these openings, several miles from the Transit road, we passed a
red-tiled building, the only one of any sort on the trail beyond the
ring-fenced cultivation of Rivas. It was known as the Jocote
Ranch-house, and became afterwards the scene of a bloody defeat for the
filibusters.

Our ride terminated at a large open shed, standing on the Transit road,
two miles east of San Juan, which had been erected by the Transit
Company, and was used by them as shelter for their carriages. Here,
together with a second company of mounted rangers, we were to quarter
until the arrival of the California passengers; and then it was to be
our duty to guard those feeble travellers through the dominions of
President Walker to the Pacific. Our own company numbered some thirty
heads,--men and officers,--and being but lately come to Nicaragua, were
yet tolerably healthy and lively,--although shaken at times by chills
and melancholy, and nearly all turning perceptibly yellow. At all times
of the day, when not in the presence of food or drink, some of them
were bewailing the hour they came to Nicaragua, and sighing sadly to
escape; and had Samuel Absalom come there from any light motive of
vanity, he had surely repented with them: as it was, he had seen a
worse day; the life, too, was not without charms for some men, and his
heart stayed within him through all. The other company was even smaller
than ours, older soldiers, and in much worse health,--many of them
having a chill daily, others wasted with perpetual diarrhoea.

Our routine of duty at this camp was, to ride each day into the forest
and hunt our ration of beef, to water our horses, and to stand an
hour's guard occasionally at night; the remainder of consciousness we
spent broiling and eating cow's flesh, sucking sugar-cane, and waging
horrid warfare against a host of ravenous ticks and crawling creatures