In the Illustrated London News for December 31st 1864, there is a report by a contributor to the magazine who had been travelling through parts of South America. There are very few reports at all on Latin America in the I.L.N. and this is interesting as giving a view of Paraguay on the eve of the War of the Triple Alliance. He reported that an electric telegraph had been installed to Asunción and that a railway was running there under English management.

He described the state as "distinguished by a mixture of barbarity and civilisation in the social condition" and as nominally a republic but in practice one of the strictest despotisms on earth. The people he described as little better than savages, and much of the land as a wilderness - one gets the impression he did not have a good time there. He visited the fort near Humaitá and describes this as an earthwork, with batteries extending half a mile along the river, but no stranger was allowed to inspect them closely so he could not give any firm details of the artillery inside. The garrison he gives as 12,000 - 20,000 strong and wearing a red Garibaldi style shirt, white trousers and a blue poncho, receiving little or no pay because service was compulsory. The article is illustrated with a sketch of the guard house at Humaitá, but it is very dark and gives little detail.

( As we all know, Garibaldi carried on wearing the red blouse that was popular in the regions of Southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and some provinces of Argentina [it is thought that the colour red was used as it hid the blood stains of the slaughtered cattle which was often noticeable on the local Gauchos shirts and blouses, they were the first to popularise this type of garment in this region and as these men were often used as mounted militia, bringing it to the attention of the various Army Quarter Masters, who realising that these blouses were cheaper and quicker to produce than the normal army tailcoat of the 1820's many regiments and militia units from these regions were allowed to utilise this fashion/trend, the cavalry of Rosas circa 1840 is a prime example.], and it was while he was in the revolt of Southern Brazil and the Siege of Montevideo that he became aware of the utility of this fashionable garment for his later campaign in Italy of 1860, many Europeans after the unification of Italy thought that the red shirt was all the idea of Garibaldi, it wasn't he had just brought the idea to Europe in a spectacular way. T.D.H. )