TREACHERY OF BENAVIDES. 367 



ments of cruelty. These murderous agents were 

 in the habit of offering to the peaceable peasants 

 the terrible alternative of following them, or of 

 being put to death. They slaughtered children, 

 women, and old men, to prevent information 

 being given of the road they had taken, or of the 

 mountain in which they had hid themselves. In 

 the month of July 1820, when General Freire 

 was passing through the Hacienda of Totoral, on 

 the banks of the river Itata, a widow presented 

 herself to him ; her husband, she said, had been 

 killed a few days before, by the captain of a guer- 

 rilla party, for having given information that the 

 party had been in his house. Actions similar to 

 this were innumerable, and quite notorious in the 

 districts of Chilian and Rere. At a place called 

 Cajon de Palomares, a party of the enemy found 

 an old man of sixty years of age, his wife, his 

 daughter, and three nephews, all poor people, 

 and having robbed them of all they had, finished 

 by murdering them ; their bodies were afterwards 

 carried to the burying-place of Conception, in 

 April 1821. 



^' In this manner the contest was maintained 



