driven back at
length with fearful slaughter, with the loss of arms, ammunition,
reputation, and of seventeen hundred men. He returned to La Rioja, with
the disorganized remnant of his band, marking his path with blood and the
infliction of atrocious chastisements. Even in adversity he is terrible
and is obeyed.

For nearly two years he divided his time between the provinces of San
Juan, Tucuman, and La Rioja, engaged in the prosecution of his designs,
chief among which was the destruction of Paz, who remained at Cordova,
intending to act only on the defensive. At length, in 1830, he considered
himself sufficiently strong for an attack on his recent conqueror. Paz was
unwilling to shed blood a second time; he offered advantageous terms to
Quiroga; but the boastful Gaucho, full of confidence in his savage
lancers, refused to negotiate, and marched against his skilful but
unpresuming antagonist. Paz secretly evacuated Cordova, and, moving
westward, hazarded a feat which is alone sufficient to establish his
character as the best tactician of the New World,--San Martin alone,
perhaps, excepted. Splitting his little army into a dozen brigades, he
occupied the entire mountain-range behind the town, operated, with scarce
five thousand men, upon a front of two hundred miles in extent, held in
his own unwavering grasp the reins which controlled the movements of every
division, and gradually inclosed, as in a net, the forces of Quiroga and
Villafane. In vain they struggled and blindly sought an exit; every door
was closed; until, finally, after a campaign of fifteen days, the
narrowing battalions of Paz surrounded, engaged, and utterly defeated at
Oncativo the bewildered army on whose success Quiroga had staked his all.

The Gaucho himself again escaped. After seven years of dictatorial power,
he is once more reduced to the level upon which we saw him standing in
1818, a vagabond at Buenos Ayres, although from that level he may raise
his head a trifle higher.

And here we might conclude, having seen his rocket-like ascent, and the
swiftly-falling night of his career,--having seen him a laborer, a
deserter, a General, a Dictator, a fugitive; but much remains to be
narrated. Passing over, with the barest mention, his temporary return to
power, which he accomplished by one of those lightning-like expeditions
that even among Gaucho horsemen rendered him conspicuous, let us hasten on
to the great dramatic crisis of his history; and