The General politely took his visitor the round of his hide huts and mud hovels, where the horses stood saddled and bridled day and night, and where the tattered soldiery waited in readiness for the emergencies that arose so frequently. When Robertson submitted his financial claim, Artigas remained as amiable as before. "'You see,' said the General with great candour and nonchalance, 'how we live here; and it is as much as we can do, in these hard times, to compass beef, aguardiente, and cigars. To pay you 6,000 dollars just now is as much beyond my power, as it would be to pay you 60,000 or 600,000. Look here,' said he, and so saying, he lifted up the lid of an old military chest, and pointed to a canvas bag at the bottom of it. 'There,' he continued, 'is my whole stock of cash; it amounts to 300 dollars; and where the next supply is to come from I am as little aware as you are.'" Notwithstanding this, Robertson then and there obtained some trading concessions that, he says, repaid him the amount of his claim many times over. Surely this picture reveals Artigas more truly than all the long-winded polemics that have raged about the famous Uruguayan. It is given by one whose sympathies were against the aims of the Gaucho chief, and who has proved himself no lenient critic. Yet the description fits no mere cut-throat and plunderer. On the contrary, it reveals a virile personality, a thinker and worker of a disposition that goes far to explain the adoration accorded him by his troops. Artigas, at the hands of the visitor who had sufficient cause for his ridicule, comes to light as a _man_--contemptuous of poverty, misery, and sordid surroundings so long as his goal remained as clear and distinct as it ever was to his sight. The picture is not without its pathetic side. It shows Artigas in the heyday of his power, yet even then hard put to it to supply his men with clothes and the common necessities of life. Imagine the calm force and philosophy of a being capable of governing more than a third of a million square miles of territory with the assistance of a treasury of three hundred dollars! Nevertheless, these _opéra bouffe_ conditions represented the highest point of material prosperity to which Artigas ever attained. For five years he ruled thus, grappling desperately with the invading Brazilian armies, and resisting the efforts of the Buenos Aires forces to regain control of the four Argentine provinces that had espoused his cause.