CIVIL WARS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 790 armed transport, Seguranca, for a cruise. These preparations had to bemade in full view of the city, and the gunners in the seaward forts were warnedthat an attempt would be made to run past them. On November 30th, in the afternoon, Mello handed over to de Gama the commandof the ships left at Rio,and just after midnight he steamed down to the entrance of thebay, followedby the Seguranca. An officer who had deserted from the President had told him where a few mines were sunk in the entrance, and he easily avoided them. He was nearly out of the bay when the forts discovered him and opened fire. He replied with his heavy guns and quick-firers, one lucky shot extinguishing a searchlight that had just been turned upon the flagship. She was only hit once, and the shell burst in a coal-bunker, injuring no one. The Seguranca had her chief engineer killed by a shell that burst in the engine-room, but she, too, got out to sea. Even after the ships had passed, the two forts on the opposite sides of the entrance continued firing wildly, and in FortLage, on the western point, several men were disabled by the fire of their friendsin the eastern batteries.

Mello landed in the south to organise the Insurrection, and sent the Aquidaban back to Rio. She ran the gauntlet of the forts again, "this time going in at dawn on January* 12th, 1894, having only two men wounded. The warfare in the harbour continued, without any important result. The island of Mucangue was captured by the army, and then retaken by the navy. Encouraged by* this success, de Gama tried to storm one of the land forts on the eastern side of the bay on February 9th, but was repulsed with heavy loss.

Marshal Peixoto was standing on the defensive at Rio until he could get some kind of a fleet together. The insurrection in the south hadproveda failure. Mello could not form an army. Only* some guerilla bands were in the field. Peixoto could thus concentrate his -resources on the effort to deal with de Gama and the insurgent squadron. At the end of November a fine torpedo gunboat, the Sampaio, had reached Pernambuco from Elswick. He had bought and armed five liners, and had obtained from a German builder five sea-soinss o o .torpedo boats. From the United States he receivedtwo reinforcements of doubtful value— the gunboat Destroyer, designed by Ericsson, ■armed with an underwater gun in her bow, which was meant to drive a large shell into an enemy's side at close quarters,and the cruiser,or armed liner, Nichtcroy, which had been fitted with the Zalinski pneumatic gun, for which, however, only five dynamite shells or aerial torpedoes wereavailable,only oneof these being fully charged. The Nichteroy brought with her on her deck twolarge steam launches for use in torpedooperations.

On March 10thPeixoto's new fleet appeared off the harbour entrance. Admiral de Gama, who wasin command of the insurgent fleet, tried tonegotiate for a surrender on favourable terms. He was short both of men and supplies, and no longer in a position to continue the struggle. The negotiations came to nothing, and on the morning of the 13th the Government fleet steamed into the harbour and, assisted by the forts, opened fire on the insurgent vessels. There was no reply, and after the fire had continued for some time, it was realised that de Gamaand his crews had abandoned their ships during tlae night. The Admiral and his principal officers had taken refuge on board of one of the foreign men-of-war. The Nichtcroy had been ordered to use her dynamite gun to demolish the rebel fort on Villegagnon Island, but when the critical moment came the apparatus was found to beout of order. It may be noted here that the Nichteroy was resold to the United States at the outbreak of the war with Spain, and renamedthe Buffalo, but she proved as useless in Cuban waters as she had been at Rio.

The insurrection in the north ended with the abandonment of tlae fleet. AdmiralMelloheld out a littlelonger in the south. All that was left of his fleet was the turret-ship Aquidaban. He hadhis headquartersat Santa Caterina Bay, some five hundred miles down the coast from Rio. The entrance to thebay waspartly closed by a line ofsubmarine mines,and the Aquidaban laybehind them anchored near the small fort on tlae island of Santa Cruz, which with the adjacent mainland was in the hands of the insurgents. In themiddle of April Peixoto sent a flotilla of four large modern torpedo boats, the Sampaio (built at Elswick) and the Affonso, Pedro Ivo, and Silvado (built in Germany), to attempt to destroy the Aquidaban.

A first attack in thenight between the 14th and 15th of April failed, the boats being discovered almost as soon as they entered the bay and retreating to tlae open sea. Tlae following night they got in covered by intense moonless darkness. They passed over the line of mines