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scene ! I am not expert at description, nor can my fancy add any 

 horrors to the picture. But surely even conquerors themselves 

 would weep at the hideous prospect now before me. The whole 

 country, my dear country, lies one frightful waste, presenting only 

 objects to excite terror, pity, and despair. The business of the 

 husbandman and the shepherd are quite discontinued; the hus- 

 bandman and the shepherd are become soldiers themselves, and 

 help to ravage the soil they formerly occupied. The towns are 

 only inhabited by old men, women, and children ; perhaps here 

 and there a warrior, by wounds or loss of limbs, rendered unfit for 

 service, left at his door; his little children hang round him, ask 

 an history of every wound, and grow themselves soldiers before 

 they find strength for the field. But this were nothing, did we 

 not feel the alternate insolence of either army, as it happens to 

 advance or retreat. It is impossible to express the confusion 

 even those who call themselves friends create; even those from 

 whom we might expect redress, oppress us with new calamities. 

 From your justice, therefore, it is that we hope for relief; to you, 

 Sire, even children and women may complain, whose humanity 

 stoops to the meanest petition, and whose power is capable of re- 

 pressing the greatest injustice." 



Considering the incursions of the Gracias into my purgunnas, 

 and how much they had lately suffered by war, they were then 

 in a flourishing condition. Several occurrences in this journey, 

 noticed by the collector-general, and the other collectors, tended 

 to improve the statement we had before transmitted to the Bom- 

 bay government, respecting the landed-property, cultivation,and 



