the aid of a revolution, immediately loses its connection with the others, forms a third entity, and shows hostility indiscriminately to both combatants (royalists and patriots), this detached party is heterogeneous, not having been conscious of existence until that time, the revolution having served to develop it and make it known.
This was the element set in motion by the renowned Artigas. It was a blind tool, but a tool full of life and of instincts hostile to European civilization and to all regular organization; opposed to monarchy as to republicanism, because both came from the city and possessed already order and reverence for authority. This tool was employed by the various parties, principally by that least revolutionary, in the civilized cities, until in the course of time the very men who had summoned it to their aid, yielded to it; and with them fell the city, its ideas, its literature, its colleges, its tribunals, its civilization!
This spontaneous movement of the pastoral districts was so ingenuous in its first manifestations, so full of genius and expression in its spirit and tendencies, that its adoption and baptism by the parties of the cities, with the political names which divided them, makes the sincerity of the latter appear in the most unfavorable light. The force which supported Artigas in Entre Rios, did the same for Lopez in Santa Fé, for Ibarra in Santiago, for Facundo in the Llanos. Its essence was individual action; its exclusive weapon, the horse; its stage, the vast pampas. The Bedouin hordes which in our day disturb the Algerian frontier by their war-cries and depredations, gives an exact idea
