" February 18. — The director has wished frequently to make me his aid-de-camp, and I have as often declined the situation. In a country like this, dis- tracted by party and still subject to all the disorders of the revolution, the stout heart and the stal worth arm are of more effect when they are backed by a few good soldiers. About a month before our departure for Chiloe, the director was deposed by the efforts of a party supported by two regiments, — he was obliged to leave the city in the morning ; at two in the after- noon Colonel Sanches was elected in his place ; in the night I formed a counter revolution in my own corps, brought over No. 7, and, in spite of the other two regiments, replaced Freire in his situation before ten o'clock the next morning. Mr. Nugent, the British consul-general, expressed himself well pleased with my conduct in this affair, but Freire is not a man to recollect the services of his best friends, and he is losing them fast. I shall be surprised if he be director six months hence."
"May 29. — I perceive that honorable mention is made of my name in the Representative* of January 25th last. I believe that I alluded, in one of my former letters, to the circumstances which gave rise to this commendation, — they were in themselves of a very unpleasant nature to me. In October last a party had prevailed so far in Santiago as to procure the spurious election of another director. Many of Freire's measures having given great disgust, and his incapacity for government becoming every day more evident, the election was strongly supported, particu- larly by two of the corps forming the garrison of Santiago. My commanding officer, Colonel Beauchef,
- A Loudon daily newspaper.
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