Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/368



338 A VISIT TO THE GRAN CHACO.

infantry with Belgian Enfields and sword-bayonets. Most of the latter, being liberated slaves, wonld have dune better work with the smooth-bore Brown Bess and with the old tri - angular bayonet. This weapon has played an important part in the war; the yataghan-shaped modern tool is too heavy for such unhandy soldiers, and our lately invented saw-sword-bayonet would have been worse still. The arms were piled, and the sentries objected, despite the uniform, to our passing inside — a precaution not useless in a country where the enemy has proved himself so desperate.

After a pleasant visit and a short chat with the officers, we retraced our steps to the clearing, and then plunged into the densely tangled thicket to the west-north-west. Here we found the redoubt thrown up by the fugitives from Humaita ; its right flank resting upon an arm of the Laguna, and the remainder surrounded by wood and scrub. There were platforms for their five brass guns, two-pounders and four-pounders ; they had dug pits for shelter in the uneven floor, and when a man was killed he at once found a ready- made grave. The fightiog had been fierce ; the trees around were cut and torn by cannon, and in one moderate-sized trunk I counted six scars.

Here the wretches defended themselves from the assailant between July 24 and August 4. Though half mad with hunger and delirious with night- watching, they fired upon two flags of truce. The Allies could have easily destroyed them, but, to their honour be it recorded, the nobler part was chosen. A Spanish chaplain in the Brazilian navy — Padre Ignacio Esmerata — devoted himself to the cause of humanity, and approached them, cross and white flag in hand. Still the desperadoes refused to surrender, till their officers proved to them that nothing could be gained by self-destruction. This bulldog tenacity of the Paraguayan, which is bred in his Guarani (" warrior ") blood, may be found in the his-