Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/305

Rh look death in the face, and showed the cowardice of a child.

In the mean time the people of Mendoza had again thrown off the yoke of the tyrants. Don José Aldao, unfortunately for himself, conceived the idea of escaping to the south, and trusting in the faith of the Indians; but the perfidious savages, having invited him and all his principal officers to a consultation, surrounded them; and though Don José succeeded in killing their chief, he and his friends, to the number of thirty, were all slain.

The people of Mendoza whom the monk Aldao had so terribly wronged, petitioned General Paz to deliver him up to them—and I mean the people in the largest sense of the word, for all had suffered by him more or less, and the craving for revenge seemed to be a disease which seized upon the whole community. No punishment could be invented severe enough for him; but at least a gallows should be erected for him in the field of Pilar, and it should be high enough for all the city to see him expire in the midst of their execrations. One committee after another was sent to Cordova to press their claim to the prisoner, as one connected in a peculiar manner with Mendoza, but General Paz was deaf to all these entreaties, and for the time there was still a chance that Aldao might some day escape from his prison.

The war recommenced about this time, and an accident which only an Argentine can understand, took General Paz from the head of his army. Having drawn up his men in a close column, he rode forward to a small eminence to reconnoitre, when, seeing a