The effect on the allies of this frightful course was to compel them to pay a fabulous price for provisions and for their transportation to the army. Another effect was that at times, in the heat of the pursuit of Lopez's forces, after an engagement the bodies of the soldiers who had been killed in the battle were left to rot where they fell, as there were no civilians to bury them. On one occasion, after a heavy skirmish, two or three hundred slain Argentines remained unburied, the army having marched forward in pursuit of the retreating Paraguayans. The horrors of this campaign were relieved by one prosaic fact, which in itself bridges the chasm between the terrible and the ridiculous: this was, that the allied troops were accompanied amid all these scenes of carnage by a poor Italian organ-grinder, carrying his organ on his back, who played during the halts in the march while the Brazilian soldiers danced to his music.
When the war ended with the death of Lopez at Cerro Cora, women, even of the richest and most influential families, returned to their homes nearly naked: the large majority made their reappearance in a still more forlorn plight. The population of the republic, which had numbered about one million three hundred thousand at the beginning of the conflict, had dwindled to two hundred thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand. These were mainly women and children, for the men were nearly all dead, and of the few male adults in the population the majority have immigrated to the country since the war. The national army, which under Lopez was sixty thousand strong, comprised at the time of M. Forgues's visit two hundred and fifty youths of fifteen or sixteen years of age, clad in the cast-off uniform of the French mobiles of 1870 and 1871. Of the Paraguayan children made orphans by the war, hundreds now live in Argentine families, either as adopted children or as servants. They were picked up by the Argentine soldiers during the flight of their parents to the mountains, their mothers having perished of fatigue or hunger, and Lopez's horsemen having spared them through pity or indifference to continued slaughter.
The sequel of the resistance of Lopez surpasses in gloomy details almost any similar struggle recorded in history. It has already been shown how women and children died by thousands or survived to poverty and want. But to understand the melancholy story at its worst, one should visit the valley of the Aquidaban River, where Lopez fought his last fight, or follow the line of his army's march from its camp at Panadero to the encampment at Cerro Cora, where he perished miserably. A traveler in that part of Paraguay—not M. Forgues, but Keith Johnston, the geographer—who visited these localities in the summer and autumn of 1874, says that the march of the army in its final retreat can still be traced by the heaps of human bones, with rusty swords or guns or weather-stained saddles lying beside them, under every little shade-giving tree. These skeletons he saw everywhere at very short intervals. Cerro Cora is described as a splendid amphitheatre surrounded by hills, with precipitous sides of red sandstone, and crowned with dark forests. Here and there amid the undulations are grassy knolls flanked by palm trees, and in one of these Lopez, driven to desperation, pitched his tent with a handful of followers. Madame Lynch, his children and his brother were with him. The single pass that led to this hiding-place was guarded with cannon, but the Brazilian horsemen, strangely enough, entered the retreat unperceived and surprised its occupants. Exactly how Lopez died is a matter of dispute in Paraguay. There are those in that country who revere his memory, and their story of his death represents him as issuing from his tent at the approach of the enemy and valiantly engaging them single-handed, while he bade his few adherents seek safety in flight. According to this account, he fell gloriously after slaying many Brazilians, refusing quarter and declaring his devotion to his country with his dying breath. The generally accepted report, however, is that he made a fruitless endeavor to escape from his encampment, and, overtaken by a Brazilian horseman, died in a matter-of-fact way from a lance-thrust. His grave is in that wild and lonely valley. At first a wooden cross marked the spot where he lies, but this has disappeared, and a bush, one of many that grow around, is pointed out as growing above it.
Even at this day, though more than four years have elapsed since the enactment of that tragedy, the scene remains as the Brazilians left it. The wrecks of the camp lie thickly on every side—bones of men, broken weapons, ammunition and the débris of gun-carriages, baggage-carts and boxes. This region is the heart of the country occupied by the Cangua Indians, a peaceable tribe who speak the Guarani language, without the admixture of Spanish words which prevails in the language as spoken in the more civilized parts of Paraguay. They rarely leave their forest homes except to seek a market for their wax, which they exchange for tobacco and other commodities. Their complexion is a dark brown, and the men, who usually go armed with bows and iron-tipped lances, wear a splinter of a substance like amber, about two inches in length, run through a hole in their under lips. In the almost inaccessible country of these Indians is situated the great cascade of the Panama River, known as the Gran Salto de la Guayra. This Paraguayan Niagara is the object of a superstitious reverence on the part of the Indians, who deem it the gateway to the infernal regions, and hence fear to approach it. The waters fall into a deep gorge with a roaring sound which may be heard twelve miles away, while splendid rainbows are generated in the clouds of spray that rise from the depths.