Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/405



TO THE BRAZILIAN FRONT. 375

became worse ; deep bailados had to be passed on ox-skulls, billets of wood, and bundles of pressed hay. Of these bridges each provedor made his own, and, after a few hours' use, the loads floundered through the mire. Carts, drawn by six to eight teams of bulls or bullocks, were tended by drivers on foot and on horseback, goading and flogging with shout and noise even louder than the creakings of the greaseless axles ; disputing the way, and not unfrequently using their daggers. The noisiest and most violent w^ere the negroes,

" a black infernal train : The genuine oflfspring of th' accursed Cain."

After trudging northward one short league from the Guardia Tacuara, I found a long field of black viscid mire which led to the Arroyo del Yacare — of the Cayman. This is a streamlet averaging four to five feet deep, and about fifty broad, which, after forming sundry swamps, discharges into the Tebicuary, the main drain of the valley. Here carts were hopelessly stuck, and wretched bullocks, with patient faces, slowly dying of hunger and thirst, sad- dened the eye. The din of war became tremendous — all spoke, none listened. The pontoon bridge having been removed, I persuaded a fellow, by means of a dollar, to let me cross the waist-deep ford upon his horse's crupper.

The right bank of the Arroyo showed the remnants of earthworks. To this point extended the much talked-of reconnaissance made (June 4, 1868 J by General Menna Barreto. That dashing officer, with 3000 cavalry, reaching the Yacare from Tuyucue, fell in with and cut up a picquet of some 50 Paraguayan troopers, Presently a larger body of Paraguayan horse, supported by infantry and backed by field fortifications, coming up, he was compelled to retreat with a trifling loss. Such is the Brazilian account. Lieutenant- Colonel Thompson (Chap. XX.) gives a very different version.