,

Of these vast areas, only 2500 square leagues are supposed to be inhabited, cultivated, or used for cattle breeding.

We may concisely lay down the limits of Paraguay thus: the river of that name and the Gran Chaco limit the west, the Paraná bounds the east and south, separating her from the Argentine Confederation; and northwards begins the Brazilian Empire. The parallelogram admits of two great divisions: the northern is a mountainous mass averaging, as far as is known, 1200 metres above sea level; the southern is a delta or doab, in places lower than the two rivers which form it. Between the two is a middle part, called the "Cordilleritas," rarely exceeding in height 120 metres; and here, the uplands fall into the lowlands. Such, for instance, are the "Campos Quebrados" (broken prairie), north of Asuncion; the "Altos" about Paraguay and Asciirra, one of the places where Marshal President Lopez established his guerilla head quarters; and the "Lomada""—a continuity of "Lomas," or land-waves, immediately south of Asuncion.

The northern mountain-masses are conjectured to be of trap formation, and to inosculate with the Highlands of the Brazil, especially with the Serra do Espinhaço, whose outlines extend to the Andine system. The trend is laid down as quasi-meridional; the Oriental slopes are the more abrupt, and the ridge divides the Republic into two planes. Thus there is a double watershed of about equal areas, E.S.-eastward to the Paraná, W.S.-westward to the Paraguay, and the streams are unimportant. The Cordillera is supposed to rise in Matto Grosso, about S. lat. 19°, under the names of Sierra de Amambay (the Tupi Samambaia, or poly-