The ranger company in which we had been ranked was stationed below, on
the Transit road; but as it would return to head-quarters as soon as
the California immigrants, now due, had crossed over to the Pacific, we
were ordered to await it there. We spent the interim foraging for our
animals or loitering about the camp. It may be that some short
exposition of filibuster spirit and circumstances, as we saw them at
this leisure time, will have interest for one or two. A few weeks
before our arrival, the prospect of the Americans in Nicaragua was
black enough, and, indeed, despaired of by most. General Henningsen,
with the greater part of the force, was cooped up and half starved in
Granada, by three or four thousand Costa Ricans and Chamorristas;
General Walker, with the remainder, lay lower down on the Isthmus,
watched by a second division of the enemy, and too weak to give him any
assistance. General Henningsen's men, reduced to a mere handful by
starvation and the bullets of the enemy, could hold out but a day or
two longer; and then the entire force of the allies would unite and
beat up General Walker, and end the squalid game. The Central Americans
were certain of their prey. But just at this juncture several hundred
healthy Americans landed on the Transit road, and, placing them on one
of the lake steamers, together with his old force, General Walker took
them up to Granada, sent them ashore in bungos under a heavy fire, told
them to do or die, and then paddled out into the lake with the steamer.
It was a good stroke. The men, without other hope, fought their way
over three successive barricades to General Henningsen, brought him
out, setting fire to the city, reembarked on the steamer, and finally
landed again at the fort of San Jorge, two miles east of Rivas. After
that, General Walker gathered all his force at Rivas, and the enemy
drew off to Granada, with some thirty or forty miles between.