Page:Travels in Uruguay.pdf/66

Rh of the night. Twenty-nine of the leading citizen—one being General Flores' brother—remained at the cabille all night to guard it, and in the morning they were all found dead of cholera. Thus, wholesale murder, and cholera raging on every side, made a very unpleasing variety after England.

The troops bivouacked on the grass in the centre of the large plazza; the matrise, or cathedral, being on one side and the cabille on the other. The military band was playing in the evening, and the townspeople sauntering up and down in the walks under the avenues of trees. The black and swarthy savage Paraguayan soldiery had lit fires, and were cooking their meat on upright spits over the fires; and the whole scene, after the butchery of the day, presented a curious aspect, the soldiery being in whitish-coloured regimentals, and giving anything but a sense of security to a beholder.

On the body of one of the conspirators a list was found of sixty-eight persons who were to have been assassinated, including the whole of the senate and two of the principal English residents. The troops returned from the country on the 20th February, after cutting to pieces 150 of the Blanco army; and yet the same evening thirty-one of these troops died from cholera, brought on from fatigue, drink, and heat. The guard ships of the different nations sent their marines ashore to guard the custom house, ambassadors, and merchants' houses. It being impossible to leave the city, I was forced to remain and listen to the fearful accounts of both bloodshed and pestilence that reached me from every quarter. It appeared that two former