quelled, and more correct information having convinced Don Garcia that the quarrel had been accidental, the severe sentence was revoked.[37] Of the treatment which he then suffered, Ercilla complains bitterly in his poem. He states that he was actually taken to a public place, there to be beheaded by sentence of a young and hasty general[38]; nay, that he had been already upon the scaffold, and had stretched out his neck for the axe, whilst he was only guilty of having unsheathed his sword, which he never drew without being most clearly in the right.[39] The historian of Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, on the other side, pretends that he had been justly condemned by the general, a person, in the opinion of his panegyrist, to whom, by confession of all, no blame could attach, of an exceedingly mild and humane disposition[40], endowed with great equanimity, an acute intellect, and a fine memory, a perfect Christian, of marvellous prudence and activity, no gambler, a zealous restorer of discipline, highly abstemious, never tasting wine, and, to crown all, constantly keeping in hand his rosary to tell his beads.[41] He, moreover, affirms that our poet was indebted to Don Garcia for many favours; but that he hated Ortigosa, the general's secretary, whom he taxed with cowardice and incompetency for his office.[42] It is impossible, and would be foreign to our present purpose, to settle this question. If Ercilla's testimony in his own case ought to be little attended to, the adulatory style of Don Garcia's eulogiser renders his assertions and opinions no less liable to suspicion and unworthy of credit. Though the sentence of death passed upon Don Alonso was revoked, he had to undergo a long imprisonment, which terminated, as we are informed, in his being banished. We are at a loss how to reconcile this statement with his own assertion, that he was, nevertheless, present at the several sieges and engagements which took place in those countries after the accident of which mention has been made. Not long after, he left Chili in disgust, without having been duly rewarded for his services. This fact appears to contradict Suarez de Figueroa, who says that he was under many obligations to Don Garcia[43]; but what these obligations were the historian has not stated; and, as has been observed by the writer of Ercilla's life prefixed to the edition of the Araucana of 1776 (p. 22.), it is evident from the narration of that prejudiced author, that in a distribution of rewards, which took place under the general, our poet received none.