thereabouts, or whether a recently abandoned camp, or simply a dead animal is the attractive object. The Baqueano knows how far one place is from another, the number of days and hours which the journey requires, and besides, some unknown by-way through which the passage may be made in half the time, so as to end in a surprise; and expeditions for the surprise of towns fifty leagues away are thus undertaken, and generally with success, by parties of peasants. This may be thought an exaggeration. No! General Rivera, of the Banda Oriental, is a simple Baqueano, who knows every tree that grows anywhere in the Republic of Uruguay. The Brazilians would not have occupied that country if he had not aided them; nor, but for him, would the Argentines have set it free.
This man, at once general and Baqueano, overpowered Oribe, who was supported by Rosas, after a contest of three years; and at the present day were he in the field against it, the whole power of Buenos Ayres, with its numerous armies, which are spread all over Uruguay, might gradually fade away by means of a surprise to-day, by a post cut off to-morrow, by some victory which he could turn to his own advantage by his knowledge of some route to the enemy's rear, or by some other unnoticed or trifling circumstance.
General Rivera began his study of the ground in 1804, when making war upon the government as an outlaw; afterwards he waged war upon the outlaws as a government officer; next, upon the king as a patriot; and later upon the patriots as a peasant; upon the Argentines as a Brazilian chieftain; and upon the Brazilians, as an Argentine general; upon Lavalleja,
