Sobremonte had fled to the provinces, he returned with an army, but Buenos Aires knew him not and had already rulers of her own. The city called together a "Congress of Notables"; of these "Notables" only one-fourth were natives, but the Congress acted under the eyes of the people and obeyed their behests. The leader chosen by the people in their hour of trial was again chosen by them in their hour of triumph, and entrusted with the task of forming their rude levies into an army. Liniers, though he had no such title, became virtually the dictator of Buenos Aires, and Buenos Aires prepared herself to renew the struggle with Great Britain, looking no longer to Spain for protection but trusting in her own strength. CHAPTER I AT THE QUINTA DE PONCE About three leagues from Buenos Aires, and about half-a-mile to the west of the great southern road which led to the Guardia Chascomus, stood the Quinta de Ponce. The house was a small one with a sloping roof of tiles and with a verandah running round three sides of it. There were also three smaller houses detached, built of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The ground belonging to the quinta was fenced in and carefully cultivated, all round the fence ran a double row of poplars, and many other trees grew about in clumps. The house stood at one corner of the quinta, some twenty yards away from the fence; all about that corner the ground was laid out as a garden, where flowers grew in wild luxuriance. Within the house was furnished with great simplicity; numerous doors and windows shaded by green jalousies provided for ample ventilation; the verandah and the many trees which grew around it protected it from the glare of the summer sun. It was well adapted for a summer residence, and had been built for that object by Don Roderigo Ponce de Leon, whose family regularly spent there the hot months of the year. A cluster of similar quintas on a smaller scale stood around the Quinta de Ponce, divided from each other by roads bordered by poplars. Beyond these quintas on every side was open pasture-land, stretching away to the southward in long undulations, dotted here and there by the lonely, treeless house of some native "hacendado." To the north the towers and domes of Buenos Aires could be seen marking themselves clearly out on the horizon, to the south-east at a nearer distance the sun-rays were reflected from the white-walled houses of the small town of Quilmes. This group of quintas formed a sort of oasis, on which the traveller, bound on some far journey into the depths of the treeless Pampa, looked back with a sort of tender gratitude as he passed by, it was his last glimpse of the world of men as he galloped on towards the world of Nature.