United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
XXVII. Now albeit this translation of the body of the blessed Cid had been made with such honour and reverence, there were many who murmured against it; and Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias, who was then Constable of Castille. and the Municipality of Burgos, sent advice thereof to the Emperor Charles V. who was at that time in Flanders, beseeching him to give order that the tomb of the Cid might be translated back to its former place, and that of Dona Ximena also, which had been removed into the Cloisters of the Monastery.
To this end she begged the Viceroy to send and take possession of her in the name of his Majesty, which he did, as I shall afterwards tell you. Meanwhile the captain who governed the town, by name Manuel de Frias, seeing that there was close to the town a fortress that commanded it, determined to seize it by force, seeing that its captain declined to surrender it.
Benito recoiled, and, in spite of the assertions of the pilot, the thought recurred to him that some living cayman might even then be met with in the deeps near the Bar of Frias! But he repelled the idea, and continued his progress, so as to reach the bottom of the depression.
This was fortunate, it must be admitted. But was Araujo mistaken? The old pilot of the Amazon could be relied on. For the thirty years that he had followed his profession the crossing of the Bar of Frias, where the current was increased in force by its decrease in depth, had often given him trouble.
It was a charge, however, universally believed in Spain, and was even preferred in print by a certain journal, the official organ of the silly Duke of Frias, one of the many prime ministers of the moderado party who followed each other in rapid succession towards the latter period of the Carlist and Christino struggle.
Four of the boats, in charge of the pilot, Benito, Fragoso, and Manoel, divided the river between the Rio Negro and the Bar of Frias into four portions. They set to work to explore its very bed.
Meantime, as the great queen was no more, who was always too sagacious to doubt that the Dutch cause was her own however disposed she might be to browbeat the Dutchmen it seemed possible to Spain that the republic might at last be deprived of its only remaining ally. Tassis was despatched as chief of a legation, precursory to a more stately embassy to be confided to the Duke of Frias.
A purely physical phenomenon, of which the following is the explanation. The gunboat Santa Ana, bound for Manaos, had come up the river and passed the bar at Frias. Just before she reached the embouchure of the Rio Negro she hoisted her colors and saluted the Brazilian flag.
In Aguas Frias, the capital, Don Rafael Valdevia, Minister of War, Esperando's greatest-hearted and most able patriot, awaited my coming. No doubt you have heard, with a smile, of the insignificant wars and uprisings in those little tropic republics.
Both were ordered to go with the four boats and the Indians to the basin of Frias, and there to wait for the two young men. Manoel and Benito started off without losing a moment, and reached the quay at Manaos. There they offered the contractor such a price that he put the apparatus at their service for the whole day. "Will you not have one of my men," he asked, "to help you?"
Word Of The Day