Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/477



AT AND ABOUT ASUNCION. 447

Buenos Aires. The Brazilian party thereupon declared that he was in durance ; but Paraguay was not likely, under the circumstances, so gratuitously to offend her power- ful sister Republic. The anti-Brazilians asserted that his letters had been intercepted by the Allies. Commander Parsons, of Her Majesty's steamship Beacon, which had relieved the Linnet^ was awaiting permission to visit the Marshal- President, and to carry off the last of the English detenus. I have before referred to the success of this officer's first mission : he had not, however, been supplied with a list of all the British employes, and at the moment of his reception by the President of Paraguay, Messrs. Valpy and Burrell were within two to three miles of him. The Argentines favoured his visit. The Brazilians refused a flag of truce ; and although they would have perforce allowed passage through their lines, they would have left him alone and unescorted to find his way across the deserted tract separating them from the enemy. Their overweening self-confidence in their own prowess gives them an arrogance which is becoming very offensive to foreigners. The bullying manner of the subaltern officers, especially with strangers, contrasts most unfavourably with the cour- tesy of the Generals and Marshals. If any ridiculous asser- tion concerning "Lop'z," as they pronounce the name, be received with the least reserve, they raise their voices, and, with open sneer, deprecate any "defence of the tyrant." I have before warned you not to confound this negraille — these sweepings of second and third class negroes and negroids — with the noble Brazilian nation. They all believe that such a campaign has never been fought ; that such hardships have never been endured ; that such battles have never been won. The Empire, for a couple of generations, has been essentially pacific, and the ignorant have of course no idea of what is war.