the
vast basin of the Orinoco was the cradle of Venezuelan freedom. The
Provisional Government consisted of a mere council of generals, who, in
1816, created Paez General and Supreme Chief of the Republic. A vast
stride from the _hatero's_ hut that we saw him inhabiting in 1808!

Paez resigned this dignity in favor of Bolivar in the following year,
contenting himself with his great military command. Surrounded by the
body-guard we have seen, through all the years 1816, 1817, and 1818, now
in Venezuela, now in New Granada, in the Plains to-day, in the mountains
to-morrow, enduring every privation, braving odds apparently the most
overwhelming, fighting pitched battles at midnight, and triumphantly
effecting surprises in the open day, he maintained alive, in the midst
of general discouragement, the cause he had espoused. Bolivar, the
Liberator, was meanwhile endeavoring to make head against the Spaniards
elsewhere, and gathered a considerable force in the interior province of
Guiana. In 1818, the vanguard of the British legion--troops browned by
the sun of Spain, who had marched with Wellington from Lisbon to the
Pyrenees, and who gladly accepted the offers of the Patriots when
Waterloo had put an end to European strife--sailed up the Orinoco, and
effected a junction with the assembled Patriot forces.

At this time, not only the whole of New Granada, but the entire
sea-coast of Venezuela and every important city in the Republic were
possessed by Morillo. Yet the Royalist cause made no progress. Morillo's
dominion was like that famous Haarlem lake which occupied so large an
extent of the lands of Holland; it might be great and threatening, but
barriers insurmountable, though unpretending, forbade its expansion, and
perseverance gradually succeeded in curtailing its limits. Whatever the
hand of Morillo covered, he possessed; but his authority ceased outside
the range of his guns. His men were growing weary of the struggle; few
reinforcements came from Spain; and the troops suffered frightfully,
through their constant fatigues and hardships. The war had become
that most terrible of all wars,--a deliberate system of surprises and
skirmishes. Paez here, Bolivar there, Monagas, Piar, Urdaneta, and a
score of other chieftains, at every vulnerable point, harassed, without
ceasing, the common foe.

In 1819, Bolivar set out upon that marvellous expedition across the
Andes in which, by marching one thousand miles and fighting thre