ed the War of Independence throughout South America. It
snapped the chain which held Venezuela down, and the Spaniards, hemmed
in for two years longer at Puerto Cabello, which place they defended
with honorable pertinacity, were finally expelled from the free Republic
in November, 1823. The city was taken by storm on the 7th of that month,
and on the 9th the citadel surrendered. General Calzada, the commandant,
with all his officers, and four hundred men, was shortly afterwards
shipped for Spain.

Here the career of the Llanero closes. A new and still more brilliant
avenue to distinction opens before Paez. At this, however, we can
scarcely glance. Our business has been to study him in the saddle,
wielding lasso and sword and lance; nor have we left ourselves room
for adequate allusion to his subsequent life as President and private
citizen, deliverer of his country, and exile in these Northern States.
Yet the record could not be called complete, unless we passed briefly in
review the vicissitudes of the past thirty years.

After the taking of Puerto Cabello, Paez administered the affairs of
Venezuela as Provisional Chief of the State, and held that office under
the Congress of Colombia, until the two republics were dissevered in
1830, when he was elected first President of Venezuela. Only partially
disturbed by a military insurrection, headed by the turbulent General
Jose T. Monagas, which was soon suppressed, the administration of Paez
was such as surprised all lookers-on in America and Europe. He displayed
administrative talents of a high order, with all the firmness and
resolution of a soldier, yet with all the business capacity and peaceful
proclivities of a civilian.

Laying down the Presidential office in 1834, he was again called upon
to assume it four years later, and until the close of 1842 Venezuela
prospered under his direction. The foreign and domestic debt was
liquidated by the products of national industry, and three millions of
dollars were left in the treasury on the accession to the Presidency
of General Soublette, in 1843. Honors had rained on the _ci-devant_
impetuous horseman, whose shout had once so frequently been the prelude
to slaughter and devastation. William the Fourth of England presented
General Paez, in 1837, with a sword of honor; Louis Philippe of France
invested him, in 1843, with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor; and
two years later, there arrived from Oscar of Sweden the Cross