Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/377



TIMBO ESTABELECIMENTO NOVO. 347

do pe of the Brazil, the nigua or chigua {" a meat-bag ")

of the Spanish Antilles, and the jigger of the West Indies,

here called pique or chique. The pest extends everwhere

from Corrientes, where it is worst, to Asuncion ; and I heard

of a person suffering severely from a jigger that had fixed

itself in his eyeball whilst a roll of tobacco was being

opened. There were plenty of curios for the curious : brass

spurs, cavalry blades, and broken flint-muskets, remnants of

saddles rude as those used by the Pampas "Indians/^ and

drums with tricolor bands, and inscribed —

" Republico del Paraguay Veneer o morir."

A Paraguayan bitch, thin as a shadow, still haunted the deserted scene ; as we whistled to her she slunk away like a cimaron or wild dog.

On the next day Lieutenant-Commander Bushe took me in his gig to the Arroyo Hondo, " the deep channeV^ which bounds the Humaita bank immediately to the north. Up this stream the Brazilians had sent their light craft to cut off the Paraguayan garrison from the capital. On the right the land was swampy^ extending a few yards to the Laguna Cierva, the southern fork of the Arroyo ; rice might here be produced in abundance. Pistia grew near the water ; behind it stood the red-leaved Mangui hibiscus, whilst within were tall trees, acacias and mimosas, festooned with the parasitic HervadosPassarinhos (a polygonum), and dead trunks converted into pyramids of verdure by a convolvulus bearing flowers of dark pink. After rowing some two hours we came to a widening of the bed where the Arroyo headed in a lagoon. To our right was an earthwork called by the Brazilians '^ Estabelecimento Novo,^^ and by the Paraguayans the Cierva redoubt. The Marshal-President had armed it with nine field-pieces served by some 1600 men, under command of Major Olabarrieta. On the morning when the ironclads