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was born in 1811, the year after the Argentine Republic had achieved its independence of Spain, at San Juan, the capital of the province of that name, lying on the eastern skirts of the Andes. He was descended from two distinguished families that figured in the colonization, the Sarmientos and the Albarracines. The latter were descended from a Saracen chief, Al Ben Razin, who, in the middle of the twelfth century, conquered and gave name to a city, and founded a family which afterwards became Christian.

In 1846, Colonel Sarmiento went to see Arab life in the interior of Algiers; he found his family name familiar to the ears of the people, and was himself taken for an Arab, and told that he could easily be mistaken for one of the faithful. He was so ambitious as to emulate them in the wearing of their national garment, the bornoz; and in the exhilaration of the ride into the interior, under the Arab escort that the French commander had furnished him with, boasted that he could ride to the pyramids without halting. They took him at his word, and though the pyramids were not the goal sought, the feat nearly cost him his life; but the vigorous habits of his youth saved him. When he found himself in the tent of a Saracen chief, and looked about