The heat and shelter of the hut had saved three hundred, a leaning rock had sheltered another hundred, and their ponchos, by confining the warmth to their bodies, had saved the rest. But they were nearly starved. Among the refugees was the famous El Chacho, who had succeeded Facundo Quiroga in the chieftainship of the peasantry. He had thrown himself on the side of General La Madrid against Rosas, but had contributed not a little to the loss of the battle by his rashness and want of discipline. He did not know, when his life was then saved by the aid of Señor Sarmiento, that twenty years later he and his hordes would be annihilated by that same deliverer. Like other peasant chiefs, El Chacho, who mingled in all the disputes of the country, sometimes took one side, sometimes the other, and was now a dangerous enemy, and now a dangerous friend, according as his caprices led him. Señor Sarmiento somewhere likens this chieftain to the Radies of Arabia, who receive from every new government some privilege or post, said government shutting its eyes to the risk of treachery should self-interest interpose its claims.
Señor Sarmiento was thus thrown back upon Chili, and his first reception in Santiago was a sad chill over a doubly exiled heart. He was charged through the press with having complained of the hardness of some of the people while he eulogized the generosity of others to his unfortunate countrymen, and then of improper use of the scanty funds he had collected for their necessities. The man who made the charge was not a compatriot, nor had he contributed, nor did he know how the money was appropriated, and must have
