with resinous torches the dangerous passes of the Andes, and who afterwards prepared at Santiago congreve rockets to be thrown into the forts of Callao, was also a priest who had laid aside the gown, finding that he was able to serve his country more effectually than the church. In all parts of America, especially in Mexico, priests and monks had led the insurgents, taking advantage of the influence which their priestly office gave them over the common people. However, the chaplain Aldao was not troubled with a scrupulous conscience, and would not have been deterred from his resolution even without the excuse of such examples. He belonged to a poor, but honorable family of Mendoza, and had shown from his infancy such willfulness and disregard of authority, that his parents educated him for the priesthood, in the hope that its solemn duties would reform his evil tendencies; a fatal mistake, for his novitiate was, like his childhood, a continued course of violence and immorality. Notwithstanding this, he received sacred orders in Chili, in 1806, under the episcopacy of Meran, and the patronage of the reverend father Velasquez, who assisted him at his first mass at Santiago, and who was greatly scandalized at seeing the newly made priest after the battle of Chacabuco in military costume, and with the martial bearing of a soldier. "Thou wilt repent of this," cried the good priest, in his horror at this profanation; but unfortunately for the Argentine people the prophecy was not fulfilled, for the apostate, though unmourned, died a natural death, and with the honors of a victorious general.
