Having won my promotion in the Peru campaign, I was a captain on
the staff. Gaspar Ruiz found himself hard pressed; at the same time we
heard by means of a fugitive priest who had been carried off from his
village presbytery and galloped eighty miles into the hills to perform
the christening ceremony, that a daughter was born to them. To celebrate
the event, I suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear
away at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to
cut off his retreat. General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from
rage. He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes;
but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect
than so much water. He took to railing and storming at me about my
strong man. And from our impatience to end this inglorious campaign I am
afraid that all we young officers became reckless and apt to take undue
risks on service.
"Nevertheless, slowly, inch by inch as it were, our columns were closing
upon Gaspar Ruiz, though he had managed to raise all the Araucanian
nation of wild Indians against us.
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