Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/351



HUMAITA. 321

the fourteen 32-pounders found in the Gran Chaco. The serviceable weapons did not however exceed sixty. Many of them had been thrown into deep water^ and will be recovered when the level shall fall. Five lay half buried at the foot of the bank^ and ten remained in position : of these, three were eight-inch, four were short 32 or 36 pounders, and two were long 32-pounder carronades.

The guns barely deserve the name ; some of them were so honeycombed that they must have been used as street posts. They varied generally from 4-pounders to 32- pounders, with intermediate calibres of 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24. Not the worst of them were made at Asuncion and Ybicuy, whose furnaces and air chimneys could melt four tons per diem. Some had been converted, but it was a mere patchwork. A few rifled 12-pounders had been cast at Asuncion. There were sundry quaint old tubes bearing the arms of Spain ; two hailed from Seville, the San Gabriel (a.d. 1671) and the San Juan de Dios (1684). The much talked-of " breech-loading Armstrong " was an English 95 cwt. gun, carrying a 68-lb. ball, and rifled and fitted at Asuncion with a strengthening ring of wrought-iron. The breeching lay like a large mass of pie-crust behind it : the bursting had probably been designed, as the shot remained jammed inside.* The captured guns are now being divided into three several parts, each one of the Allies taking about forty, which may be useful for melting up into trophies and memorials. I was told that the Oriental share was twenty- eight guns, of which seven were brass.

I landed with my Blanco friends, who, charmed by my disappointment, despite the natural joy of once more seeing

throw 150-pound shots, described by Lt.-Col. Thompson (chap, xiv.) It was called " shining head," from the soft expanding rings of brass, which were fitted with square-headed bolts.
 * This is possibly the " Aca vera," the 56-pounder, bored and rifled to

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