In September, the regiment being then distributed in quarters at Brighton, Hastings, Romney, Rye, and other points on the south-east coast, there arrived suddenly one night an express message ordering the Seventeenth to prepare forthwith for foreign service. Its route, it was added, would be sent down immediately. [Sidenote: 27th Sept.] On the 27th September the regiment marched to Portsea and Southampton, and having detached two troops to Chichester as a depôt, gave up its horses and embarked on the 5th October at Spithead, bound for South America. It must now be explained where and why it was wanted. [Sidenote: 1806.] On the 4th January 1806, just when the Seventeenth was disembarking in England from Dublin, there arrived off the Cape of Good Hope 4000 British troops under Sir David Baird, convoyed by a squadron under Commodore Sir Home Popham. The troops were landed; and in less than three weeks the Cape Colony had passed from the Dutch into the hands of the English for ever. Before he sailed, Sir Home Popham, always a busy man, had become greatly bitten with the idea of an attack on the Spanish possessions in Central and South America, that is to say, on any part of Central and South America except Brazil, which was a Portuguese Colony. He had held many conversations with one General Miranda, a native of Venezuela, who was at the head of a revolutionary movement against the dominion of Spain in South America, and had promised that if the British would send a force thither the whole population would rise and fight at their side against Spain. It was the old story which had taken the English to the Carolinas in 1781, and to St. Domingo in 1793, with most disastrous results. But Popham, forgetting these two lessons, continually urged upon the English Government the project of an attack on South America, and even drew up a complete plan of operations for descent on the continent from the Atlantic and Pacific sides simultaneously. The date of this plan is October 1804. The memorandum had been before the British Government for more than a year, and had received little or no notice. At three months’ distance from England, with men and ships to his hand, and no one in command over him, Popham persuaded Baird to let him have Brigadier-General Beresford (afterwards well known in the Peninsular War as Marshal Beresford) and 900 men; [Sidenote: 14th April.] and with these and his squadron he sailed away for Rio de la Plata, to take Buenos Ayres on his own responsibility. At first everything went well. The force, strengthened by 200 more men picked up at St. Helena, duly arrived in the Plata, and disembarked on the 25th June at a point ten miles below Buenos Ayres. From thence, in spite of Spanish troops in greatly superior numbers that were drawn up to oppose him, Beresford marched practically unchecked and unhindered into the city, [Sidenote: 26th June.]and on the following day received its surrender. [Illustration: _G. Salisbury, 1832_