Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/382



352 THE HUMAITA " QUADRILATERAli."

Some of this class made fortunes like the more prudent kind of " Californian widow." I heard of one that obtained from a Brazilian officer the honorarium of 35/. — it was enough to bring water into the mouths of the honest.

We then turned south-east to the hospitals^ of which two are large and one small_, the Hospital dos Colericos. After the terrible attack of the last year^ all indigestions and cholerines were set down as the true Asiatic epidemic. About a dozen graves were being dug^ of course for cholera patients. But sporadic cases may be expected^ and General Argolo told us of a man who had died of pure fright. This, however, is the hot season, and even the river is not un- wholesome, despite the generation of filth. A few suffer from bad colds, the result of the raw south suddenly re- placing the tepid north wind ; and here the currents are meridional, instead of being diagonal like the north-east, the south-east, and the south-west of the coast. As a rule, the fevers are simple intermittents ; during six months the medical officer of the Linnet saw only one purely remittent case. The percentage of sick amongst the Brazilians is SJ, whereas in large armies it averages from 10 to 12. The ^^carabins" and apothecaries were booted to the fork, as in the Crimea, but here they were civil : one great swell sported a bridle, crupper, and saddle all silver, with the Argentine stirrup, of which at least four- fifths are under- foot. Many of the horses start and buck, and few are so easily managed as in Buenos Aires, where the lightest hand is required, and where the pressure of the reins upon the neck turns the animal.

Still bending south-east, I enjoyed for the first time in the southern hemisphere a long hand-gallop over the cool, soft, springy turf. It was scattered with the Solanum called Cepa de Cavallo, and with a pink-lined mushroom which the people term " toad^s meat." In places were dwarf

THE humaitA "quadrilateral."