CHAPTER XIV.

MONTEVIDEO.

_January 30th, 1851._—Our passage “down,” as the phrase is, was devoid of incident. We arrived on the night of the 20th inst., and are at anchor in the outer roadstead. In October, I described the general aspect of the mount, the city, and the surrounding country from this; and reminded you of the existence of a civil war, and the close siege of the city, for eight years past, by Oribe, a citizen of Montevideo, and formerly President of the Republic of which it is the capital. The right to this office, though once resigned and abandoned by him, he still claims; and to enforce it, invaded the State with an army of Argentines, furnished by Rosas, Governor of Buenos Ayres, and minister of foreign affairs for the Argentine States. With this he would have gained possession of the town long ago, had it not been for the armed intervention, in 1845, of England and France; and the continued guardianship of the place by the latter, with a squadron, in the roadstead, and a body of fifteen hundred or two thousand troops on shore.

The principal European powers, rejecting the pretensions of Oribe, acknowledge the constituted authorities of the inside, or city party only, as the government of the Republic. The policy of the United States being a strict neutrality, Commodore McKeever pays a like respect to both; and, under an escort furnished by Oribe, has paid an official visit to him at his camp outside of the lines, as well as one to the President within, at the government house in the city.

When here in October, an armistice had existed for some time, in connection with the negotiations then pending between the belligerent parties and Admiral Le Predour, commander-in-chief of the French force. We had not heard of its termination: but a movement of the troops on shore at daylight, the morning after our arrival, attracted the notice of those on board on watch, and led to the supposition that an engagement was about to take place. A messenger from my ever mindful friend R——, the officer of the deck at the time, summoned me to witness it; and for an hour, with other officers of the ship, I gazed through a glass upon what seemed a spirited conflict, between the outside and inside forces. We learned afterwards, however, that it was only a sham battle between different parties of the French troops, and the Montevidean soldiery, composed of a foreign legion of Basques and Italians, and a native regiment of negroes. So far as the effect upon the eye, and, under our misapprehension, upon the heart was concerned, there was, in the manœuvres of the battle field—the rapid charge, the roar of cannon, the sharp rattle of musketry, and the flying through the air and the bursting of shells—much of the reality of an actual engagement.

Poor Montevideo, for nearly a half century past, has been singularly ill-fated, even for a South American city. The greater part of that period, it has been the victim of calamitous wars, either foreign or