Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/354



324 HUMAITA^

The cattle was in excellent condition; you could play- cards or count money, as the Spaniards say, upon their backs. The animals, however, like the men, were light ; they would be efficient opposed to Cossacks, but used against heavy cavalry they would dash up, recoil and shatter, as a wave is shivered by a rock.

As a rule the Brazilian cavalry has not seen much ser- vice in this war of earthworks. Their principal use has been in raids, reconnaissances, and attacks of outposts. "With few exceptions they have behaved remarkably well, and have been ably and gallantly handled by their officers, who acted upon the well-known axiom, that cavalry should never surrender. They are now somewhat in the position of the Crimean cavalry after the Charge of Balaklava. The Argentines, as a rule, were poorly mounted, and being mostly foreigners, were inferior riders. The Paraguayans at the beginning of the war had good cattle, but they were soon annihilated; horses here are rare, and the country supplies for the most part only a diminutive Yaboo. They charged furiously, not with the fine old Spanish war-cry " Santiago y a Elles!" but with the Zagharit of Egypt and the Kil of Persia, a kind of trille here directly derived from the Bed Indians. They exposed themselves with upraised blades, like Mamelukes, careless of what they took, and determined only to give. Their lances are stout weapons of hard heavy wood, eight feet long, with iron heels measuring two and a half spans, and the heads are those of Anglo-Indian boar-spears, not exceeding two inches, and ending in bars that defend it against the sabre.

The Argentine army was variously reported — by its friends as an able and efficient arm ; by its enemies as a montonera, or horde of thieves and brigands, who have never had a siege gun in position. They began with 15,000 men, which speedily fell to 9000, of whom some 6000 were Argentines,