ting he expressed a hope--which I deemed it prudent to
reciprocate--that we should meet again.

Nothing can be finer than the ride to Caracas by the old Spanish road, or
more superb than its position in a magnificent valley, watered by four
rivers, surrounded by a rampart of lofty mountains, and enjoying, by
reason of its altitude, a climate of perpetual spring. But the city itself
wore an aspect of gloom and desolation. Four years previously the ground
on which it stood had been torn and rent by a succession of terrible
earthquakes in which hundreds of houses were levelled with the earth, and
thousands of its people bereft of their lives. Since that time two sieges,
and wholesale proscription and executions, first by one side and then by
the other, had well-nigh completed its destruction. Its principal
buildings were still in ruins, and half its population had either perished
or fled. Nearly every civilian whom I met in the streets was in mourning.
Even the Royalists (who were more numerous than I expected) looked
unhappy, for all had suffered either in person or in property, and none
knew what further woes the future might bring them.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE KING'S NAME.

I put up at the Posado de los Generales (recommended by the commandant),
and the day after my arrival I delivered the letters confided to me by
Senor Moreno. This done, I felt safe; for (as I thought) there was nothing
else in my possession by which I could possibly be compromised. I did not
deliver the letters separately. I gave the packet, just as I had received
it, to a certain Senor Carera, the secret chief of the patriot party in
Caracas. I also gave him a long verbal message from Moreno, and we
discussed at length the condition of the country and the prospects of the
insurrection. In the interior, he said, there raged a frightful guerilla
warfare, and Caracas was under a veritable reign of terror. Of the
half-dozen friends for whom I had brought letters, one had been garroted;
another was in prison, and would almost certainly meet the same fate. It
was only by posing as a loyalist and exercising the utmost circumspection
that he had so far succeeded in keeping a whole skin; and if he were not
convinced that he could do more for the cause where he was than elsewhere,
he would not remain in the city another hour. As for myself, he was quite
of Moreno's opinion, that the sooner I got away the better.

"I consider it my duty to watch ove