With the treaty of San Ildefonso, Uruguay began her real existence. Montevideo was made the greatest fortress on the Atlantic coast, commanded by its own military governor, strongly garrisoned and provisioned, and with over one hundred cannon mounted on its walls. The Charruas had long been driven back from the coast, and as soon as the danger of Portuguese interference was over settlements spread rapidly along the whole southern border. Prior to 1777 there were only five towns in Uruguay, but within the next five years the number tripled. By the year 1810 there were seventy-five hundred people living in the city of Montevideo, seventy-five hundred in its immediate district, and sixteen thousand in the outlying settlements. Outside of Montevideo, cattle-herding was the sole business, and the people were a hard-riding, meat-eating, bellicose race. Immediately to the north-east lived fifty thousand Rio Grandenses of Portuguese blood and speech, who, in like surroundings, had acquired the same pastoral and semi-nomadic habits as their Argentine and Uruguayan neighbours, and who constantly made incursions over the Spanish border. The Uruguayan gauchos retaliated, and for nearly a century continuous partisan warfare went on, for these half-savage cattle-herders recked little of treaties or boundary lines. The Spanish guerrillas bore the name of _blandenques_, and in this school of arms the future generals of Uruguay's war of independence were trained. Most of the forays were only for the purpose of stealing cattle or burning cabins built in coveted regions; nevertheless, one of these expeditions changed the nationality of a territory larger than England. In 1801 the Rio Grandenses conquered the Seven Missions, thus doubling at a single stroke the area of their own state and reducing Uruguay to substantially its present dimensions. As the seat of the largest Spanish garrison, Montevideo naturally became the centre of pro-Spanish feeling and influence in the Plate and the home of families who boasted distinguished Castilian descent and conservative principles. In the interior settlements Creole influences predominated, and the population was substantially homogeneous with that of the Argentine provinces on the other side of the Uruguay River. Between the aristocratic Montevideans and the gauchos of the country districts there was little sympathy. [Illustration: BRIDGE AT MALDONADO.]