Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/493



AGAIN TO THE ALLIED FRONT. 463

fasted decently, with bread and vin de paya, a stewed fowl, and the best beef that we had eaten in Paraguay. Drunken soldiers were loungiug about, and Dr. Newkirk, after in- specting the accounts of his fraudulent apothecary, at once recognised the brand of a favourite charger belonging to Dr. Stewart. The trooper who rode it was of the San Martin corps, but a dollar and a card sent to the commanding officer soon caused the restoration of the stolen property.

The country about Luque consisted of landwaves dotted with ant-hills and tussocky grass ; and belts of wood, espe- cially thorn-coppice, dividing open esteros, rivulets here called caiiadas, and marshes and mud-pools floored with hard clay. Here and there a bunch or bouquet of vegeta- tion somewhat better than usual, showed the " copuera,^"* or countryman's house. In this part of Paraguay the " capilla^'- village is not known ; the people live in detached farms with mud walls, and open ranchos surrounded by oranges, palms, and mamones, as papaws are named after the shape of their fruit. Cotton was formerly grown here in fields neatly kept as gardens, and some contained 300 lineos, or 20,000 hills. The shrub has now been allowed to run wild. Marshal-President Lopez had made, much like Mohammed Pasha of Egypt, the planting of tree- wool obligatory, and with 20,000 troops at his command, hands were never wanting. The soil is distinctly poor : the Brazilians declare that they are fighting for a country — unspoiled *^^ Arcadia of English capitalists,^' the " most interesting, loveliest, pleasantest in the world " — which they would not accept as a gift. At present the surface is tolerably pure ; presently it will become a sheet of offal and garbage, and the waters will be turned into cess, and sink, stagnant and putrid, into animal and vegetable decay.

After breakfast we crossed the railway in order to call upon the Exmo. Sr General-in-Jefe del Ejercito Argentino,