Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/416



386 TO THE BRAZILIAN FRONT.

mained there, however, for the shortest possible time, and he at once returned to take part in the closing scene of Act No. 2.

In the cool of the evening we strolled about the camp, to see what we could. Women — Brazilian mulatresses and Argentine " Chinas" — seemed to abound. Almost all were mounted en Amazone, and made conspicuous by mushroom straw hats, with the usual profusion of beads and blossoms. They distinguish themselves as the hardest riders, and it is difficult to keep them out of fire. They are popularly numbered at 4000, but this surely must be an exaggera- tion. It is bad enough to have any at all. Some of them have passed through the whole campaign, and these " brevet captains " must fill the hospitals. My Brazilian friends declared them to be a necessary evil. I can see the evil, but not the necessity. Anything more hideous and revolting than such specimens of femininity it is hard to imagine.

The artillery park stood to the north-west of the head- quarters. I counted twenty Whitworths — all kept in apple- pie order, as if by Hindu gunners. We saw the men of a field battery preparing to march with their twelve guns : larger and stronger than the soldiers of the line, they were very heavily laden. They are said to equal Paraguayans on the plain, but their enemies seldom meet them without throwing up an earthwork covering.

The Brazilian cavalry, the " eyes, feelers, and feeders of the army," were here in as good condition as those whom I saw at Humaita. The Carbineers had mostly the Spencer rifle, and had learned to use it tolerably w^ell. They wore upon the chest the cartridge belts which, after becoming obsolete in Europe and confined to Turks and Arnauts, are now being revived by the breechloader. The regiments con- sist of 400 men, as did those of the Paraguayans before the war ; but the latter gradually dwindled out of existence.