Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/394



864 FROM HUMAITA TO GUARDIA TACUARA.

â– filled^ the parapet was levelled^ the abatis was pulled up,, and the garrison was being shipped off. After Timbiithe banks became lower_, and were not so easily to be defended. About noon we steamed past Tayi^ pronounced Taji : it is so named from a tree also called the Lapacho,, one of the BignoniacisBj which supplies a fine cabinet wood. Here on the eastern bank were batteries subtending the normal horseshoe : it had been judged necessary to dislodge from them the Paraguayans in order to surround and completely to cut off the communications of Humaita The line sweeps to the east and forms a narrow; its tall barranca is about one mile long^ and falls above and below into woods and lowlands. Being shelving^ and not^ as usual_, perpendicular, it is easier to attack ; still it commands the mouth of the Bio Bermejo, and it sweeps the stream with a cross fire up and down from two to two miles and a half : the settle- ment shows nothing but a dwarf cross and a tall mangrullo on a bald point of land ; its few wattle and dab tents and hovelsj near the whitewashed church, are abandoned by all living things save the vulture. There is also a little bridge on the high road to the capital. At the far side of the river is the paddle-wheel of another small Paraguayan steamer sunk by the Brazilians.

Here again, on July 9, 1868, two ironclads, the Barroso and the Rio Grande, were attacked by twenty-four canoes, each carrying ten " bogabantes," as the corps trained to such service was called. The affair repeated that of Humaita ; and the crew of the Rio Grande, when boarded by the enemy, shut themselves up under hatches, and the Barroso, which had been passed by the assailant, came up and cleared the decks of her consort with grape and canister. After this affair the Brazilians thought it wise to bar the stream with a boom.

We then passed a narrow gap in the eastern bank, an

FROM humaitA to guardia tacuAra. 305