the government of San Juan complacently reckoned him among its friends, and strangers came to the Llanos to pay him their respects and to ask support in behalf of one party or another.
At that time the Argentine Republic presented an animated and interesting picture. All interests, all ideas, all passions, met together to create agitation and tumult. Here, was a chief who would have nought to do with the rest of the Republic; there, a community whose only desire was to emerge from its isolation; yonder, a government engaged in bringing Europe over to America; elsewhere, another to which the very name of civilization was odious; the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition was reviving in some places; in others, liberty of conscience was proclaimed the first of human rights; the cry of one party was for confederation; of others for a central government; while each different combination was backed by strong and unconquerable passions. I must clear up the chaos a little, to show the role which it fell to Quiroga to enact, and the great work he was to bring to pass. In order to depict the provincial commandant who took possession of the city and annulled its constitution, I have found it necessary to describe the face of nature in the Argentine Republic, with the habits induced and the forms of character developed by it. And to describe Quiroga extending his power beyond his own province and proclaiming a principle, an idea, and carrying it everywhere at the point of the bayonet, I must likewise sketch the geographical distributions of the ideas and interests which were agitated in the cities. With this object, it is requisite for me to examine two cities un-
