Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: G r A N D Corrient/e Part of SOUTH AMERICA (to illustrate Chapters I and II) Scale, i: 11,000,000 English Miles ao 40 60 80100 Emerr Walker sc. BUCCANEER AND GUERILLA 21 fishing boat, and therein set out with a dozen companions to wage war alone against the giant Empire of Brazil, ' the first to unfurl on those southern coasts the Republican banner of Rio Grande, a banner of freedom.'l Well was the little boat called Mazzini. But they soon changed it for a larger ship which they had captured, and continued the struggle with ever-increasing success. Gradually Garibaldi's warfare became amphibious, and before long, celebrated as he was for his exploits at sea, he was yet more celebrated as a guerilla chief, leading bodies of a few hundred, sometimes a few thousand men, across the vast upland plains and forests and river gorges of the Continent, that lay between the Atlantic and the Parana River. The cavalry, who were often the more numerous arm, were natives of the wilderness, horsemen born and bred, and magnificently mounted ; hardy and resourceful as the Boers, they had more dash, and liked close quarters. Their favourite weapon was the lance; though many used the sabre, together with the lasso or the bolas, hunting the enemy and casting at him, as they had learnt to do in pursuit of the swift-footed ostrich.2 Otherwise the warfare must in many respects have resembled the warfare on the veldt. It was necessary to traverse enormous distances across country, far from the haunts of man; to need no food but the cattle which the troops drove with them and slaughtered at meal time, roasting the flesh Homerically on green spits ;3 yet always to know the whereabouts and strength of the enemy, to fall on him when he was weaker, and when he was stronger to vanish...