The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-18 00:00:00

PARAGUAY-THE STORY OF MESSRS.
BLISS AND .11ASTERMAN.

These gentlemen arrived at New York in the
Brazil mail steamer Mississppi, Feb. 21, and after
a short stay proceeded to Washington for au inves-
tigation of the charges made against them by Lopez.
Mr. Porter C. Bliss, from Western New York, is
about 30 years of age, and eight years ago accom-
panied Minister Webb to South America, where lie
studied the languages and the geopraphy of the
continent. His appearance indicates what he ha s
suffered, and tends much to confirm his story, a
does that of Mr. Masterman, an Englishman, who,
in 1861, entered the Paraguayan service as chief
military apothecary, on au engagement made in
London. In substance their tale is as follows.
Benigo, the brother of Lopez, having access to
the Treasury at Ascuncion, abstracted a large
sum, for which he was tried and found guilty.
To avert punishment, he professed to know of
a conspiracy, to further which the money had
been taken. Minister Washburn, the Paraguayan
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Berges, the Portuguese
Consul, Masterman, Bliss, and others, were accused.
Many were arrested, as were Messrs. Bliss and
Masterman when on their way to a United States
steamer in company with the United States Minis-
ter, to whose Legation they were attached. They
were placed in irons, weighing about 40ibs., and
taken 36 miles from Ascuncion after being rifled
of everything they had. For weeks they were kept
in an open field without shelter until some branches
were tied together and covered with grass. A
sentry kept watch and allowed no communication,
the monotony only being broken when they were
taken before the revolutionsry tribunal. Both
prisoners were tortured, a musket being placed
under the knees and another over the neck with
connecting thongs, which, on being tightened, force
the head between the knees. When thus fastened
the executioner strikes the muskets with a mallet,
while a priest urges confession. Under this pro-
cess, the prisoners, who knew of no conspiracy, in-
vented one, and Mr. Bliss was compelled to write
a pamphlet, and it was from this Lopez made his
extracts which so astonished Mr. Washburn, giving
what professed to be a full, true, and particular
account of the conspiracy in which he had engaged.
At the time Mr. Washburn expressed his belief
that a narrative so untrue had been extorted only
by torture, and Mr. Bliss, now in the United States,
solemnly asserts that such was the case; that he
knew of no conspiracy, but that he was compelled
to save himself from so horrible a death to invent
the story. In this Mr. Masterman fully bears hum
nut. Mr. Bliss adds that he lived on terms
of the closest intimacy with Mr. Washburn, as
well as with the most prominent foreign families
in Ascuncion, and that they could not have been
engaged in a conspiracy without his knoaiug
it, yet 500 of these foreigners have lessen shot for
this phantom conceived in the Dictators' brain, a
man as cowardly as he is tyrannical. Mr. Bliss
alludes to Lopez as a wretched fool, and speaks of
him personally as a poltroon ; and he considers it a
strong proof of his folly that he should have.ac-
cepted as truth these statements, wrung from men
under torture. The greatest care was taken in re-
vising his pamphlet to make it complete, and in every
particular to bear out the charge. He was kept in-
cessantly at work often 14 hours a day, and some-
times roused up at midnight. He had to alter and
revise the fictitious history at the dictation of the
authorities, which, of course, under the circatn-
stances he readily did, and he attributes his preser-
vation to having made Lopez believe every word.
During the time he was writing be bad at least a roof
over his head and was better fed. Mr. Masterman,
after five years service with Lopez, had been thrown
into a dungeon for not obeying an impossible order
by telegraph. He was kept in a loathsome cell for
eleven mouths, and being close to where the poli-
tical prisoners were confined he could hear their
shrieks and groans, and see them carried back
covered with blood from torture. When released
he accepted the post of surgeon to the American
Legation, offered him by Mr. Washburn, scorning
to return to the service of one who had thus treated
him ; a proceeding Lopez never forgives. He had
been most useful as a chemist in improving gun-
powder works, making fulminating powder, extract-
ing sulphur from pyrites, and designing tarpedos,
for he was thoroughly Paraguayan in sympathies,
regarding the inhabitants as a brave and noble
people, who freely poured out their best blood " in
defence of the most hideous tyranny the world could
show—for the Republic existed but in name—Lopez
ruled alone, with a power so absolute and unques-
tioned that no one who has not lived in the coun-
try can form any adequate conception of it."
After being arrested with Mr. Bliss, and hurried to
Villeta on mules, with 401bs. of irons hanging to
their ankles, he was brought up for examination,
brutally flogged with a stick, and then thrust into
a hut, where he found Capt. Falcon, and a priest,
who acted as secretary. The former said, "Ah !
we have got you at last ; now confess that you are
a traitor, and that Washburn is the chief in the con-
spiracy." He replied that he could make no such
confession, since, to the best of his knowledge, no
conspiracy bad ever existed, and that the charges
against Mr. Washburn and himself were false.
Falcon "Then you will not con-
fs smake you." He was then placed
;li shoutedsee i f savagely,jc
an
on the ground outside the hut and close to its thin
straw wall, so that the captain, seated within, could
hear all that was said, while the priest superin-
tended the
application of the torture called the
t' Ur ug uay a n
bounda"-- hY
which the prisoner had his
arms behind him by two soldiers, and
tightly
then being seated on the ground with his knees
separated, and a musket bound beneath thorn,
one of the men put his foot between his shoulders,
and forced his bead down until his throat
rested on the musket. Another was then placed
on the back of his neck, and the two tied firmly
together with thongs; at intervals the execu-
tioner struck the ends of the muskets with a
mallet, while the priest continually exhorted him
to confess and claim the forgiveness and
bounty of the President. After a time he
was unbound and another musket added to the
weight on his neck, but as they were forcing his
head down he threw it forward to avoid the pressure
on the throat, and his lips were so severely cut that
his mouth was filled with blood, nearly choking
him. The pain was so excruciating that he fainted,
and on recovering consciousness found himself
lying on the ground, while the priest, who had left
for a short time, came back saying that Bliss was
already confessing, and urged him, as the only means
of saving his life, to follow his example, while dull,
heavy blows, each followed by a shriek from the
negro servant of Dr. Carreras, who had been also
arrested, showed that they were inflicting some
other form of torture upon him. It was, therefore,
useless to hold out longer; Dan Benigno, Jose
Berges, Carreras, Rodriguez, and Bliss, with many
others, hal all been made to say that Mr. Wash-
burn was guilty, and with a sense of bitter humi-
liation he told them, as they were about to apply
the torture for the third time, that he would confess
all he knew—that is to say, falsely declare that a
conspiracy, which he was positively aware bad never
existed, bad been organized and presided over by
Mr. Washburn. The confession was interrupted by
incessant threats of the reapplication of torture,
for not knowing what he was expected to confess,
and forgetting what the others had stated, he was
constantly at fault. After the executian of Drs.
Carreras and Benitez, both of whom had suffered
excruciating torture, and some fifty Paraguayan
officers, they were a little better treated. Finally,
they were summoned before the revolutionary tri-
bunal, and informed that their evidence would be
read over in presence of two officers of the United
States, and that their lives depended on their ad-
hering to the depositions. Captain Rams tar was
about to ask Mr. Masterman a question iu presence
of two Paraguayans sv!io understood the language,
but he entreated him not to do so. The officers evi -
dently.regarded them as criminals, and treated them
superciliously. About midnight of the 10th De-
cember they were put on board the Wasp, when
the following scene occurred :—Commander Kirk-
land, without replying to their salute, called the
Master-at-Arms, and said :—" Take these men
forward, put a sentry over them, and don't let A