Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/370



340 A VISIT TO THE GRAN CHACO.

site where the last struggle had lately ended impressed me highly with Paraguayan strength of purpose^ and with the pro- bability of such men fighting to the last. Lieut. -Commander Bushe, following Mr. Gould^ believed that Marshal-President Lopez was utterly exhausted_, or that he would not have suflPered Humaita to fall ; that the weight of the Allies must soon bring about the " unconditional surrender ; " that the success of the Brazil upon the river^ like the campaign of the Mississippi^ had cut the Republic in two ; and that Para- guay^ like Africa and the Confederate States^ however hard- shelled outside, w^ould be found soft within. In vain the Paraguayan prisoners declared that the war had only begun, and that none but traitors would ever yield. One of them asked the medical officer of the Linnet why the ship was there. " To see the end of the struggle, was the reply. " Then," rejoined the man, with a quiet smile, " ustedes han de demorar muchos anos."

The Brazilians affected likewise to look upon the fall of Humaita as the coup de grace, the turning-point of the cam- paign. This Jock once broken, the river door must soon open. About the same time reports of certain barbarities committed in Paraguay had assumed consistency, but often in a truly ridiculous form. H.M. steamship Linnet was supplied with many a telegram announcing that " Lopez continues his atrocities : he has shot his sister, his brothers, and the Bishop." These "shaves," so familiar to me during three years' residence in the Brazil, were officially reported to headquarters. Whatever may have happened since, the assertions were then decidedly false. The next mail brought the report that Bishop Palacios, instead of being shot as he deserved, had received a war-medal or a Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit, a kind of Legion d^Honneur, bor- rowed from France, and established when the campaign began.

And now, " till the next/' as men here say.