Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/451



TRIP TO ASUNCION. 421

There was fierce fighting at this spot; and on September 23, an ambuscade of Parag^uayans fell upon the Bra- zilian vanguard, destroying many of it, and annihilating a whole battalion. As we advanced, hove in sight the Guard ia de las Palmas, the usual horseshoe in the eastern or left bank here, three to four feet high, and declining to the north and south. The large clearing showed a forest of poles and sticks; stretchers sheltered by remnants of roofs; grass still mangy and worn; green-painted litters and am- bulances, and long lines of broken huts and hovels ; in fact, the remnants of a big encampment. Here stood the general comercio or bazar, and the camp of the Argentines, who threw up a redoubt before attacking the Marshal President's last line of defence. The second mangruUo to the north denoted the Brazilian quarters, then sheltering some 20,000 men, and the Generalissimo Caxias occupied the Ildoriaga estancia not in sight of the stream.

The Gran Chaco side appeared low and wet, and a ruined Bancho denoted the station of the Brazilian telegraph. After Las Palmas both banks sank, and presently the eastern rose to three feet, whilst the stream broadened, forming a channel island. The latter sheltered the Para- guayan canoes, which attacked the Allied Commissariat. About this point. Marshal Caxias began the road through the Great Chaco, three leagues long, and intended, as usual, to take the enemy in rear. The operation was laborious in the extreme, but it proved exceptionally successful. A little higher up we could distinctly see to the north-west the Loma Cumbarity (the " Cumbari pepper-plantation ^'), separated from the Loma Valentina by a swampy tract. Here, early in September, Marshal- President Lopez took up his headquarters, some four miles from the river, and hence he could command a perfect view of Las Palmas and of the Angostura batteries.