se waifs,
who at that time were little accustomed to receive such care, and was
gratified to find very tangible results in the improvement shown by
them. He next received orders to the sloop-of-war Vandalia, which sailed
from Philadelphia in the last days of 1828 for the Brazil station. On
this cruise, which for him lasted but a year, he for the first time
visited the Rio de la Plata and Buenos Ayres, and came in contact with
the afterward celebrated dictator of that country, Rosas. The different
provinces, whose union is now known by the political name of the
Argentine Republic, had, under the later days of Spanish rule,
constituted with Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay the Viceroyalty of Buenos
Ayres. On the 25th of May, 1810, a declaration of independence was
issued in the city of Buenos Ayres. A long period of disturbance,
internal and external, followed. At the time of this first visit of
Farragut a contest had for some time been going on between two parties,
representing two opposite political ideas, and striving in arms for the
control of the State. The ideal of one was a strong centralized
government supported by a powerful standing army. This naturally found
its most numerous constituents among the wealthy and educated
inhabitants of the principal city, Buenos Ayres. The province of the
same name, however, and the other provinces generally, favored a looser
form of confederation. The former party, known as the Unitarios, held a
brief lease of power; but their opponents found an able leader in Juan
Manuel de Rosas, who personified the best and worst features of the
_gaucho_ of the pampas and obtained unbounded popularity and following
among those wild herdsmen. In 1828 Rosas and his allies forced the
Unitarian president to resign, and installed one of themselves, named
Dorrego, as governor of Buenos Ayres. This success was but one step in
the series of bloody struggles which ended in the establishment of the
dictator; but it marked the point at which Farragut first saw Buenos
Ayres and Rosas himself, with whom he was at a later date thrown in
intimate contact and who at that moment was in the full flush of his
early popularity.

In December, 1829, Farragut's eyes were in such bad condition that it
was found necessary to send him home. He arrived in February, 1830, and
remained in Norfolk for a period of nearly three years, broken only by
occasional absences. During a part of this time he was again attached to
the