Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/492



462 AGAIN TO THE ALLIED FRONT.

Tips and downs. Upon its further side rises the loma, which shows the Luque village^ a neat place seen from a distance. Here the bridges were in good repair ; the stations were for the most part remarkably substantial, as if made to last for ever ; and that opposite La Trinidad was a neat chalet. The carpenters will not take the trouble to whittle down their extremely hard timber^ and building material every- where abounds.

After a run of little more than seven miles in thirty minutes, during which the levels rose to 2(^0 feet, we reached the Luque station,^ and were greeted by one of the employes, Sefior Cordeiro, who remembered my former visit to the front. This gentleman gave me two parchment- bound volumes, containing the Life and Miracles of Saint Ignatius de Loyola. I also managed to procure a mutilated translation of Colonel du Graty, with notes by D. Carlos Calvo. This work was officially recommended to all good patriots, and hundreds of copies were found in store at Asuncion. The literature affected by foreigners in Paraguay seems mostly to have consisted of grammars, dictionaries, and ready letter- writers. Travellers remarked that, although all the natives could read and write, a village often con- tained only a single book.

We found Luque the normal settlement derived from the Jesuit ages ; a single quadrangle surrounded by some forty or fifty ground-fioor houses, with deep verandahs or corridors on wooden posts, whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs. All opened, for better espionage, upon the grassy space in front. To the east was a mean little chapel, and on the west was the great comercio, or camp-bazar. We chose the Hotel de Paz, a kind of booth, where for a sovereign we break-

visit to Pirayu, Paraguari, Yaguaron, and Ita, Mr. M. Mulhall (page 95) may be consulted to advantage.
 * For the rest of the line, as far as Itaugua (twenty-five miles), and a