character as the best tactician of the New World,--San Martin alone,
perhaps, excepted. Splitting his little army into a dozen brigades, he
occupied the entire mountain-range behind the town, operated, with scarce
five thousand men, upon a front of two hundred miles in extent, held in
his own unwavering grasp the reins which controlled the movements of every
division, and gradually inclosed, as in a net, the forces of Quiroga and
Villafañe. In vain they struggled and blindly sought an exit; every door
was closed; until, finally, after a campaign of fifteen days, the
narrowing battalions of Paz surrounded, engaged, and utterly defeated at
Oncativo the bewildered army on whose success Quiroga had staked his all.

The Gaucho himself again escaped. After seven years of dictatorial power,
he is once more reduced to the level upon which we saw him standing in
1818, a vagabond at Buenos Ayres, although from that level he may raise
his head a trifle higher.

And here we might conclude, having seen his rocket-like ascent, and the
swiftly-falling night of his career,--having seen him a laborer, a
deserter, a General, a Dictator, a fugitive; but much remains to be
narrated. Passing over, with the barest mention, his temporary return to
power, which he accomplished by one of those lightning-like expeditions
that even among Gaucho horsemen rendered him conspicuous, let us hasten on
to the great dramatic crisis of his history; and taking no notice of the
five years of marching and countermarching, scheming, fighting, and
negotiating, that intervened between his defeat at the Laguna Larga and
1835, draw to a close our hasty sketch.

In that year, after taking part in a disorderly and fruitless expedition
planned by Rosas to secure the southern frontier against Indian attacks,
he suddenly made his appearance at Buenos Ayres, with a body of armed