to official communications and documents which prove
the interest which has been taken in the necessities of the squadron.

(Here follows a reiteration of the _promises_ and good intentions of
the Protector, with which the reader is already well acquainted.)

This has been a mortal blow to the State, and worse could not
have been received from the hand of an enemy, there only remaining
to us a hope in the moderation and patient suffering of the
valiant men who have sacrificed all!

You will immediately sail from this port to Chili, with the whole
squadron under your command, and there deliver up the money
which you have seized, and which you possess without any pretext
to hold it. In communicating this order to your Excellency, the
Government cannot avoid expressing its regret at being reduced to
this extremity towards a chief with whom it has been connected by
ties of friendship and high consideration since August 20th, 1820.

I have to complain of the style of your Excellency's Secretary,
who, perhaps from his ignorance of the idiom of the Spanish
language, cannot express himself with decency--his soul not having
been formed to conceive correct ideas.

MONTEAGUDO.

The complaining tone of this letter about the "valiant sacrificing all,"
is worthy of the writer; when I had left untouched many times the amount
seized, and the army, according to the admission of the Protectoral
Government, had received two-thirds of its pay, whilst the squadron had
even been suffered to starve. On the 28th I replied to the Minister as
follows:--

Sir,

I should have felt uneasy, had the letter you addressed
to me contained the commands of the Protector to quit the ports of
Peru without reason assigned, and I should have been distressed
had his motives been founded in reason, or on facts; but finding
the order based on the groundless imputation that I had declined to
do what I had no power to effect, I console myself that the Protector
will ultimately be satisfied that no blame rests on me. At all
events, I have the gratification of a mind unconscious of wrong, and
gladdened by the cheering conviction that, however facts may be
distorted by sycophancy, men who view things in their proper
colours will do me the justice I deserve.

You address me as though I required to be convinced of your
good intentions. No, Sir, it is the seamen