By sheer force of will and attention to detail, he organised an efficient regular army. The victories that followed were as much due to his painstaking care and foresight as to his brilliant strategical combinations and admirable tactical dispositions. Because he thought another could finish his work better than himself he voluntarily resigned supreme power on the very eve of the campaign which expelled the last Spaniard from South America, and, disdaining to offer an explanation, went into life-long exile. So modest was he that his name and services well-nigh fell into oblivion. That he is now recognised as the saviour of South American liberty is due as much to the literary labours of the greatest of Argentine historians, Bartolome Mitre, as to the spontaneous opinion of his countrymen during the first decades after his retirement. [Illustration: GENERAL SAN MARTIN. [From a steel engraving.]] General San Martin was born on the 25th of February, 1778, in a little town which had been one of the Jesuit missions far up the Uruguay River. His mother was a Creole and his father a Spanish officer, who destined his son to his own profession. When a child of only eight, he was taken to the mother country and educated in the best military schools of Spain. At an early age he entered the army and served in all the many wars in which Spain engaged after the outbreak of the French Revolution. He saw much active service and became a thorough master of his profession. He imbibed liberal ideas and joined a secret society pledged to the work of establishing a republic in Spain and independent governments in her colonies. When the Spanish people rose against the French conquests, San Martin threw himself heart and soul into the conflict on the side of the patriots, and distinguished himself in the battles that opened the way to the recovery of Madrid. He was promoted to a lieutenant-colonelcy, but the next year he resigned his commission to return to his native land to aid her in her fight for independence. By a curious coincidence the ship that bore the South American who achieved the independence of his country was called the _George Canning_, after the European who, thirteen years later, did most to secure the independence of South America from external attack. He landed in Buenos Aires in March, 1812. At that moment the anti-Spanish revolution seemed everywhere to be on the point of suffocation. Bolivia and Uruguay were lost; the reaction was gaining ground in Venezuela; Chile was menaced by an army from Lima and shortly fell back into Spanish hands; Peru was steady for the old system. Only in Argentina and New Granada were the fires of insurrection still burning, and between them intervened Peru, the stronghold of Spanish power in South America--a citadel impregnable behind mountains, deserts, and the ocean. The War of Independence could only succeed by aggressive campaigns which must be conducted through difficult country and over the whole