ntry gentleman. He
died surrounded by his family and friends on May 3, 1857, and the day
of his funeral was one of national mourning. His widow erected a
monument to his memory in the Recoleta cemetery, and in 1872 the
municipality of Buenos Ayres granted a site for a public statue on
the Pasco Julio, which so often rang with the plaudits of the people
as they welcomed this great Irishman returning from victory.

No brighter pages occur in the history of the New World than those
which commemorate the gallantry and self-devotion of the Irish
soldiers who aided South Americans to throw off the yoke of Spain. In
1819 an Irish Legion of 1729 men arrived under the command of General
Devereux, a Wexford landowner, called the Lafayette of South America,
to fight in the campaign of General Bolivar. Devereux was
distinguished for his great bravery. After the War of Independence he
returned to Europe, being commissioned to form a company for mining
operations in Colombia, which country had appointed him envoy
extraordinary to various European courts.

Colonel Ferguson and Captain Talbot were both Irishmen and among the
last survivors of Devereux's Legion. It is computed that one-third of
the Irish who came out under General Devereux died in hospital. It
was this legion which won the decisive battle of Carabobo, June 26,
1821, going into action 1100 strong and leaving 600 on that
hard-fought field.

Among the officers who composed Bolivar's Albion Rifles we find the
Irish names of Pigott, Tallon, Peacock, Phelan, O'Connell, McNamara,
Fetherstonhaugh, French, Reynolds, Byrne, and Haig, and the medical
officer was Dr. O'Reilly. We find mention in General Millar's
_Memoirs_ of Dr. Moore, an Irishman, who attended Bolivar in most of
his campaigns and was devotedly attached to the person of the
Liberator. Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes, Major Maurice Hogan, Lieutenant
William Keogh, Captain Laurence McGuire, Lieutenant-Colonel S.
Collins also served in the struggle for independence.

The period of independence found a small number of Irish residents in
Buenos Ayres, mostly patrician families, such as Dillon, MacMurrough,
Murphy, French, O'Gorman, Orr, Butler, O'Shee, who had been exiled or
had fled from Ireland and obtained the king of Spain's permission to
settle in Spanish America. The descendants of these families are now
so intermarried in the country that they have mostly forgotten the
language and traditions of their ancestors; b