Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/479



AT AND ABOUT ASUNCION. 449

however, believed that he was most unwilling to see the offer accepted.

Shortly before my arrival, the Paraguayan outposts had attacked the Brazilians with a '^ railway battery" of two guns, and had killed and wounded some forty men. The steam-engine w^as charged by the Rio Grandenses, lance in hand ; and no one had the presence of mind to lay a log, or to cut the throat of a horse across the rails in rear. The Paraguayans, after doing damage, leisurely retired, and stopped the train to pick up two of their wounded who had fallen out of it. After my departure they fell upon a vedette of cavalry, and drove off, it is said, all the horses. For the first few weeks after the " affreux desastre," they numbered at most 2500 men and youths, most of them hurt and wounded. The wonderful " morosidade" of the Allies allowed the prisoners — the lost and those placed hors de combat — to return to their colours; and in April, 1869, Marshal-President Lopez was supposed to have 6000 troops, which others exaggerated to 8000 to 9000. Arms and ammu- nition had become exceedingly scarce, but the former could always be picked up from the enemy's field of victory, whilst the women were kept to hard labour making cartridges.

A good new hotel — de Paris — is preparing at Asuncion. We lodged at the Hotel de la Minute, which has succeeded the " Hotel de Francia, a fifth-rate inn, with exorbitant charges for small rooms." We paid, everything included, $3*50 per diem — a moderate charge for unexpected good treatment. The French owner was an old soldat d'Afrique, and he was chafing under an insulted nationality, having been lately " shopped" under the pretext that he was re- ceiving stolen goods, when he was only buying furni- ture for his inn. At the same time sundry tobacco-bales, the property of a foreigner, were confiscated because he had carried arms against the Allies. This gave rise to a report

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