e
land its atmosphere very seldom permitted them to remain for long
without the local and somewhat demoralizing influences.

Had Lopez been content to continue to act as supreme and all-powerful
lord of every man and thing within his own frontiers, the affairs of
Paraguay, enlivened at intervals by those salutary orgies of executions,
might have drowsed on indefinitely. For a man of the temperament of
Francisco Solano Lopez such comparative repression was impossible. He
had dreamed himself Emperor of South America, and this he was determined
to be.

Of all the neighbouring countries, Brazil was the first to be alarmed.
She had the most reason, since her frontiers ran to the greatest length
side by side with those of the land which held the ambitious Dictator.
Ere Francisco Solano Lopez had reigned two years the inevitable had
occurred. Arrogance and threats of aggression on the part of the inland
State, resentment and profound mistrust on the part of the Brazilian
Empire, led to open breach. The pretext lay in the joint interference on
the part of Brazil and Paraguay in the internal affairs of Uruguay,
which troubled Republic was just then in a more than usually violent
state of revolution.

Lopez, in a moment of somewhat artificial exaltation, protested solemnly
against the Brazilian policy as directed against Uruguay. Since this
protest was ignored, Lopez resolved on war. He commenced hostilities by
the capture of the _Marques de Olinda_, a Brazilian steamer which
conveniently found itself at the moment at Asuncion, on its way up the
great river system to the Imperial territory of Matto Grosso.

The crew and the passengers of the _Marques de Olinda_ were taken ashore
as prisoners. These included the Brazilian Governor of Matto Grosso,
who, together with the great majority of his fellow-passengers, was
destined never to see his native land again. This decisive act lit up
the flames of war, and the most important struggle between the races of
its own soil which the Continent had ever seen now commenced; for in the
end, not only were Brazil and Paraguay involved, but the neighbouring
States of Argentina and Uruguay as well.

CHAPTER XXV

THE PARAGUAYAN WAR

Although four States were involved in the struggle, South American
historians are unanimous in giving the strife which broke out in 1864
the name of the Paraguayan War. This is appropriate enough, for a number
of reasons, one of them being that, after