When the war ended with the death of Lopez at Cerro Cora, women, even of the richest and most influential families, returned to their homes nearly naked: the large majority made their reappearance in a still more forlorn plight. The population of the republic, which had numbered about one million three hundred thousand at the beginning of the conflict, had dwindled to two hundred thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand. These were mainly women and children, for the men were nearly all dead, and of the few male adults in the population the majority have immigrated to the country since the war. The national army, which under Lopez was sixty thousand strong, comprised at the time of M. Forgues's visit two hundred and fifty youths of fifteen or sixteen years of age, clad in the cast-off uniform of the French mobiles of 1870 and 1871. Of the Paraguayan children made orphans by the war, hundreds now live in Argentine families, either as adopted children or as servants. They were picked up by the Argentine soldiers during the flight of their parents to the mountains, their mothers having perished of fatigue or hunger, and Lopez's horsemen having spared them through pity or indifference to continued slaughter. The sequel of the resistance of Lopez surpasses in gloomy details almost any similar struggle recorded in history. It has already been shown how women and children died by thousands or survived to poverty and want. But to understand the melancholy story at its worst, one should visit the valley of the Aquidaban River, where Lopez fought his last fight, or follow the line of his army's march from its camp at Panadero to the encampment at Cerro Cora, where he perished miserably. A traveler in that part of Paraguay--not M. Forgues, but Keith Johnston, the geographer--who visited these localities in the summer and autumn of 1874, says that the march of the army in its final retreat can still be traced by the heaps of human bones, with rusty swords or guns or weather-stained saddles lying beside them, under every little shade-giving tree. These skeletons he saw everywhere at very short intervals. Cerro Cora is described as a splendid amphitheatre surrounded by hills, with precipitous sides of red sandstone, and crowned with dark forests. Here and there amid the undulations are grassy knolls flanked by palm trees, and in one of these Lopez, driven to desperation, pitched his tent with a handful of followers. Madame Lynch, his children and his brother were with him. The single pass that led to this hiding-place was guarded with cannon, but the Brazilian horsemen, strangely enough, entered the retreat unperceived and surprised its occupants. Exactly how Lopez died is a matter of dispute in Paraguay. There are those in that country who revere his memory, and their story of his death represents him as issuing from his tent at the approach of the enemy and valiantly engaging them single-handed, while he bade his few adherents seek safety in flight.