EARLY CAREER OP MR. NOBBS. 169 
have been imagined, is met with in Mrs. 
Graham's (afterwards Lady Callcott's) "Jour- 
nal of a Residence in Chili in 1822." 
Lieutenant Nobbs was also engaged in a 
severe conflict with a Spanish gun-brig near 
Arauco, a fortress of Chili ; when in com- 
mand of a gun-boat, after sustaining the loss 
of forty-eight men killed and wounded, out of 
a party of sixty-four, he was taken prisoner 
by the troops of the piratical Spanish 
general, Benevideis. 
The prisoners were all shot, with the 
exception of Lieutenant Nobbs, and three 
English seamen. These four, after remaining 
for three weeks under sentence of death, 
were, quite unexpectedly, exchanged for four 
officers attached to Benevideis' s army. Mr. 
Nobbs had seen his fellow-prisoners, from 
time to time, led out to be shot, and had 
heard the reports of the muskets consigning 
them to a dreadful death. 
Lady Callcott states that Benevideis was 
the son of the inspector of a prison, and had 
been a foot-soldier in the first army of the 
Chilenos in the cause of South American 
independence. From her description of his 
M 
