he did so. Lieutenant Page, although he had a very poor opinion of Hopkins, decided he ought to help a fellow American, and applied for the necessary permits. However, the Paraguayan government and Page got into a prickly dispute about the paperwork, the government insisting all applications had to be made in Spanish, which language Page refused to use. So Page defied López and removed Hopkins from Paraguay anyway in USS Water Witch. This raised López's animosity, since the implication was that Water Witch, a guest of Paraguay, was prepared to fight its way out of the country to remove a person defying the Paraguayan government. More than one source claims that Water Witch trained her guns on the presidential palace. A furious López responded by banning all foreign vessels of war from Paraguayan waters. (It was why he refused to ratify the U.S.-Paraguay treaty of friendship, above). Fort Itapirú fires on USS Water Witch In January 1855, while Water Witch was in Argentine waters, Lieutenant Page led off a small expedition to explore an Argentine river, leaving his executive officer, Lieutenant William Nicholson Jeffers, in charge of the ship, with orders to explore the Upper Paraná river. The Upper Paraná flows west until it encounters the Paraguay River, when it turns south and is called the Lower Paraná. The Upper Paraná — which Jeffers was to explore — was (and is) is the international boundary between Argentina and Paraguay, and at that time was at least two miles wide. A few miles upstream the Upper Paraná there was a long island called Carayá that divided the river into two channels. The southern channel was international, but so far as Paraguay was concerned the northern channel, called the Canal Privado was in Paraguayan territorial waters, was indeed a sensitive military zone. The reason was that, mostly, the Paraguayan coast was swampy and not easily invaded, but an exception occurred around the village of Paso de Patria, where there was a firm beach where a landing could be made. This vulnerable spot was defended by a military camp at Paso de Patria, and the entrance to the channel was protected by a Paraguayan fort called Itapirú. The map, drawn by colonel George Thompson of the Paraguayan army just few years later, shows the scene. Itapirú was only a small semicircular brick fort, but it had six large cannon, and its gunners