A little behind the camp, on the flank of the mountain, the horses were feeding on the grass, and the young shoots of trees, carefully tended by six Indians, well armed.
Two men, seated before a half extinguished fire, having each a carbine placed near him on the grass, were talking and smoking, and every now and then sipping their maté.
These two men were Gueyma and the Cougar; the troop was placed under their immediate orders. It was composed of the youngest, the most vigorous, and most renowned warriors of the tribe.
From the time when, at the signal given by the Brazilian Government, this troop had crossed the Spanish frontier, and had—like a flight of birds of prey—fallen on the enemy's territory, terror had accompanied it; murder, incendiarism, and pillage had preceded it; behind it, it had left only ruins and corpses; in its presence fear chilled the courage of the inhabitants, and made them abandon as rapidly as possible their poor ranchos, to fly from the cruelty of these barbarous Guaycurus, who spared neither women, children, nor old men, and who appeared to have taken an oath to change into a desert the rich and fertile fields, in the midst of which they traced a furrow of blood.
They had thus traversed, like a devastating hurricane the greater part of the province, and had reached the Rio Quinto, not far from which they were camped, on the environs of a little town named Aquadita, a miserable place, the inhabitants of which had taken flight, abandoning all they possessed at the news of the approach of the Guaycurus.
The treaty concluded between the Brazilians and the Indians could not have been more advantageous to the former, for this reason: from the discovery of America, the Portuguese and the Spaniards continually disputed possession of the New World. Placed side by side in Brazil and Buenos Aires, they could not long remain without making war.
When the family of Braganza was obliged to abandon Portugal, to take refuge in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil became the real centre of Portuguese power, and the king contemplated aggrandising his empire, and of adding to it what, in some respects, he reasonably considered his natural frontiers—the Banda Oriental, and the course of the Rio de la Plata.
The war lasted a long time, with alternations of success and disaster on both sides. England offered her mediation, and peace was on the point of being concluded; but, at the epoch we are dealing with, the Brazilian Portuguese, profiting by the troubles which desolated the Rio de la Plata, and especially the Banda Oriental, abruptly broke the negotiations, called out an army of 10,000 men, under the orders of General Lecor, and invaded the province—the lasting object of their covetousness—skilfully making their movements cooperate with those of the Indian bravos, with whom they were leagued, and who themselves rushing from their deserts with the fury of wild beasts, had invaded the Spanish territory from the rear, and had thus placed them between two fires.
The picture presented at this time by the insurgent provinces was one of the saddest that could be offered as a warning to the wisdom of governors, and the good sense of peoples.
The ancient vice-royalty of Buenos Aires, previously so rich and flourishing, had become a vast desert, its towns heaps of cinders; all its territory was but a vast battlefield, where were incessantly contending armies fighting each for its own interests, drowning patriotism, in streams of blood, and replacing it by private ambition.