Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/447



TRIP TO ASUNCION. 417

of tliiu-leaved willows, fantastic clumps of creepers investing dead trunks, and leas of the broad succulent pistia, that show whence come the floating isles. We hailed with de- light, after the arid growth of the Pampas and the scanty- clothing of the desert Chilian shore, the fair Brazilian flora, tall mangui-hibiscus, cecropia or candelabrum-tree, and convolvulus, here white, there pink.

" Such towns are these V' said M. Mendoza, as he pointed to the few long white-walled Ranchos, known as Villa Franca. Its site is a clearing in the eastern bank, where it is somewhat higher than usual ; above and below it the raised ground falls into tree- clad hollows, and a long island occupies the centre of the stream. More interesting was the Vuelta Hermosa, which all remarked before they had heard its name — a regular " horseshoe bend," in the western barranca, whose fifteen perpendicular feet of stiff" clay under- lie sixteen inches of dark vegetable mould, clad in grass and well-grown palms. It is a splendid site for a colony, but still — it is in the Gran Chaco. The only Paraguayan build- ings are in their clearings on the low shore opposite^ tattered stockades and tiled ranchos, almost swept away by the inundations. Such are the deserted Guardias of Gatrapi and La Zanjita.

Our attention was then called to Villa Oliva, another deserted hamlet, consisting of a chapel, El Rozario^ a white and tiled house, and half a dozen sunburnt ranchos : deserted all, and rising from a drowned land, at whose edge half a dozen pistia-islets were cutting themselves adrift. Carts, ambulances, and ammunition waggons, left by the Allies for want of draught, lay broadcast o\^er the country ; and in striking contrast rose the Marshal-President^s telegi'aph posts of well-trimmed hardwood (madera de ley). North of Villa Oliva was found a single bridge, and the swampy ground proved, Paraguayan-like, very unsound and treache-

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