Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/433



TO THE TEBICUARY RIVER. 403

Avell to my kind-hearted hosts, and transferred myself very unwillingly on board the Clyde steamer, Vale of Boon, Captain Smith. Early on the next morning wc ran up the Tebicuary. The flooded mouth was a mass of islets, and the huge figs, which formed the avenues of the sides, seemed to be growing like mangroves in the water. Presently passing the mouth of the Yacare influent the bank rose two feet high, and the tree bare trunks were bunchy with para- sites like the mistletoe. At last the ledge became tall and perpendicular, where the stream runs as that of the Para- guay, whilst that opposite was low and flooded. On the northern margin appeared an incipient sandstone with strata and cleavage.

The course was tortuous in the extreme, and the channel was so narrow that at every turn we scraped the bush and forest. After a tight loop, bulging to the south-east, and a run of some three miles, we came to a big bend where the northern bank projected southwards. It was a mere tongue of land opposite the pass described to you in Letter XX., and here the Brazilians had crossed to carry the works of San Fernando. Vultures rose from the bloated carcases of cattle ; and Paraguayan corpses, in leathern waist- wraps, floated face downwards, rising and falling after a ghostly fashion, w^ith the scour and ripple of the stream. At the apex of the re-entering angle of the southern bank were the Brazilian earthworks ; a kind of tete de pont was fronted by the best abatis that I had yet seen. Opposite it, and not connected by a bridge, was the lately captured redoubt which defended the San Fernando Pass, with the usual bar- racks and mangrullo.

I chanced upon an animated scene : it will ever be remembered by me with pleasure. At the "port" five iron- clads were ferrying across the troops, who were that day to be followed by their Commander-in-Chief. On the left bank

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