e by one
the veterans struggled through the pass, but they were discovered by La
Torre before they issued upon the plain.

Although taken entirely by surprise, the Spaniards had time for a
partial change of front, and before the veterans of Apure had assembled
at the mouth of the pass, a volley of musketry rang out from the Spanish
lines, and the gleaming of bayonets told of a wall of steel across the
path. The scanty force of Paez, however, dashed from the ravine, and,
forming hastily, rushed upon the enemy. Four Royalist battalions
converged upon them, and they were crushed. They fell back, flying in
disorder, and the Spaniards were on the point of securing the pass,
when a shout arose before them that made the stoutest quail. With
one ever-memorable cheer, a long hurrah, which spoke of well-known
unconquerable determination, the British legion, less than eight hundred
strong, with their Colonel, John Ferrier, at their head, appeared at the
mouth of the ravine. Forming instantaneously and in perfect silence,
but with the accuracy of a regiment on parade, they threw forward their
bayonets, and knelt down, sedately, calmly, immovably, to confront
destruction. The remaining troops of Bolivar were in their rear,
traversing slowly the defile; and until they reached its mouth, that
living wall of Anglo-Saxon valor neither stirred nor blenched. Volley
after volley enfiladed their ranks, and, after each discharge, the mass
of men was smaller. Still their cool and ceaseless firing rolled death
into the ranks of the enemy, until at length the troops whom they had
saved from destruction rallied once more. Then, what remained of the
legion, headed by the two or three officers whose lives had been
marvellously preserved, rushed fiercely forward like an avenging flame,
and swept before them the affrighted Spaniards, wildly scattering at
the onslaught which it was impossible to withstand. In another moment,
eighty or ninety of the lancers of Paez issued from the ravine, and,
hurling themselves upon the broken enemy, turned the defeat into an
utter rout. La Torre's troops, with the exception of one regiment, fled
in disgraceful confusion, or perished by hundreds under the lances
of the implacable pursuers; and on the evening of the 24th of June,
Bolivar, encamped upon the Plain of Carabobo, laid his hand upon the
shoulder of Jose Antonio Paez, thenceforward General-in-chief of the
Armies of the Republic of Colombia!

Carabobo decid