Canterac alighted at the house of Dr. Saens, the cura of Chumpi, and announced himself as a patriot officer. An excellent dinner was prepared for the new guest, and his five or six brother officers. In the course of conversation, Canterac managed to extract the priest's opinion of the different royalist generals. When the animated clergyman drew Canterac's own picture, he could hold out no longer, but making himself known, fined the incautious ecclesiastic five thousand dollars, and marched him off a prisoner until the sum was paid. At Coracora the same general played a similar trick on the priest of that place, and punished, with equal severity, his unguarded loquacity. The aggrieved parties some time afterwards wrote to Miller, giving an account of the snare into which they had fallen. After the capitulation of Ayacucho, General Bedoya, who had accompanied Canterac on these occasions, related the same adventures to Miller, and spoke of them as exceedingly good jokes.

At the time the infantry of Sucre were re-embarking at Quilca, two thousand Chilenos, under the gallant and distinguished Colonel Benevente, arrived at Arica from Valparaiso. This officer was superseded in the command by the Chileno general Pinto, who, upon Sucre's leaving Quilca, had agreed that the Chilenos should occupy Iquique, or move by means of shipping to other points in the Puertos Intermedios, for the purpose of preserving a footing in those provinces, until reinforcements could be sent from Lima. Pinto is an amiable, gentlemanly man; but the events of the last campaigns seemed to have

depressed his spirits, and to have deprived him of all sort of energy. Without orders, and contrary to the arrangement with Sucre, Pinto took upon himself to command the destruction of the horses, and to sail back to Chile.

The schooner in which Pinto was embarked was attacked in the course of the voyage by a privateer, but was preserved from capture by the gallantry of the commanding officer, Captain Winter, who worked the only gun (a traversing twenty-four pounder), until a shot having luckily carried away the mainyard of the privateer, the schooner escaped to Coquimbo, of which province Pinto became governor.

The provinces of the Puertos Intermedios being once more cleared of patriot troops, the viceroy made, at Arequipa, a new distribution of the royalist army, by dividing it into two separate commands.

Canterac marched with his division, now called the Army of the North, to occupy his old position in the valley of Xauxa, and to threaten, or operate against, Lima. Valdez, with the other division, called the Army of the South, was to remain in the provinces of Arequipa, Puno, &c. The viceroy returned to the seat of his government at Cuzco, a convenient and central situation.

The object of these dispositions was not only to provide against attacks from the patriots who had the means of conveying troops by sea, but also to observe the movements, and counteract the influence, of the ultra-royalist General Olañeta, who now commanded five thousand royalist troops in Upper Peru, and had become an object of distrust to Canterac

and other generals supposed to possess liberal sentiments, who had taken with enthusiasm the oath of fidelity to the Spanish constitution of 1820. On the downfall of the constitution in 1823, the same generals acknowledged, with the same formalities, and apparently with equal readiness, the restoration of absolutism in Spain. Olañeta, however, placed no confidence in the political sincerity of La Serna, Canterac, and others. He denounced them in his proclamations as freemasons; refused to obey orders from the viceroy; and despatched a messenger to Madrid by the way of Buenos Ayres, to inform the king of his proceedings, in full confidence of obtaining the royal sanction. In the meanwhile Upper Peru was avowedly independent of the viceroy, who was obliged to detach the Army of the South under Valdez to prevent the consummation of Olañeta's grand scheme.

But notwithstanding these dissensions, the forces of the royalists were augmented by recruits, and by prisoners of war compelled to serve. They were, at this period, calculated at twenty thousand men, and there appeared very slender hopes that the patriots would be able to make an effectual resistance to victorious and overwhelming numbers. Indeed the cause of independence in Peru seemed to hang by a single thread. But Colombia could not behold unmoved the declining fortunes of her neighbour and ally. Colombia recollected the assistance she had received from the Peruvian division at Pinchincha, and she wisely and generously resolved to pay the debt tenfold, by sending her best troops, and with them her own Liberator.

CHAPTER XXI.

General Bolivar arrives in Lima.-Marquess of Torre-Tagle.Riva-Aguero dissolves congress at Truxillo.-He is made a prisoner.-Mode of recruiting the Peruvian army.-Uniform. -Pay.-Rations.

THE president, liberator of Colombia, General Bolivar, having obtained permission from the congress of that republic to proceed to Peru, left the vicepresident Santander at the head of the government in Bogota; embarked at Guayaquil; landed at Callao ; and, on the 1st of September, 1823, made his public entry into Lima, where he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. His excellency was immediately invested with supreme authority in military and litical affairs. The Marquess of Torre-Tagle, who had been previously nominated by the congress president of Peru, still retained the title; but such was his professed admiration of Bolivar, and so great his fears of Riva-Aguero, that, with his own concur rence, the powers of president were reduced to a mere shadow of authority.

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The country suffered nothing by the virtual retirement of Torre-Tagle, for his administration had been barefacedly venal. He gave large sums to individuals for the promise of their support against RivaAguero; several of which transactions being made known to Bolivar, he removed some of the receivers from important posts.

The patriot forces now at Lima and its vicinity might amount to seven thousand men, of which twothirds were Colombians; and reinforcements were daily expected from Guayaquil and Panamá.

The following is the translation of a letter from the Liberator to Miller:

66

Lima, 26th October, 1823. My dear General,-For a long time I have desired to know you personally, for your services have assured to you the gratitude of every American who is a lover of liberty and of merit. Receive this now in testimony of my esteem, and believe that I have the greatest desire to manifest to you that consideration to which you are entitled from your noble conduct in the army of Peru.-I am,

“With the most distinguished consideration,
"BOLIVAR."

"Your attentive servant, It has been mentioned, that the ex-president RivaAguero had retired to Truxillo. On his arrival in that city, however, he thought proper to call in question the validity of his dismissal; to re-assemble such members of the congress as had accompanied or followed him from Callao; and, notwithstanding that the deputies had prorogued their sittings sine die, they resumed their sessions under the auspices of the self-appointed president. One of his first measures was to raise troops; and, in a short time, upwards of three thousand recruits from the northern provinces were armed and equipped in the department of Truxillo. His next measure was to dissolve congress, and to banish its refractory members. Those who in Truxillo had been the most eloquent eulogists of Riva-Aguero became his most noisy detractors