These native masses obeyed with all their might and with the utmost enthusiasm so long as it was a question of fighting against the foreign troops and of winning their independence; but, victory once assured, guided by their leaders, the _caudillos_, most of whom were white, they revolted against the tendencies which began to show themselves among the Europeans of the cities, and in many places succeeded in dominating over them by force of numbers, thus preventing all political and administrative progress, and maintaining, as their form of government, the personal, arbitrary, and irresponsible power of a leader, that is, of the _caudillo_. The written Constitutions which these people had established upon declaring their independence, and which were inspired by the Constitutions of the United States or the Swiss Republic, were thus reduced to a dead letter, as they were in complete contradiction to the political habits of the mass of the populace, and required, for their application, a political education which the peoples of South America did not possess. A whole century had to elapse before immigration, material interest, and the influence of civilisation, were able slowly to modify the political mentality of these peoples, by reinforcing and popularising the principles of government, extirpating the elements and suppressing the causes of the anarchy which had so long disturbed them. Among the nations which experienced these beneficent influences, the Spanish colony known as the _Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata_, to-day the Argentine Republic, was quite specially favoured. Its territory, composed of immense prairies, the celebrated Argentine “pampas,” stretching from the sea-coast and the river littoral, offered the unique wealth of their fertility and their climate. There were no mines of gold or silver to arouse the greed of adventurers; they came to these regions only to traverse them, and so to proceed immediately to the gold-bearing regions of the distant Cordilleras. Moreover, the first colonists who established themselves on the banks of the Plata, repulsed and expelled by the natives, were forced to abandon a certain number of cattle and horses, which found in these prairies an admirable opportunity to live and multiply in freedom, until finally they formed the immense herds of wild cattle and horses, whose hides became the principal wealth and the chief article of commerce of these regions. Although the Rio de la Plata had no commercial relations with the outside world, and was only able to trade with Cadiz, the immensity and the solitude of its shores favoured a contraband trade; to such a degree that English, Dutch, and Portuguese smugglers came from all parts to exchange their manufactured articles for the hides of these wild herds.——This it is that explains how Buenos Ayres was able from the outset to become a great commercial centre, in which the trades dependent upon stock-raising quickly occupied the first place.