SURRENDER OF CALLAO. 



71 



what many of the officers of the army, and some 

 other persons, conceived a most favourable mo- 

 ment for gaining an important advantage over 

 the Royalists. A great outcry was in consequence 

 raised by all parties against him, on account of 

 this apparent apathy ; and his loss of popularity 

 may be said to take its date from that hour. 



The fortress of Callao, nevertheless, surrender- 

 ed to San Martin a few days afterwards, and with 

 this he declared himself satisfied. Being all along, 

 as he declared, certain of gaining this most im- 

 portant object, by which the independence of the 

 country was to be sealed, he did not conceive it 

 advisable to bring the enemy to action. It is as- 

 serted, indeed, by many who were present, that 

 San Martin'^s army was much superior in num- 

 bers to that of Canterac, the Spanish general: 

 but his friends, while they admit this, assert, that 

 it was at the same time necessarily defective in 

 discipline and experience ; since more than two- 

 thirds of the original expedition had sunk under 

 the effects of the climate at Huaura, and the new 

 levies consisted of raw troops recently collected 

 from the hills, and the surrounding countries. 



