The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-09 00:00:00

dered, with a woman and child only seven years old.
Similar massacres were common throughout the war.
The word " Resbalosa" was invented by Rosas to
convey to his infernal agents, the Masorqueros, a
particular mode of dispatchina, their victims. It
meant that they were to be tied' up naked, with their
hands behind their backs, whilst the assassins cut their
throats slowly with knives or a saw ; and this horrible
torture was accompanied by a song made for the occa-
sion. The slightest trifles afforded a sufficient pretext
for these monstrous cruelties, which partook rather of
the amusements of cannibals than the known practices
of wars or persecutions even in the most fanatical age.
One man was shot in prison for wearing a fancy dress
on his way to see his mistress ; another for having
steered a Monte Videan barque ; in the month of Octo-
ber, 1842, the Masorqueros repaired every night to the
city of Buenos Ayres from Rosas's ramp, or rather Gol-
gotha, called the " Santos Lugares," hard by the walls,
to murder and pillage the inhabitants, no less than 400
of whom wore slaughtered in their houses by these ruf-
fians in three weeks. In actual war these horrors were
all redoubled. The taking of Catamarca by Mariano
Maza in 1842, when he made a pile of the heads of 600
of the inhabitant., beheaded in the market-place ; and
the deeds without a name perpetrated by the Friar
Aldao (another of Ro,a's officers), as Governor of Men-
doza. baffle all description, and exceed the atrocities of
the French Reign of Terror itself. But this Argentine
Reign of Terror has been going on for eight years—it is
still going on with the same fury, or, if checked, is only
checked by the want of victims in a country where the
population has already been decimated by these mis-
creants. We have said enough—perhaps too much—
though we have only opened at random the frightful
record in which these acts are enrolled. They are still,
we repeat it, going on ; they are at this instant inflict-
ing pangs of torture and of grief of which the natives of
this Christian land cannot in the worst hours of their

extremest misery form more than a vague conception.
These horrors have engendered a frightful indifference
to human life and to all the ties which render society'
sacred and secure. The character of Rosas is that of the

race to which he belongs, and he is prouder of his reso-
lution and address among the Gauchos than of the poli-
tical power he has acquired and exercised with such
_ _ _

ruthless severity. It must be added, that the lives of
even the best of his rivals have been equally disgraced
by acts of unjustifiable treachery and violence, as, for
instance, when General Lavall e shot the President Dor-
rego, after becoming his prisoner of war. But if there
be in this man any quality above that of a merciless ty-
rant, and if his past acts have been governed by a sys-
tern of policy, and not by the mere sanguinary passions
ascribed to him by his enemies, it is well even for him
that an end should be put to these deplorable conflicts,
and that the Governments of the Plata should be made
to acknowledge, that where the mercantile interests of
foreign states are sacrificed to incessant civil broils, those
states must provide for the protection of the interests of
their own subjects, and endeavour to restore that peace
to the country which can alone render its internal go-
vernment respected and secure.

ROWING MATCH.—The scullers' contest between
Thomas Coombes, of Mil'bank, and Joseph Leach, of
Lambeth, for 101. aside, came off on Tuesday. The former
of these, the brother of Robert Comabes, the champion,
is well known as a first-rate man. and has distinguished
himself on many occasions. The latter has appeared
but little before the public ; but his contest last summer
with Clement Bartlett, induced his friends to consider
him a likely customer for his opponent of Tuesday. The
distance was from Westminster to Putney, and Coombes
appeared to have the call in the betting circles. The
race disappointed the expectations of those who had
assembled to witness it. Coombes won the choice of
station, and went to the Middlesex side, his adversary
being at the next pier. Immediately after the start, and
before their arrival at Lucas's-road, Leach gradually
rowed away from his man, retained the lead, and won by
-upwards of forty yards. Coombes, who had started well,
appeared to have strained his left arm immediately after-
wards. His defeat may be :attributed to this, although
it is of course difficult to say that he would have been
successful had it been otherwise.
Gouitif ENGINES.—Four of the largest locomotives
ever constructed are to be built for the Sheffield and

Manchester Railway. The cylinders are to be
eighteen inches, the stroke two feet diameter, and all six
coupleititahlweight of the engines alone, when loaded
with fuel an water, is 24 tons. It is calculated that on
a level they will draw separately from 1,000 to 2,000
tens.— Tyne Mercury.

CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA.
(From the Times.)
The vast regions of Central South America are se-
parated from this country, and indeed from the whole
of Europe, by such an extreme diversity of manners and
of political condition that we have long ceased to pay
them as much attention as our own commercial interests
in that part of the globe would of themselves deserve.
Yet if we are obliged to confess that European politicians
have neglected the vast field which the emancipation of
the southern Spanish colonies was supposed to have
opened to liberty and civilization, it must at the same
time be acknowledged that the rank native growth of
the soil has choked the seeds we had hoped to plant
there, and that if our attention is recalled to these parts
of the New World, it is only by wars or revolutions,
carried on by the most revolting means, and to the most
unprofitable end. Meanwhile, however, the progress of
the successive military rulers of these unhappy
countries in all the enormities of crime and of mis-
government has been so rapid and so astounding,
their persecutions have become so monstrous and
sanguinary, not only against the scanty Indian po-
pulation of those wilds, or the turbulent rivals
of their usurped authority, but against Europeans
who may have fallen under their suspicions, or even
sought to elude their violence, that it is high time fur
more civilised nations to assert their rights, and to check
a series of atrocities which, for cruelty and duration are
literally unparalleled in the history of mankind. The
Rio de la Plata is one of those great mstuaries of the
American continent which seem destined by Providence
to open as it were inland seas to commerce and naviga-
tion,
whilst the vast extent of the rivers which unite
their waters in the mighty stream form a system of in-
ternal communication throughout the continent from
the Cordillera of the Andes to the sea. So great are the
natural opportunities of the country, that, in spite of the
insufficiency of the sparse and needy population, consi-
derable trading interests have risen up at Monte Video,
oa the left, and at Buenos Ayres on the right,
bank of the river, and a large population of English,
French, and Italian traders are living under the
Monte Videan Government, where they have taken
refuge from the violence of the Government on the
opposite shore ; but their operations are impeded,
their persons are endangered, and the independent
existence of the Banda Oriental is threatened, by the
exterminating, though unsuccessful war carried on
against it by Rosas and Oribe in the name of the Argen-
tine Republie. A recent event has shown the utter
futility of extending to such States as these the laws
and observances used amongst civilised nations; for one
or two guns from the United States frigate Congress
dissipated what was called the blockading squadron of
the Argentine Republic in half an hour, and any well- I
armed merchantman might have done the same. But
we have reason to hope that a more imposing and effec-
tual intervention on the part of the principal Powers in-
terested in the trade of the River Plate will eventually
take place. The Governments of Brazil and of England,
acting in conjunction with that of France, are said to ,
contemplate measures which will at least secure the tran-
quillity and independence of the Banda Oriental, and
impose terms more favourable to the security of trade on
the Dictator of Buenos Ayres. The Government of Rio
Janeiro has shown, in the proposals which it has recently
made to England on this subject, a spirit of confidence
and goodwill towards us which by no means verifies
the sinister predictions of the Opposition as to Viscount
d'Abrantes's mission. It is probable that the ar-
rival of Mr. Gore Ouseley, who has recently been ap-
pointed to succeed Mr. Mandeville as the Minister ac-
credited by Great Britain to the States of La Plata, will
speedily remove the obstacles to trade on the river, es-
pecially when it is found that he is to be supported, if
necessary, in the most effectual manner by England,
Brazil, and France. The intervention of England in
these questions is not attracted by the internal vices of
the South American Governments, but by the necessity
of protecting our own mercantile interests there ; but,
we trust, that in proportion as these Governments are im-
pressed with the necessity of remaining at peace, and of
respecting the rights of foreign nations, they will also
learn that they cannot aspire to the countenance and
amity of England, or of any European Power, unless
they acknowledge the laws of humanity, and observe,
even towards their rivals, some show of moderation and
justice. We employ no figure of speech when we say,
that we are at a loss for words to convey to our reader,
any adequate conception of the barbarous acts im-
puted to the Argentine Government, that is, to
Rosas, and his satellites Oribe, the Friar Aldao,
and the club of the Masorqueros, a body of men ex-
pressly enrolled for the perpetration of the infest san-
guinary crimes. It is true that at no very distant
period the natural talents of Rosas, his resolution, and
his apparent devotion to the interests of his country,
inspired some Englishmen of station and character with
a sort of respect for his government, and of indulgence
for his earlier excesses. But that time is long since past,
if we are to believe an hundredth part of the frightful
catalogue of atrocities which we have now before us in
the pages of the Tablas de Sangre, or " Tables of
Blood," and these facts, though published by his ene
mies, are many of them attested by eye-witnesses, whose
evidence we have reason to believe. Since Rosas raised
himself to the supreme power in 1835, down to the close
of the year 1843, it has been computed by Senor In
darte, the author of these "Tables," that he, or his
immediate followers, have put to death by poison four
persons ; by cutting the throat, 3,765 ; by shooting,
1,393 ; by private assassination, 722 ; whilst in the
murderous civil wars of the last ten years nearly
15,000 men have been slain, every battle being
follewed by a butchery of prisoners, and 1,600 captives
or wounded men have been put to death by the lance.
One of the first acts of Rosas, on the Bth of July,
1636, was to cause 110 Indians, who had been brought
down from the Pampas, to be put to death, and in order
to strike terror into the population of Buenos Ayres,
they were taken out in dozens, and shot before all the
people. Four of their chiefs were brought to the bar-
racks, where they had their throats cut, along with two
little children ! Every day brought with it some fresh
atrocity in this calendar of bloodshed. We can only
select one or two out of many hundred examples. The
war and subsequent persecution of the party known as
tbe " Unitarians," in opposition to Rosas, as the head of
the Federalists, was conducted with unrelenting cruelty.
" Death to the savage Unitarians" was his rallying cry
and the test of allegiance to his person. A witness
named Jose Ramos made oath, before 1:1 Commissioners
assembled at Monte Video, that while he was with
Rosa's army he saw many of the prisoners castrated
before they had their throats cut, and that he knew an
Englishman, whose name was William, who was mur