doubt not that you will write a book which will make you famous. My only
regret is, that in the present state of the country you may find going
about rather difficult. But it won't be for long. We have well-nigh got
this accursed rebellion under. A few weeks more, and there will not be a
rebel left alive between the Andes and the Atlantic. The Captain-General
of New Granada reports that he has either shot or hanged every known
patriot in the province. We are doing the same here in Venezuela. We give
no quarter; it is the only way with rebels. _Guerra a la muerte!_"

After this the commandant asked me to dinner, and insisted on my becoming
his guest until the morrow, when he would provide me with mules for myself
and my baggage, and give me an escort to Caracas, and letter of
introduction to one of his friends there. So great was his kindness,
indeed, that only the ferocious sentiments which he had avowed in respect
of the rebels reconciled me to the deception which I was compelled to
practise. I accepted his hospitality and his offer of mules and an escort,
and the next morning I set out on the first stage of my inland journey.
Before parting 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