supplied them with food refused further contributions. Efforts were made to seduce him from his principles and to ensure his loyalty. But he refused the rank and rewards offered by the viceroy as the price of his submission. At length he found himself alone in his resistance, in the midst of countrymen, who, if they would no longer fight under his banner, were too faithful to betray him. Yet he would not abandon the cause, but, taking his sword and a small stock of raiment, departed for the mountains, where he wandered for thirty months, living on the fruits of the forest and gnawing the bones of dead animals found in their recesses. Nor did he emerge from this impenetrable concealment, until two faithful Indians, whom he had known in prosperous days, sought him out with great difficulty, and, communicating the joyous intelligence of the revolution of 1821, brought him back once more to their villages where he was received with enthusiastic reverence as a patriot raised from the dead. When discovered by the Indians he was worn to a skeleton, covered with hair, and clad in a tattered wrapper; but, amid all his distresses and losses, he had preserved and treasured his loyalty to the cause of liberty and his untarnished sword!
Meanwhile another actor in this revolutionary army had appeared upon the stage. This was Xavier Mina, a guerilla chief of old Spain, who fled from his country, in consequence of the unfortunate effort to organize an outbreak in favor of the Cortes, at Pampeluna, after the dissolution of that assembly by the king. He landed on the coast of Mexico at Soto la Marina with a brave band of foreigners, chiefly North Americans, on the 15th of April, 1817. His forces amounted to only three hundred and fifty-nine men, including officers, of whom fifty-one deserted before he marched into the interior. Leaving one hundred of these soldiers at Soto la Marina under the command of Major Sarda, he attempted with the remainder, to join the independents in the heart of the country.