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The manner for the
most part is that of General Santierra, and that old warrior, I note
with satisfaction, is very true to himself all through. Looking now
dispassionately at the various ways in which this story could have been
presented I can't honestly think the General superfluous. It is he, an
old man talking of the days of his youth, who characterizes the whole
narrative and gives it an air of actuality which I doubt whether I could
have achieved without his help. In the mere writing his existence
of course was of no help at all, because the whole thing had to be
carefully kept within the frame of his simple mind. But all this is but
a laborious searching of memories. My present feeling is that the story
could not have been told otherwise. The hint for Gaspar Ruiz the man
I found in a book by Captain Basil Hall, R.N., who was for some time,
between the years 1824 and 1828, senior officer of a small British
Squadron on the West Coast of South America. His book published in the
thirties obtained a certain celebrity and I suppose is to be found still
in some libraries.


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