Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/480



450 AT AND ABOUT ASUNCION.

that the invaders^ who professedly declared war against the Government of Paraguay only, were about to appropriate the belongings of all who had opposed them in the field. As the whole of the Paraguayan population was in this category, the result would have been general spoliation. Nothing of the kind was, I believe, intended; but it was impolitic in the extreme to raise any such question. Marhal-President Lopez could hardly fail to make capital out of the report, and to show his vassal-citizens that they had nothing to expect except by fighting to the last. Mean- while, money was being coined. I was asked if my claim upon Paraguay had been settled, and was assured that by the easy sacrifice of half of what did not belong to me, the rest could be recovered in hides or in yerba. Afterwards, on board the Arno, I met a Brazilian ^^ fornecidor,^^ who, accompanied by his Traviata and his Traviata^s mamma and daughter, openly boasted that in three days he had cleared 30,000 silver dollars. This " flogs" even the Anglo-Indian commissariat officer whom we subalterns used to greet with the stock question about the date when he expected trans- portation.

At Asuncion I again met Lieutenant-Colonel Chodasie- wicz : he was amiable as ever, and ready to impart his stores of information ; but his position had not improved after the departure of his patron Marshal Caxias. He had proposed to attack the last Paraguayan position on the Lomas, by marching up stream 10,000 men and twelve guns, escorted by the Monitors. The rest of the army having for base the line of the Tebicuary river, would have advanced, not by the Gran Chaco, but eastward of the Laguna Ypoa, and by Caapucu, till they reached the apex of the triangle, Ita, which lies in the rear of Angostura. But such combined movements are hazardous, even when at- tempted by the best troops.