Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/414



S84 TO THE BRAZILIAN FRONT.

I took the opportunity of calling upon Crigadier-General the Barao do Triumpho. A son of Rio Grande do Sul, though upwards of sixty years old and six feet in height,, he is celebrated as the best horseman of the Brazilian army. He could sit without stirrups any " bucker, " and use his sabre as if on foot with two pieces of money between his thighs and the saddle. After a glorious career^ he died on December 21^ 1868, of a typhus fever and a complication of disorders supervening upon a slight wound received at the Loma Valentina. Some months afterwards, when visiting Asuncion, I unexpectedly saw his unfinished tomb, inscribed " O Barao do Triumpho" No man was more regretted, and Marshal Caxias justly called him " O bravo dos bravos do exercito Brazileiro."

" We hang this garland on his grave."

I also missed General da Motta, a ripe Guarani scholar, who could have assisted me in explaining Paraguayan names of geographical features. All are significant, and deserving of record. It will be a pity to imitate Chile, which has forgotten the meanings of Aconcagua and Tupungato.

En revanche, I saw General Osorio, commanding the third corps d'armee, the most popular man and the most brilliant officer in the Allied army. He was made Barao do Herval because he first landed upon the shores of Paraguay proper, and his subsequent services qualified him to become a Vis- conde. The title, I may explain, is taken from the Serra do Herval — of the mate-tea plantation : it lies in lat. 32Â° south, and is a continuation of the Serra Geral of Parana, whose eastern declivities have many " hervales."

General Osorio was lodged in a small thatched house, a little to the west of the headquarter farm. An orderly took in my card, and I found him sitting with a few friends. He was slippered and suffering from osthexy, and thus he