Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/463



EX-CAPITAL OF PARAGUAY. 433

such as a Liberty cap on a pole, supported by Religion and Patriotism. Also a pair of heraldic lions ; the lion of Paraguay, be it observed, is a jaguar, not a Britisher, nor, as M. Demersay says, a leopard. It is, in fact, the Icon de Ibera, a beast almost as harmless as an " Essex lion." Still, the Argentine National Hymn refers to it in the

line —

" Y a sus plantas rendido un leon."

These lions are made of Country grit ; they are grotesque with a witness, and they carefully present their posteriors towards the master of the house. The wings are laid out in large saloons and ball-rooms below, and above in about a score of small apartments, some of which have fire-places. The architect was an English master-mason, Mr. Taylor, and his workmen were Paraguayan lads and recruits, hired at eighteen- pence a day ; all things considered, they have not done badly.

Mr. Taylor was one of the unfortunates. One night, late in 1868, when he was returning quietly home, he was led off to the Capitania (Port Captain's office), where irons were rivetted to his legs. Without a word of accusation, he was tormented by being thrown, back downwards, in the sun, and by being cowhided when he called for water. Some are of opinion that these brutalities were the unauthorized work of underlings ; others again assert that nothing of the kind could take place without the cognizance of the chief authority. However, after the decisive defeat at the Lomas, Marshal- President Lopez happened to ride past where Mr. Taylor and the chief of the telegraph office, Mr. Fischer von Treuenfels, a Prussian of talent and education, hap- pened to be lying in irons. They appealed to him for mercy : he professed not to remember them — doubtless their imprisonment had worked great changes — and he at once, ignoring their offences, ordered them to be set at

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