Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/421



LETTEE XXI.

TO THE TEBICUARY RIVER.

Off the Tebicuary River, September 3, 1868.

My dear Z ,

On September Ist^ at 2 p.m.^ the Brazilian sqnadron moved up to the mouth of the l^ebicuary, whose line had lately been abandoned by Marshal-President Lopez. The Linnets resolved, before following- their example, to honour the day by spending it amongst what Anglo- Indians call the " janwars." We heard shots all around as if we had been in Western Europe, but here '^ sport^^ was accompanied by much tailoring and wounding of game.

The river views above Tacuara are of the loveliest, a vista of successive lakes, diversified with isles and islets, with coves and inlets, soft as the scenery of a West African stream. The vegetation consists of the normal gnarled hard- wood trees, diversified by tall figs and a palm resembling the well-known cabbage-palm yatai (Areca oleracea) : the undergrowth is a lively-looking broom, a composite, in the Brazil called " vassoura.^"* The frechilla or arrow-caue grass, which much resembles the uba (a saccJiarum) of the Empire, shelters prodigious clouds of insects, especially sandflies ; it also supplies an oat-like seed said to fatten cattle as well as alfalfa.

We began by operating upon the caymans, with which the banks swarmed : one of them was seen floating with bleached body and supine like a woman, whilst a vulture was pulling at it as though the Paraguay had been the corpse- bearing bosom of Mother Ganges. The " yacare^' — in the