Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/391



THE HUMAITA "QUADRILATERAL." 361

troopers hutted under hides. A profusion of raw meat was hung up to dry, and the place was not without caiia. Leaving the redan we rode along the outer line of entrenchments. Here we saw the same kind of work, trenches 18 feet wide and deep ; and platforms for guns, 14 feet 6 inches square and 3 feet 6 inches high ; magazines at every 36 to 42 feet, traverses, sod-revetted parapets 6 feet tall and equally thick, a single cavalier, and a ruined farmhouse. The main diffi- culty of the attack was the nature of the ground. To the south an arenal or sand- wave hides from us Fort Itapiru. Northwards is the bouquet de bois that marks the head- quarters of the Marshal-President. Presently we struck northwards from the outer to the middle line, crossing per- pendicularly three several esteros. The water was girth-deep, and the bottom was black mud fetid with organic matter. Hence the name Paso Pucii, the Long Ford.

We then turned to the north-west, and soon reached the far-famed lines of Curupaity. The works, running nearly north and south, were much stronger and better made than any that we had yet seen. Unfortunately for the defenders it could be shelled by the ironclads, which were only thirty feet below it. The works were composed of glacis, fosse, and parapets of adobe revetted with sods. Inside was a ditch three or four feet broad, with a wall of about the same height, which acted covered-way and drained the terre-plein. The position is the plateau of Humaita : a tree-clad bank rising some twenty feet above the ponds and swamps which front it. The attack in front offered peculiar difficulties. On the right (north) was the copse where the Brazilians ad- vanced and were delayed by coming upon a small outpost : hence their loss was small, and they were accused of having saved themselves at the expense of their Allies. The left flank rested upon a deep lagoon, and between this and the monte lay the putrid knee-deep mire which the Argentines