( 38 ) 



After the army had reimbarked for Monte Video, I remained a 

 few days to forward some business for the commissary, and to attend 

 to my own. It was gratifying to me to find that the services I had 

 an opportunity of rendering to those famiHes that had taken refuge 

 in the suburbs during the siege were not forgotten ; they all strove 

 which should be foremost in testifying their acknowledgments by 

 every polite attention which it was in their power to shew me. 



My short stay at Buenos Ayres did not afford me time to make 

 any geological researches ; indeed the country behind it, being a vast 

 plain, without any traces of rock, did not offer much scope for such 

 an undertaking. With the exception of a part of the bank near the 

 mole, which is of granite, I scarcely found an indurated substance 

 during the whole route. Judging from the shells and other marine 

 productions which are occasionally found in the Pampas, I should 

 conclude that those extensive level districts have formed, at some 

 period, the bottom of the river, and that they have been left dry 

 hy the progressive precipitation of matter and the deepening of the 

 Rio de la Plata in its present channel through a long course of ages. 

 A circumstance which seems to support this conjecture is, that the 

 land continually gains upon the river, and that at those times, when 

 the wind blows from the Pampas, a considerable extent of the bank 

 on the side of Buenos Ayres is left dry. 



capitulation was signed, as they were accompanying a waggon full of our wounded from the 

 corrals of Miserere to the Retiro, a place assigned for our re-embarkation, they were 

 met and recognized, in their disguise, by a party of Spaniards, who, suffering the waggon 

 to pass, carried these unfortunate men to prison. Hearing of this I made repeated applica- 

 tions to the Commissary-general to induce him to procure their liberation ; he assured me that 

 he had represented the matter to the Commander-in-chief, who had promised to attend 

 to it. The men, however, never were liberated ; some were executed, and others con- 

 demned to hard labour. Thus not only were they disappointed of their reward, but 

 abandoned in their hour of need by the men on whose good faith they had relied, and 

 whose cause they had zealously served. The Commander-in-chief might have obtained their 

 discharge by making a spirited remonstrance, but he omitted to do so, and was very ge^ 

 nerally accused for this unfeeling neglect j the Spaniards themselves spoke with indignation 

 of our inhumanity in leaving these poor men to be punished as traitors. 



