There are few darker pages in the modern annals of South America than the record of the months of October 1841, and April 1842, in the devoted town of Buenos Ayres. Rosas, himself secure amid his savage soldiery, issued his secret death-roll. The chiefs of the Masorcheros, anxious to secure their own safety, rivalled each other in their zeal to capture; and the work of death itself was intrusted to hands whose trade was blood. Without trial[7] for offences, without warrants for apprehension, without even a knowledge of danger, houses were openly entered, men massacred, women flogged, and property destroyed; victims were decoyed out, by friends, from theatres and ball-rooms; men were followed in the streets, and stabbed at their own doors; and concerted signals were arranged to tell the police carts, that wandered about the streets at night, where to find out the victims. We shall not give any more harassing details here. There is no doubt that there were more massacres committed than ever were ordered by authority: the machinery of murder, once set agoing, revolved of itself, and knives were sometimes made to settle old quarrels and long accounts; Rosas, when he found things going on too far, easily put a stop to them by disposing of some of the Masorcheros themselves, among others, the chief, who was thus for ever prevented from telling any tales against his master. Such unheard-of and unexpected scenes suddenly occurring in the midst of a happy, prosperous, and orderly city, were accompanied by strange anomalies. Foreigners could scarcely conceive the existence of a regular organised body of assassins. Natives, not yet schooled into distrust of their best friends, and perhaps not even conscious of guilt, could not, all at once, throw aside their habits of social conviviality. The churches were open for their usual services, the markets still crowded; there was no rioting in the streets, which the police paraded as usual. Ministers and consuls still displayed their flags, and balls and dinners were as numerously attended as ever; and those who had not seen or suffered were unwilling to believe the horrid reports that circulated in secret whispers; and many who knew, or had seen some of the fearful goings-on around them, probably deemed an affectation of ignorance or indifference their best policy. Such was the state of the city until the frequency of outrages forced the natives to keep their houses, take refuge under the roofs of foreigners, smuggle themselves on board merchant vessels or men-of-war, or sneak through the deserted streets like doomed men, shunning the contact of their fellows as if it had been a city of the plague.