Letters from the battle-fields of Paraguay

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Preface

The principal object of these letters is to tell a new tale of modern Paraguay, to place before tbe public simple, unvarnished sketches and studies of what presented itself to one visiting the seat of a campaign which has, in this our day, brought death and desolation into the fair valleys of the Paraguay and the Uruguay Rivers. In no case, let me say, has distance better displayed its eflFects upon the European mind. Returned home, I found blankness of face whenever the word Paraguay (which they pronounced Paragay) was named, and a general confession of utter ignorance and hopeless lack of interest.

Many in England have never heard of this Five Years' "War which now appears to be an institution. Even upon the Parana River I met an intelligent skipper who only suspected a something bellicose amongst the ^^ nebulous republics^'' because his charter-party alluded to a blockade.

It speaks little for popular geography when we read year after year such headings as '^ Hostilities on the River Plate,"'"' whereas the campaign was never fought within 300 miles of the Rio de la Plata. The various conflicting accounts scattered abroad, with and without interest or obligation to scatter them, make the few home-stayers that care to peruse South American intelligence accept as authentic, and possibly act upon, such viridical information as that for instance supplied by the following clipping : —

b 2 vm PREFACE.

Telegram received at the Brazilian Legation in London.

The war is over. (No !) Lopez has either fled to Bolivia, (No !) or is concealed at Corrientes. (Impossible!) The execution of his brothers (?) Burgos (?) the bishop (?) and prisoners (?) is confirmed. (No !) Tlie Paraguayan population was returning to Assumption (Never !) which has been occupied by the Marquis de Caxias.

And lastly, M. Elisee E,eclus_, in the ^^ Revue des Deux Mondes/^ can term Paraguay with the impunity of impudence,, ^^ etat pacifique par excellence/' when her every citizen was a soldier^, and when even during the rule of the Jesuit, the tiller of the ground was also a man-at-arms.

The war still raging upon its small theatre of action is a spectacle that should appeal to man's sympathy and imagination. Seldom has aught more impressive been presented to the gaze of the world than this tragedy ; this unflinching struggle maintained for so long a period against overwhelming odds, and to the very verge of racial annihilation j the bulldog tenacity and semi-compulsory heroism of a Red-skin Sparta, whose only vulnerable point, the line of her river, which flows from north to south, and which forms her western frontier, has been defended with a stubbornness of purpose, a savage valour, and an enduring desperation rare in the annals of mankind.

Those who read, dwelling afar, see one of the necessary two phases. Some recognise a nation crushed by the mere weight of its enemies ; drained of its population to support the bloody necessities of a hopeless war ; cut off" from all communication with the world outside, yet still as ever fired with a firm resolve to do and die before submitting to the yoke of the mighty power that is slowly but surely crushing it. Others again behold nothing but a barbarous race blotted out of the map, an obscure nationality eaten up, as the Kafirs say, by its neighbours ; a rampant tyranny whose sole object is self-aggrandisement, a conflict of kites and crows, the slaves of a despot, of an '^ American Attila,''

PREFACE. ^ IX

figliting at the despot's nod^ for the perpetuation of a policy of restraint which a more advanced state of society cannot tolerate, and of an obsolete despotism which the world w^ould willingly abolish.

Those who write have in almost all instances allowed their imaginations and their prejudices to guide their judgment, and mostly they have frankly thrown overboard all impartiality. The few '^ Lopezguayos'' or " Paraguayan sympathizers/-' the ^^ thick and thin supporters'"' of the Marshal President, make him the '' Liberator of South America;'' the " Cincinnatus of America;" the " King Leopold of the Plate ;" they quote the names applied to him by his subjects, Great White Man (Carai guazii) and " Big Father." Paraguay is to them another Poland in the martyrology of peoples, a weak, meek inland Republic to be strangled, after an " odious struggle of three to one," in the huge coils of the Imperial Anaconda. They accuse the Brazil of the most interested views, they charge her with boundless profligacy and the " most hideous vices," as if these had aught to do with the subject ; they declare that no nation has a right to impose upon a neighbouring and independent people a government not of its own choice ; they irrelevantly predict terrible crises when the Negro question and that of the great feudal domains shall demand to be settled, and they even abuse '' I'Empire Esclavagiste" because she has not madly freed her slaves, or rather because she has freed them to enslave her free neighbours.^ Many there are who term the Marshal President, alias the '^ Tyrant of Paraguay," the " Monster Lopez," a " Vandalic and treacherous aggressor," a Nero, a Theodore, '' O barbaro do Paraguay :"

* " Kevue des Deux Mondes," of February 15th, 1865, and August 15tl), 1868, by M. Elisee Reclus : November 15th, 1865, by M. J. de Cazane, and September 15th, 1866, by M. Duchesne de Bellecourt. The ignorance of fact paraded in these papers is to be equalled only by the animus ■which pervades them.

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they hold his military republico- despotism a hornets^ nest, a thorn in the side of the progressive Brazil^ and they look upon the long campaign as the battle of civilization_, pure and simple, against the Japanese isolation and the Darfurian monocracy which are erroneously dated from the days of Dr. Francia.

It is hardly necessary for me to declare that Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur, or to hope for immunity from the pains and penalties which attach to the purely neutral. My sympathies are with the Brazil, as far at least as her " mission^^ is literally, not liberally, to unlock the great Southern Mississippi; to "keep open and develop the magnificent water system of the Paraguay- Parana- Plate,'"' and to sweep away from the shores of its main arteries the Guardias and Piquetes, the batteries and the ridiculous little stockades which served to keep its waters comparatively desert, and to convert a highway belonging to the world into a mere monopoly of Paraguay. I have spoken somewhat harshly of the Brazilian army : here hablar fuertey the sermo brevis et durus is the duty of a writer. Its personnel as a rule, admitting many brilliant exceptions, imperfectly represents the noble Brazilian people; its successes have been hailed with an enthusiasm run frantic, and its spare merits have been commended with an exaggeration whose consequences, operating upon public opinion, may do the country much real harm. The Brazilian freeman, as his history shows, may court comparison with the bravest of soldiers. The case is not the same with the freed man and the servile fresh from the hoe.

On the other hand, I cannot but admire the wonderful energy and the indomitable will of Marshal President Lopez and his small but sinewy power, which will never be forgotten nor want admirers as long as history shall endure. In many actions one-third of the number engaged

PREFACE. XI

was placed hors de combat, and often of a battalion numbering 400 men only 100 returned.

The Paraguayans have indeed fought for their altars and their fires, fought for the green graves of their sires, their God, their native land, for the '^ vindication of their outraged honour, the guarantee of their threatened existence, and the stability of their wounded rights.-'^

As regards the '^ atrocities of Lopez '^ — to quote another popular heading — his ^^ unheard-of and fiendish cruelties,*' his extorting by torture the testimony required from foreign employes, his starving to death prisoners of war; flogging to death men, women, and children ; his starving and killing the wounded, and his repeatedly shooting and bayoneting, amongst others, his brothers, his sisters, and the bishop, the reader will, I venture to assert, do well to exercise a certain reservation of judgment, like myself. Truth seems to be absolutely unknown upon the banks of the Plate. After the most positive assertions and the most life-like details concerning the execution of some malefactor (or victim) in high (or low) position have been paraded before the world, a few days will prove that the whole has been one solid circumstantial lie. The fact is that nothing about Paraguay is known outside the country, and of its government very little is known even inside its limits. The foreign employes themselves must generally speak from hearsay, and some of them have not failed to supplement their facts by fancies, theories, and fictions. The most trustworthy will own that in the case, for instance, of a whole corps being decimated, they remained, though almost upon the spot, in ignorance of the executions till two years afterwards.

The war in Paraguay, impartially viewed, is no less than the doom of a race which is to be relieved from a selfchosen tyranny by becoming chair a canon by the

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process of annihilation. It is the Nemesis of Faith ; the death-throe of a policy bequeathed by Jesuitism to South America; it shows the flood of Time surging over a relic of old world semi-barbarism, a palseozoic humanity. Nor is the semi-barbaric race itself without an especial interest of its own. The Guarani family appears to have had its especial habitat in Paraguay, and thence to have extended its dialects, from the Rio de la Plata to the roots of the Andes, and even to the peoples of the Antilles. Th^ language is now being killed out at the heart, the limbs are being slowly but surely lopped off, and another century will witness its extirpation.

This Crimean Campaign,

Si licet in parvis exemplis graudibus uti, abounds in instances of splendid futile devotion. It is a fatal war waged by hundreds against thousands ; a battle of Brown Bess and poor old flint muskets against the Spencer and Enfield rifles ; of honeycombed carronades, long and short, against "Whitworths and Lahittes ; of punts and canoes against ironclads. It brings before us an anthropological type which, like the English of a past generation, holds every Paraguayan boy-man equal, single-handed, to at least any half-dozen of his enemies. It is moreover an affair which, whilst testing so severely the gigantic powers of the Brazil and threatening momentous effects to its good genius — democratic imperialism, has yet been prosecuted with so many laches, with an incuriousness, an inconsequence, and in many cases with a venality which, common as are such malpractices in the non-combattant ranks of all semi-disciplined and many disciplined armies, here presents an ethnographical study.

Nor is the subject without its sensational side. These pages will offer details concerning places and persons whose names are more or less familiar to the public ear : Asuncion,

PREFACE. Xlll

the capital of this " inland China -/^ Humaita, the " Sebastopol of the South/^ that gigantic ^*'hum " whose "grim ramparts '^ (wretched earthworks) appeared even in the London Times as " the Gibraltar, or more properly the Mantua, of South America •" the Amazonian corps raised by "Mrs. President Lopez/^ the mysterious Madame Lynch, en personne ; the Marshal President, who though separated by half a world from our world, must ever command a sufficiency of interest ; the conspiracy that has been so fiercely asserted and denied, the new Reign of Terror, called by some the Reign of Rigour, and the executions which, if they really took place, can be explained only by the dementia preceding destruction, or by the most fatal of necessities. In the purely military sketches the most interesting details are those concerning the much talked-of earthworks, a style of defence becoming in these days of breech-loading and couchant drill, more and more necessary as the means of oflPence shall improve, and calling for as much practical information as we can collect.

The Paraguayan campaign is essentially a war of entrenchments as opposed to the siege and the pitched battle, and entrenchments have now taken a high position in strategics.

I made two visits to the seat of war. The first, from August 15th to September 5th, 1868, led me to the mouth of the Tebicuary River, when the Paraguayan batteries of San Fernando were being stormed. The second began on April 4th, lasted till April 18th, 1869, and showed me the curtain rising upon the third act of the campaign — the Guerilla phase preceding the conclusion. During a residence of some three and a half years in the Brazil, the Paraguayan question was the theme of daily conversation around me, and where my personal experience failed it was not difficult to turn to account that of others.

XIV PREFACE.

In making up the map, the trustwortliy and satisfactory labours of Captain Mouchez of the French Imperial navy, which have been adopted by the Allied Armies in the field,* have of course been taken as a base. The northern part of the republic is borrowed from Colonel du Graty, whose geography, whatever may be his politics, is, in this portion, better than that of any other traveller. The whole has been corrected by the map illustrating the work on the Paraguayan War, by Lieut.-Col. George Thompson, of whom more presently.

I have not yet had leisure to reduce to writing the printed documents of the Brazilian War-office, obligingly supplied to me by the enlightened Minister H. E. the Burao de Muritiba. He, however, who would produce a detailed and connected study, a complete and satisfactory account of a four years^ campaign, interesting even after Custozza, Sadowa, and Lissa, and certainly the most complicated, topographically and strategically, that has been fought since 1850, must have more time and better opportunities than I possess. He should have access to the private as well as to the published reports of Bio de Janeiro, of Buenos Aires, and of Monte Video. Nor will his account be aught but incomplete unless he be enabled to collate with those of the Allies the official correspondence of the Paraguayan commandants, whilst a complete set of the Semanario, the Moniteur of the republic, is becoming almost unattainable. Whatever victory the Brazil has claimed, Paraguay, as may be expected, has revindicated it, and vice versa.

All accounts which have hitherto appeared are necessarily one-sided : the Allies — Brazilian, Argentine, and Oriental — have told and re-told their own tale, whilst the Paraguayans have mostly been dumb perforce.

Since these remarks were penned, I have had an

PREFACE. XV

opportunity of reading, and I have read with the utmost interest, ^' The War in Paraguay, with an Historical Sketch of the Country and its People, by George Thompson, C.E., Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in the Paraguayan Army, Aide-de-camp to President Lopez, &c/^ (Longmans, 1869). By the kindness of the author and of the publishers the proofs were sent to me before they were made public, and I delayed for some time my own pages in order that Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson should takethe precedence to which his knowledge of the subject, and experience of eleven years spent in hard labour and in actual field-service, entitle him. The two books, however, are by no means likely to clash. The " War in Paraguay^^ is semi-historical, treating of what the author witnessed during the hostilities. " Letters from the Battle-fields"^ is a traveller's journal of much lighter cast, and necessarily more discursive.

I have attempted also to sketch the campaign, than which, rightly explained, nothing can be more easily understood. It is composed of three great acts, and the following is the skeleton :* —

Act No. 1. President Lopez raises a force of 80,000 men and resolves to brook no interference on the part of the Brazil in the affairs of the Platine States. He engages in hostilities and he determines to be crowned at Buenos Aires Emperor of the Argentines. For this purpose he marches (April, 1865) two corps d'armee of 25,000 men under General Bobles, and 12,000 men under Lt.-Col. Estigarribia, down the rivers Parana and Uruguay, intending that they should rendezvous at Concordia or some central point and jointly occupy Buenos Aires. He himself

* The reader will kindly remember, that these pages treat only of the Paraguayan war in the south. Nothing is said touching the campaign in Matto-Grosso, and on the northern waters of the Paraguay river.

XVI PREFACE.

remains witli a third corps d^armee of supports and reserves, behind his proper frontier, the Parana River. Both the invading columns are defeated in detail, the survivors return by the end of October, 1865, and the central body retreats to Paso. Thus ends the offensive portion of the campaign, which lasted about five months.

Act No. 2. President Lopez, commanding his armies in person, vainly attempts to defend the frontiers of the Republic, and gradually retiring northwards, before vastly superior forces and a fleet of ironclads, he fights every inch of ground with a prodigious tenacity. This defensive phase concludes, after upwards of three years, with the affair of Loma Valentina, the " Waterloo of the war." This terrible blow was struck December 25th-27th, 1868.

Act No. 3, and as yet not " played out^"* (September, 1869). The Guerilla phase, when President Lopez, compelled to abandon his capital, Asuncion, falls back upon Cerro Leon, and makes '' Paraguary "^ provisionally his chief town. Whilst this state of things endured I left the Rio de la Plata.

Named by her Gracious Majesty, Consul at Damascus, I now bid, and not without the sincerest regret, a temporary adieu to the Brazil, that glorious land, the garden of South America, which has so long afforded me a home.

R. F. B.

August, 1869.

* Our periodicals mostly print the word Paraguay, thus confounding the little country town with the country.

CONTENTS. XIX

LETTER XXI. TO THE TEBICUARY RIVER pp. 391 405

LETTER XXIL

RETURN TO BUENOS AIRES. THE CONSPIRACY.

THE ^^ ATROCITIES OF LOPEZ '' .... 406 412

LETTER XXin.

TRIP TO ASUNCION, THE CIUDAD 413 430

LETTER XXIV.

DESCRIBING ASUNCION, EX-CAPITAL OF PARAGUAY 431 444

LETTER XXV.

LETTER XXVI.

LETTER XXVIL, AND LAST 469 — 481

THE

BATTLE-FIELDS OF THE PAEAGIJAY AND UEUGUAT RIVERS.

Section I. Introductory Essay— Paraguay

T HAD intended to spare my readers the mortification of -■- readings and myself of writiog, this essay. Returning^ however^ to England, and once more restored to civilized society, my astonishment was great to find the extent of ignorance touching what has been called " La Chine Americaine'^ — both grow tea, but that is their chief point of resemblance. I was mortified to see the want of interest attached to perhaps the most remarkable campaign fought during the present century, and I applied myself during my six weeks of leave to find out the cause of the phenomenon.

It proved on inquiry, that after the interest of Dr. Francia faded away, Paraguay had dropped clean out of general vision. Many, indeed, were uncertain whether it formed part of North or of South America; and it is, I need hardly say, impossible to take any interest about the fortunes of a race whose habitat is unknown. Moreover, the periodicals of Europe, wanting, like their public, accurate topographical knowledge of the scene of action, managed to invest a campaign whose grand movements are simple in the extreme however complicated by terrain may be its details, with a confusion that lacked even the interest of mystery. Hence most readers of journals have, during the last four years, studiously avoided leaders, articles, or intelligence headed " Hostilities in the River Plate,^"* and in so doing they were justified.

This Essay proposes to itself an abstract of the geography and the history of Paraguay, compressed as much as possible without being reduced to a mere string of names and dates.

And first of the word " Paraguay,''^ which must not be pronounced ^' Paragay.^^ The Guarani languages, like the Turkish and other so-called ^' OrientaP^ tongues, have little accent, and that little generally influences the last syllable : a native would articulate the name Pa-ra-gua-y.*

For this term are proposed no less than nine derivations.

" Paraguay ,''^ says Muratori (p. 92), " means ^ River of feathers,^ and was so called from the variety and brilliancy of its birds .^^

" Paraguay ,''^ says P. Charlevoix, " signifies ^ fleuve couronne,^ from Para, river, and gua, circle or crown, in the language of the people around the Xarayes lake, which forms as it were its crown. ^''

"Paraguay,'"* says Mr. Davie (1805), "would signify ^variety of colours,' alluding to the flowers and birds. Para, in fact, may mean ' spotted,' as in the name Petun Para, the speckled tobacco familiar to all Paraguayan travellers."" Mr. Wilcocke (1807), who borrows without acknowledgment from Davie and other authors, echoes " variety of colours."

* " Y " is written in the Tupi or Brazilian dialect, " ig," or " yg." The sound, somewhat like the French " eu " in " eut," for instance, was and is still, a shibboleth for foreigners. We find, by a curious coincidence, which of course has no serious etymological significance, the Celtic Gauls expressing water by the terminal "y," for instance in vich-y = vich (strength or virtue) and " y," water.

" Paraguay/' says D. Pedro de Angelis (1810)^ " must be translated, the River running out of the lake Xarayes, celebrated for its wild rice. The derivation would be Para, sea, gua, of, and y, water/'

"Paraguay," which in some old MSS. is written Paraquay, says Rengger, " is simply ' sea-water hole,' from Para, the sea, and qua-y, water- hole."

" Paraguay," says popular opinion, " merely expresses water of the (celebrated) Payaguaor Canoe tribe of Indians, corrupted into Paragua by the first Spanish settlers." *

" Paraguay," says Lieut. -Col. George Thompson, C.E., "is literally, ' the river pertaining to the sea' (Para, the sea, gua, pertaining to, and y — pronounced ii — river or water) ." Colonel Thompson, I may here remark, is spoken of as an excellent Guarani scholar, and he has prepared for publication a vocabulary of that interesting moribund tongue.

An eighth derivation, for which there exists no authority, is " Water of the Penelope bird" (the Ortalida Parraqua, still common on its banks).

Without attempting to decide a question so disputed by authorities so respectable and so discrepant, I would observe, that even as late as 1837, a tribe of Guaranis had for chief one Paragua; that such names have been handed down amongst them from extreme antiquity; and that, both in Portuguese and in Spanish America, the conquerors often called geographical features after the caciques whom they debelled or slew. Paraguay therefore, may mean the river of (the kinglet) " Paragua."

It is not easy to treat of the topography and geography of Paraguay. Some portions, — for instance, the Paraguay river and the Parana to the parallel of Villa Rica, and even to the rapids of La Guayra — have for three centuries been travelled over and surveyed. On the other hand, the most tropical division of the Cordillera, which, runniDg north

1—2 from Villa Rica to the Apa River^ traverses the Republic like a dorsal spine^ may be pronounced to be in parts completely unknown.

The limits of the Republic are undetermined ; upon this subject she has differences with all her neighbours^ — with Brazil_, with Bolivia^ and with the Argentine Confederation. A detailed history of these disputes would fill many a volume. She claims to extend between S. lat. 22° 58' and 37° 50' j and she traces her frontier up the Parana after its confluence with the Paraguay River to the Cordillera of the Misionesj thence to the line of the S. Antonio Mini till it falls into the River of Curitiba, then again bending westward up the Parana, and more westward still up the Ivenheima affluent (so called by the Brazilians, the Igurey or Yaguarey of the Spaniards), and finally over the mountains to the valley of the Rio Blanco (S. lat. 21°). Westward the limitation remains for adjustment with Bolivia, and to the southwest the Rio Bermejo separates the Paraguayan from the Argentine Republic. This demarcation, including the disputed territory between the Rio Blanco and Rio Apa (the Crooked Stream alias Corrientes) and others, involves a trifle of square 860 leagues.

Under these circumstances, as may be imagined, the area of the Republic is a disputed point. I will briefly cite the extreme views of other authors.

Messrs. Rengger and Longchamps (1825) allow to her 10,000 square leagues.

Mr. Demersay^s estimate is :

Square Leagues.

Lands between the Parana and Paraguay Rivers . . . 10,413

Ditto ditto in Grand Chain 16,537

Ditto the Parana and Uruguay Rivers . . . 1,820

Total square leagues . 28,770*

* These are square Spanish leagues=26,759 French, or 26,935 of 25 to the deyrree.

Colonel du Graty conjectures the extent of the Republic to represent a total of square Spanish leagues 29,470 — viz.,

Land east of the Paraguay River . . 11,123

Land west ditto . . 16,537 (purely fanciful).

The Misiones claim 1,820

Of these vast areas, only 2500 square leagues are supposed to be inhabited, cultivated, or used for cattle breeding.

We may concisely lay down the limits of Paraguay thus : the river of that name and the Gran Chaco limit the west, the Parana bounds the east and south, separating her from the Argentine Confederation; and northwards begins the Brazilian Empire. The parallelogram admits of two great divisions : the northern is a mountainous mass averaging, as far as is known, 1200 metres above sea level ; the southern is a delta or doab, in places lower than the two rivers which form it. Between the two is a middle part, called the " Cordilleritas,-'^ rarely exceeding in height 120 metres ; and here, the uplands fall into the lowlands. Such, for instance, are the '' Campos Quebrados'' (broken prairie), north of Asuncion; the '' Altos'^ about Paraguay and Asciirra, one of the places where Marshal President Lopez established his guerilla head quarters; and the "Lomada"" — a continuity of "Lomas,^^ or land-waves, immediately south of Asuncion.

The northern mountain-masses are conjectured to be of trap formation, and to inosculate with the Highlands of the Brazil, especially with the Serra do Espinha90, whose outlines extend to the Andine system. The trend is laid down as quasi-meridional; the Oriental slopes are the more abrupt, and the ridge divides the Republic into two planes. Thus there is a double watershed of about equal areas, E.S.-eastward to the Parana, W.S.-westward to the Paraguay, and the streams are unimportant. The Cordillera is supposed to rise in Matto Grosso, about S. lat. 19°, under the names of Sierra de Amambay (the Tupi Samambaia, or polypodium), de S. Jose or de Maracaju (the Jesuits' Mbaracuyu, the Passion Flower). Running with southerly rhumb it fines off into a dos d^ane, under the names of Nabileque, Caa-guazu (large Yerba), and Cuchilla Grande, the divortium aquarum which throws ofi* the Tebicuary River. It then sinks into low hills some six miles north of the line of railway ; whilst the main ridge diverging to the east, forms, where traversed by the Parana River, the Rapids south of La Guayra. Finally, entering the Brazilian provinces of Parana and S. Paulo, it inosculates with the Eastern ghauts, the Serra do Mar; and in the south-east it joins the Cordillera of Misiones. This mountainous section of the Republic, deeply cut by streams and torrents, abounds in game, and is rich in primaeval forests of valuable timber : the savage Redskins, however, still hold possession of the land, and exploration will be costly, if not perilous.

The remainder of the republic is an expanse of drowned Savannahs lying between the two mighty rivers, and it is believed that the western half, drained by the Paraguay, is on a lower plane than that discharging into the Parana. The ground much resembles the Gran Chaco, an alluvial detritus from the Andes, filling up the great basin of Pampas formation. Here is supposed to grow the Abati Guaniba or wild maize,* and this is said to be the home of the Ombii Fig, as the mountains are of the Araucaria (Braziliensis) pine. I need not now describe the features of the land to which my diary will lead me.

As regards her political distribution, Paraguay consisted

* Old writers give four kinds of maize in these regions: — 1. Abati nata, a very hard grain. 2. Abati moroti, in Tupi " Marity" (means shining), a soft and white grain. 3. Abati mini, a small grain which ripens after a month. 4. Bisingallo, an angular and pointed grain, which gives the sweetest flour.

ill 1857 of twenty-five departments^ including one in the Gran Cliaco, and the other on the left bank of the Parana River. Each of these divisions had one or more towns, villages, or chapels, with a military commandant, a juge de paix, and a curate. The capital is Asuncion, numbering some 12,000 souls, which anchors raise to 15,000, to 21,000, and Colonel du Gratz to 48,000. Other places of name are El Pilar, which we shall visit, Villa Rica, a pauper central settlement in the richest lands, hence generally known as Villa Pobre, and differing little from the various Pueblos, Pueblitos, and Capillas, south of the Tebicuary. It lies in south latitude 25° 47' 10'', and west longitude 56° 30' 20", some 323 feet above Asuncion, and 580 higher than Buenos Aires. Villa Real is built on the river eighty leagues above Asuncion. Twenty leagues further is Tevego, now Fort Bourbon or Olympo, the " Botany Bay '' of Dr. Francia ; and there are sundry minor places, as Encarnacion on the Parana, and La Villeta, S. Pedro, and Concepcion on the Paraguay, rivers. These are dignified with the pompous titles of cities and towns. They are mere villages and hamlets.