Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/428



398 TO THE TEBICUARY RIVER.

travellers the Paraguayans had preserved their ancestral art of artificially colouring the plumes.

At one p.M.^ Sept. 2, H.M.S. Linnet steamed up the broadening river and sighted sundry islets which are not on the chart. The faint wind which relieved us of the morraa90 or stifling calm was very pleasant, and we sincerely wished for a heavier sky than the thin windsbaume or cirrus which the Brazilians call algodao batido — whipped cotton. Trying even to the seasoned is the sudden change from raw cold to dry heat, and more trying still are the immundicities, Messrs. Borachudo So Co. The weather, which I have said here mainly depends upon the wind, will gradually gain warmth from a minimum of 45 deg. in the cold or south wind horizon to 85 deg., and even 100 deg. when Boreas, whose blustering is here gone, shall prevail.

The country still appeared mean, as that about Pekin described by travellers. After steaming two leagues we sighted five of the ironclads — the Monitors having been sent higher up — anchored ofi* the mouth of the Tebicuary River. This is usually laid down in south latitude 26Â° 39' and east longitude (G.) 58Â° 10'; at a distance of 108 miles from Corrientes. Lieutenant Day writes the word Tebiquari; Lieutenant- Colonel Thompson, Tebicuary or Tibicuary. Two derivations were given to me : one from Tebi the rear centre of the human frame, and Cuari broad : the compound word being the name of a Cacique or a tribe. Others translate it Tebi, cua source, and yg water — i.e. water flowing from a source which resembles a certain part of man. It is now a river with a name — a historic stream which has received its bapteme de sang.

The Tebicuary is the largest river wholly owned by Para- guay. It rises in two branches from the Cuchilla Grande or great knife-like ridge north of Villa Bica, not from the