on these issues, he was to turn matters over to Commodore Shubrick. Then Shubrick was to:- Blockade the Paraguay River to prevent commerce. Attack and destroy the Paraguayan Fortress of Humaitá. Proceed to the capital Asunción and capture it by force if necessary. Shubrick could have blockaded Paraguay, but the rest of his orders may not have been feasible for any naval force of the wooden-warship era. Paraguay lay in the heart of South America and had to be approached — and if necessary, fought — through tricky rivers, requiring the skills of a brown-water navy. It was by no means easy to capture and destroy the Fortress of Humaitá. "A hard nut to crack", it was afterwards known as the Gibraltar of South America. Its batteries had furnaces for making cannonballs red hot. While not an exact parallel, in the subsequent War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) it took a combined Brazilian-Argentine force more than two years, incurring major casualties; and, unlike Commodore Shubrick, the allies had ironclad warships and a large siege army with logistical support. For hostile vessels, even the river approach to Humaitá was dangerous. One scholarly assessment is that Shubrick's warlike resources were "woefully inadequate" for the job. As for capturing Asunción, the allies in the War of the Triple Aliance were to do it in January 1869, but they had large armies and incurred very large casualties. The Paraguayans fought fanatically, losing (on a cautious estimate) between one fourth and one half of their population. If Shubrick had blockaded Paraguay, it would have been financially inconvenient for that country, but not disastrous, because Paraguay was self-sufficient. Previously, Paraguay had for years defied dictator Manuel de Rosas of Buenos Aires (1835-1852) when he had tried to do the same. Approach to Asunción Units of the expedition began arriving in Montevideo, Uruguay in December 1858. It caused intense alarm in the region. Judge Bowlin, however, appreciated it was essential to convey America's peaceful intentions. To do that, he wrote, the diplomatic mission intended to go up to Paraguay in USS Fulton alone, other U.S. vessels to go no further than Corrientes, Argentina. Maybe Paraguay would object to Fulton entering its territorial waters, in which case they would travel on a Paraguayan steamer, for "I am resolved to have no controversy with them on so immaterial a point". The larger ships remained in Montevideo while the lighter