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.