Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/440



410

RETURN TO BUENOS AIRES.

On August 31, 1868, Mr. Washburn received his passports, and early in the next month the U.S. steamer Wasp, Lieut.- Commander Kirldand, was sent up to remove him. As the gunboat lay about one league below the capital, the Paraguayan steamer Rio Apra was placed at his disposal. Whilst the Minister was embarking, two of the employes at the Legation, Messrs. Bliss and Masterman, were violently arrested for high treason in the streets of Asuncion. In the case of these individuals he admits a certain duplicity of " fencing and fighting " besides flattering his antagonist. But when Mr. Washburn was safely on board the Wasp, he heard that Marshal- President Lopez had threatened Lieutenant-Commander Kirkland to keep him a prisoner ; and instead of returning to his post and compelling the restitution of his attaches, he addressed (September 12) a violent letter, menacing to put the President of Paraguay under the ban of the civilized world.^

In the early autumn of 1868, I again met Mr. W^ash- burn at Buenos Aires. Physically, he was much changed; he had been living in a state of nervous excitement, in an atmosphere of terror and suspicion, happily unfamiliar to the free air of the United States. Many of his assertions were those of a man who was hardly responsible for his actions. He declared that all the foreigners at Asuncion were in prison, and that doubtless most of them would be killed, on the principle that " a dead cock does not crow." He asserted that Marshal-President Lopez was fighting wild, like an exhausted pugilist, furiously hitting right and left. He explained the " atrocities " as the results of systematic plunder. A " hole in the treasure chest " had

from on board the Wasp a letter to Lopez, which would probably have had the etTect of my receiving orders to fire at her as she went down, had he received it before that took place."
 * Of this missive Lieut.-Col. Thompson remarks: "Mr. Washburn sent