Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 10 August 1893, Page 3

Notes and Events.

— • — . A Mr Hudson in a lately published book tells the following interesting bit of history : —About seventy years ago when Brazil made war on Argentina, she sent three warships, filled with troops to capture El Carmen as a point of vantage. One ship being wrecked on the Bio Negro bar, the troops on board were at once landed to march up the valley and seize the town. The second ship grounded on a sandbank up the river, and when the third ship reaohed £1 Carmen a surprise awaited it. For on the approach of the troops the Patagonian leader not only mustered all the able-bodied men - about seventy in number within the- fort, but dressed the women in male clothing, and im provised dummy soldiers of wood, bolsters, and other materials, sticking these along the battlements at intervals, so as to give the appearance of a numerous garrison. The sight of these made the deluded Imperial commander decide to defer his attack until the arrival of the ships, of the additional disasters to which he was ignorant. So he retired without firing a shot. The Patagonian commander thereupon despatched his men to collect all the horses pasturing in the valley, and as the enemy, worn oat by forced marches and half mad with thirst, were in 1 retreat, the thunder of numberless hoofs in the rear was heard, which imagination converted into masses of cavalry swooping down. As a thousand unbridled horses, driven by seventy riders, came on at frantic speed, the Brazilians faced and fired into the confused mass, killing and wounding many of the riderless animals. But those behind, urged on by the Patagonians, came trampling over the dead and dying, and when a stray bullet shot the Brazilian commander dead his men threw down their arms and surrendered— 6oo disciplined soldiers to a scratch company of 70 poor Patagonians. Crying for water instead of quarter, they were marched by their captors to the river, into which, in the mad scrimmage to quench their thirst, many were pushed and swept away by the rapid current. The survivors were marched back and immured in the fort, when on the same evening the third ship arrived before El Carmen, but, coming too near the shore, ran aground. Peppered by Patagonian musketballs, the men on board leapt into the water to be drowned or captured, and before night fell the Itaparica became a Patagonian prize. Her old timbers may still be seen at low water,' 4 ' like a gaunt fossil rips of some gigantic Pliocene monster," witness of the pluck and cunning which saved Patagonia from a bully* in; and dastrdly foe.