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200 MEXICO. prosecute his own plans without interruption in the Interior^ After seizing a Conducta of a million of dollars, sent to Aca- pulco by the Manilla Company, he effected a junction with General Guerrero, who had maintained his position on the river Zacatula, unsubdued by the forces which had been suc- cessively detached against him, but who did not hesitate to place himself under Iturbide's orders, as soon as he knew that the Independence of the country was his object. From this moment his success was certain. On his route to the BaxTo, towards which, as a central position, he directed his march, he was joined by all the survivors of the first Insur- rection, as well as by detachments of Creole troops. Men and officers flocked to his standard, in such numbers as to set all fear of opposition at defiance. The Clergy and the People were equally decided in his favour. The most distant Districts sent in their adhesion to the cause, and wherever he appeared in person, nothing could equal the enthusiasm dis- played. Few have enjoyed a more intoxicating triumph than Iturbide; — few have been called, with more sincerity, the saviour of their country ; and none have offered a more strik- ing example of the instability of popular favour, and of the precarious tenure of those honours, which great revolutions sometimes give. While the tide of success lasted, nothing could arrest his progress: before the month of July, the whole country recognized his authority, with the exception of the Ca- pital, in which Novella had shut himself up, with the Euro- pean troops. Iturbide had reached Queretaro, on his road to Mexico, which he was about to invest, when he received intelli- gence of the arrival, at Veracruz, of the new Constitutional Viceroy and Political Chief, Don Juan CDonoju, who, at such a crisis, was, of course, unable to advance beyond the walls of the fortress. Iturbide, with his usual talent, hastened to turn this circumstance to account : at an interview with the Vice- roy, whom he allowed to advance for the purpose as far as the town of Cordova, he proposed to hira the adoption, by