The capital and centre of its trade was San Fernando, situated at the top of a narrow inlet of the sea called La Laguna. Most of this trade was in the hands of Europeans, and the town itself was held for the President by a General Moros with about a thousand troops. From what we heard, he didn’t worry much about anything, except to loot the Custom House occasionally or take bribes from the merchants and captains of trading-ships. The President always had a ’down’ on this province, and hindered its trade as much as he could without stopping it altogether; and, after his old General had had a ’picking’ at San Fernando, every ship had to stop at the narrow mouth of La Laguna and pay more dollars. The President had a pretty modern fort there—El Castellar—to make them heave to if they forgot to stop, and directly the revolution started he had given orders that no ships whatever were to be allowed to pass, so you can pretty well imagine how the English merchants cursed. Then northward of the province of Leon came the towering mountain ranges and plateaus of Santa Cruz, arid, and scorched, and dusty, rising almost precipitously from the forests of Leon, and falling again in terrific ridges and chasms into the northern province of San Juan, the eastern slopes falling into the sea as we had seen at Los Angelos. The mineral wealth—copper, gold, and silver—of the Republic was in these mountains, and they absolutely cut off the southern province of Leon from any communication with the northern province of San Juan. There were mountain paths and dangerous mule-tracks, but what I mean is that no armies could possibly assist each other across them, and old Canilla could sit up in Santa Cruz, at the top of his mountain, and jolly well choose his own time to crush any rising in the provinces spread out at his feet, and, so long as his Navy was loyal, could prevent any insurgents from one province getting to the other by sea. However, there was one thing ’up against’ the President. The province of San Juan bred all the cattle and live-stock of the Republic, and he was obliged to keep a big army down in the northern plains to guard them. Once the insurgents got the upper hand in San Juan he would have to depend entirely on importing cattle from the neighbouring Republics or from Prince Rupert’s Island—not so much to feed his troops, but Santa Cruz itself. Now you will have a rough idea how the land lay, and can understand that, so long as his Navy was loyal to him and prevented the two insurgent provinces on either side of him from combining, the President would be cock of the walk. That was the opinion of nearly every one in Princes’ Town, and, though they all favoured the insurgents and wanted them to win, they’d shake their heads and say that old Gerald’s chances were pretty bad.