Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/456



426 TRIP TO ASUNCION.

appears a tumulus dark with monte_, and springing from a yellow plain, becomes a mere swell in the loma or upland. To the north-east we are shown theCapella delpane,, orYpane, where in peaceful times the citizens of Asuncion enjoyed their picnics. The word signifies " crooked water'^ (y-pane), and the streamlet must not be confounded with the large tributary of the Paraguay, at whose mouth, in S. lat. 23Â° 30', is Villareal, the port whence the Yerba used to be embarked for Asuncion. Near this place the Brazilian army en- camped after the battle of Itororo.

Further to the north-east a brown house in the bush was pointed out to me as the Potrero Baldovino, which won for itself a name on December 6. My informant "as a Para- guayan soldier of five years^ standing; he looked hardly sixteen ; he had been speared in the Gran Chaco fights ; he could show a silver Cross of the Order of Merit, and he was then in the service of M. Mendoza. A great bend to the east presently placed us in front and south of the Cerro de Lambare. It was the scene of the historic fight be- tween 40,000 " Indian^^ braves and D. Juan de Ayolas, before he disembarked at Asuncion on August 15, 1536. The name was that of a Cacique, and also of a well-known river-fish. It is a flat-topped hill — a truncated cone, whose table is 143*25 metres above the river level. Clad in dark monte, and said to be basaltic, it much resembles the curious knots which I have described as buttressing the course of the Rio de Sao Francisco. I had read ^' The Peak of Lambare is enchanting, with its cone-like elevation clad in luxuriant foliage, raising its lofty form to the skies" — and I was of course disappointed. Here was once a chapel, and people used to extract salt from the river mud.

Evidently we are now approaching a city. A made road, with avenues of trees, threads a succession of quintas, and runs over the hill on the eastern bank. Dwarf forest.