Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/498



468 AGAIN TO THE ALLIED ERONT.

they want_, and that the issue of money is a signal for all manner of disorders. When recounting my experience to high authorities at Uio de Janeiro^ I found that this style of procedure was there unknown.

At Luque we witnessed the unloading of three railway waggons^ under charge of a furious major of infantry, acting conductor. The maize sacks and hay bales were tossed one by one upon the muddy ground, and were slowly rolled up the bank of the little cutting by a score of negro Sepoys in fatigue suits. As usual in these lands of liberty, every boy gave his opinion, and obtained at least as good a hearing as his seniors. In France or Englandsome seven hundred men would have been told off, and they would have done in ten minutes the work which here occupied nearly an hour. This typical slowness in small matters illustrates the whole course of the long campaign. The Juquery bridge took nearly a month to repair, and a facetious editor at Buenos Aires allowed the Brazilians half a year before they could prepare a fresh base of operations.

As we left Luque in an unloaded train, pushed by the engine at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, we were cheered by a characteristic incident. Suddenly in the evening air appeared a bundle of something describing a parabola : it was a Brazilian soldier in uniform, who thought jumping the readiest way to leave the waggon. All sup- posed him a dead man, but his African head had alighted like a shell upon the loose sandy surface. He rolled over as might a toy tumbler, and at last, seated upon his broadest breadth, with highlows extending skywards, he displayed at us flashing ivories and widely-open eyes which recalled the inlayings of some Lower Empire statue.

We were not sorry to find ourselves, sound in limb, once more within the walls of the Hotel de la Minute.

Farewell.