and, among others, some Frenchmen. Rosas, who thought everything was permissible towards them, exhausted the patience of King Louis Philippe-patience pretty well known, by the bye-and brought on the formation of the first blockade by France.

But the upper classes of society, thus ill-treated, began to leave Buenos Ayres, and, in searching for a place of refuge, turned their eyes towards the Oriental State in which the greater part of the proscribed city came to seek an asylum.

It was in vain that Rosas' police redoubled its vigilance; it was in vain that a law punished emigration with death; it was in vain that to that death atrocious details were added-for Rosas soon saw that death alone no longer sufficed; the terror and hatred inspired by Rosas were stronger than the means invented by him, emigration went on increasing from hour to hour, from minute to minute. To effect the flight of a whole family, it was only necessary to find a boat large enough to contain them all; that being found, father, mother, children, brothers, sisters, were all crowded into it, abandoning house, property, goods; and every day in the Oriental State, that is to say, Montevideo, some of these boats were seen to arrive filled with passengers whose whole wealth consisted of the clothes they wore.

And none of these passengers had to repent of the confidence he had placed in the hospitality of the Eastern people; that hospitality was as great and generous as would have been that of an ancient republic-such hospitality, moreover, as the Argentine people had a right to expect from friends-or rather from brothers, who so many times had united their flags to combat the English, the Spaniards or the Brazilians; common enemies, foreign enemies, less dangerous, however, than the enemy that was born among them.

The Argentines arrived in crowds, landed, and, upon the port the inhabitants awaited them, choosing

M

as they set foot on land, in proportion with their pecuniary resources and the size of their house, the number of emigrants they could receive. Then, provisions, money, clothes, everything was placed at the disposal of these unfortunates, until they could create some resources for themselves, in which everybody eagerly assisted them. On their side, the emigrants, being grateful, set about this task immediately, in order to lighten the burden they imposed upon their hosts, and thus leave them the means of assisting other fugitives. To obtain this end, persons accustomed to all the enjoyments of luxury took up the lowest trades, ennobling them so much the more as these trades were opposed to their social state. It was thus that the noblest names of the Argentine republic figured in the emigration. Lavallé, the most brilliant sword of its army; Florencio Varela, its man of highest talent; Aguero, one of its first statesmen ; Echaverria, the Lamartine of La Plata; Vega, the Bayard of the army of the Andes; Guttierez, the happy singer of national glories; Alsena, the great advocate and illustrious citizen, appeared in the number of the emigrants, as likewise appeared Saenz, Valiente, Mulino, Torrée, Ramos, Megia, the great proprietors; as, still further, appear Rodriguez, the old general of the armies of independence, and of the Unitarian armies; Olozabal, one of the bravest of that army of the Andes, of which we have said La Vega was the Bayard. For Rosas pursued equally the Unitarian and the federalist, only careful of one thing, and that was to get rid of all who could be an obstacle to his dictatorship. It was, in some degree, to this hospitality granted to the men he was persecuting, that the hatred Rosas bore to the Oriental State must be attributed.

At the epoch we are treating of, the Presidency of the republic was exercised by General Fructuoso Rivera. Rivera, whose name we have just pronounced, was a man of the country, as Rosas was, as Quiroga

was; only all his instincts were directed towards civi lization, which placed him in opposition to Rosas. As a soldier, the bravery of Rivera has never been surpassed; as a partisan his generosity has never been attacked. During thirty-five years he was seen to figure in the political scenes of his country. During thirty-five years he was seen to spring to his arms at the moment war to the foreigner was pronounced.

When the revolution against Spain commenced, he sacrificed his fortune; for, with him, giving was an irresistible necessity; he was not generous, he was prodigal. And in the same degree that Rivera was prodigal towards men, God had been prodigal towards him. He was a handsome cavalier, in the sense of the Spanish word caballero, which comprehends at once the soldier and the gentleman; with a brown complexion, lofty stature, a piercing look; conversing with grace, and drawing his interlocutors into the fascinating circle of a gesture belonging only to himself, he was the most popular man in the Eastern state. But, it must be said, never, at the same time, did a bad administrator more completely disorganise the pecuniary resources of a people. He had deranged his private fortune, he deranged the public fortune-not for the purpose of reconstructing a fortune, but because, as a public man he had preserved all the princely habits of the private man.

But at the period we are now treating of, this ruin had not yet made itself felt. Rivera was commencing his presidency, and his presidency was surrounded by the most able men of the country: Obez, Herrera, Vasquez, Alvares, Ellauri, Luiz (Edward Perez) were, in fact, if not his ministers, the directors of his government; and with these men, all that was progress, liberty and prosperity, was assured to this fine country.

Obez, the first of Rivera's friends, was a man of antique character: his patriotism, his grandeur, his eminent talents, his profound information, place him in the number of the great men of America. That nothing

might be wanting for his popularity, he died in proscription, one of the first victims of Rosas' system in the Oriental State.

Luiz (Edward Perez) was the Aristides of Montevideo. A severe republican and exalted patriot, he consecrated his long existence to virtue, liberty, and his country.

Vasquez, a man of talent and information, began rendering his first services to his country at the siege of Montevideo, in the war against Spain, and finished his career during the siege against Rosas.

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Herrera, Alvarez and Ellauri, brothers-in-law of Obez, were not behind those we have named; they not only belong to the Oriental State as devoted. defenders, but to the whole American cause.

Thus their names will be always held sacred in that vast land of Columbus, which extends from Cape Horn to Barrow's Straits.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

MANUEL ORRIBE.

THE presidency of Rivera terminated in 1834. General Manuel Orribe succeeded him, by the influence of Rivera himself, who reckoned upon finding in him a i continuator of his system. In fact, Manuel Orribe had been appointed general by Rivera, and had formed part of the preceding administration, as minister of war.

Orribe was connected with the first families of the country. He fought in its defence, and was always distinguished for his personal bravery. His mind was weak, his information limited, which explains his alliance with Rosas, to whom he gave himself entirely up, without thinking that that alliance brought with it the loss of that same independence for which he, Orribe, had so often fought.

As a general, his incapacity was complete. His

passions had the violence of nervous organizations, and led him to the commission of cruelty. As an individual he was a worthy man.

As an administrator, he was more economical than Rivera, and he cannot be reproached with having augmented the deficiency of the public treasure, and yet it is to him belongs all the responsibility of the ruin of the Oriental State. Forgetting that to be chief of a party it is not enough to wish to be so, he refused to remain bound to the great national party which had Rivera for its head. He wished to form a party of his own, excited the mistrust of the country, and, terrified at his weakness, he one day threw him. self into the arms of Rosas. Although the treaty remained secret, the country suspected it of exciting the underhand hostilities of the government against the Argentine emigration, and, as nothing was more opposed to the opinion of the country than the system of Rosas, the country followed General Rivera, at the moment when the latter placed himself, in 1835, at the head of a revolution against Orribe.

In spite of the almost unanimity which threatened him, Orribe resisted till 1838. He then descended from the presidency by a renunciation made officially before the chambers, and left the country, having demanded permission of those same chambers to do so. But, after leaving the country, Rosas forced him to protest against this renunciation, and, a thing which had never been seen in America, he recognised him as chief of the government of a country from which he himself had been driven. It was something as if Louis Philippe, at Claremont, had appointed a viceroy to the French republic.

People began by laughing, at Montevideo, at this eccentricity of the dictator. But he, all the while, was preparing to change this laughter into tears. The natural consequence of this conduct of Rosas was war between the two nations. And this war was terrible! Orribe, whom some of the French journals, paid by