Late in the afternoon, when the Californians had departed for Virgin Bay, where they were to embark on Lake Nicaragua, our party of recruits took the road for the same place, on our way to Rivas, the head-quarters of the filibuster army. A short distance from the Pacific, we began the ascent of the Cordillera chain, not very formidable here, but broken into spurs and irregular ridges, with deep umbrageous hollows, and little streams of clear water winding noisily among them. Coming down from this rugged high ground, we entered a wide plain, stretching away to Lake Nicaragua, out of whose waters we saw the blue cones of Ometepec and Madeira lifting their heads up above all, and capped with clouds. Before we had crossed the twelve miles between ocean and lake, and entered Virgin Bay, it was dark, and the Californians were already hurrying aboard a little steamer, which puffed and whistled at the wharf. In half an hour afterwards they were steaming across the lake for the entrance or head of the Rio San Juan.

It was here that we ate our first meal at the expense of General Walker, or, rather, at the expense of an innkeeper of Virgin Bay; for he, our entertainer, looked upon us as little better than sorners, declaring he had already fed filibusters to the value of six thousand dollars, without other return than General Walker's promise to pay, which he professed to esteem but slightly or not at all. These hotel-keepers of Virgin Bay and San Juan, who came in the wake of the Transit Company, and made their money by the California passengers, seemed to be a good deal worried by General Walker. Their business was no longer profitable, and their families lived in a state of continual alarm between the combatants; yet they were not allowed the alternative of flight; for it was General Walker's policy, wise or unwise, when he had got a man into Nicaragua who was useful to him, to keep him there; and the last Transit Company, being entirely in his interest, carried no emigrant out of the Isthmus unfurnished with a passport from President Walker himself.

That night we slept in an empty building, and were aroused next morning at daybreak, and ordered to continue our march to Rivas, which was said to lie nine miles to the north of us. We set forward, grumbling sorely for lack of breakfast, and stiff from our twelve-miles' march of the evening before. Our path led us sometimes under the deep shades of a tangled forest, sometimes along the open lake-beach, on which the waves rolled with almost the swell of an ocean surf. A few miles short of Rivas we emerged from the ragged forest, and entered a beautiful, cultivated country, through which we passed along green lanes fringed with broad-leaved plantains, bending oranges, tufted palms, and all tropical fruit-trees,—a very Nicaraguan paradise to the sore-footed wayfarer. At last this enchanting approach brought us to the outskirts of Rivas, and we entered a narrow, mud-walled street, and never halted until we came out upon the central and only plaza of the miserable town. Our incumbered march, without breakfast, after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in our little crowd of world-battered and battering strong men, topers, and vagabonds.

The square we had entered was perhaps one hundred yards or more in width, much overgrown with grass, and surrounded by buildings of mean and gloomy aspect. Six narrow and sordid streets debouched into it,—two coming with parallel courses from the west, two from the east, and one entering at each eastern angle from the north and south. It was at the opening of the last of these that we rested, and received our first impressions of the wretched plaza,—since hung for us with a thousand dirty reminiscences.

It displayed none of those architectural embellishments and attempts at magnificence which usually centre about the plazas of the Spanish-American capitals,—not even a carved door-facing or trifling ornament of any description. The entire side on our right, between the two eastern streets, was occupied by the cracked and roofless walls of an ancient church or convent, which had long been a neglected ruin. The fallen stones and mortar had raised a sloping embankment high up its venerable sides; and the small trees, here and there shooting above the luxuriant grass and running vines which, covered this climbing pile of rubbish, waved their branches over the top of the mouldering walls. The interior of the crumbling structure was a wilderness of rank grass and weeds, the elysium of reptiles, iguanas, centipedes, and ten thousand poisonous insects. On our left, opposite the falling church, was another ruin; but its vulgar features owned none of the green and mossy dignity of age, which gave a melancholy beauty to the former. It was a glaring pile of naked dust and rubbish, and its shot crumbled walls and riddled doors told the tale of its destruction. The entire front on that side of the plaza was in ruins, with the exception of one stout building on the corner diagonally opposed to us. The northern side was inclosed by a long, low building, with its elevated doors partly hidden by the far-projecting, red-tiled roof; and in front of it six or eight grim pieces of cannon, mounted upon wheels, gaped their black mouths toward us. Our own side of the square was occupied by a building exactly like the one opposite. The low-reaching roof was supported by wooden posts, and the long porch or corridor between the posts and the wall was paved with large earthen tiles. The doors, elevated several feet above this pavement to baffle the heat of a tropical sun, were darkened by the overhanging roof; and this, together with the effect of the small wooden-grated windows and the absence of furniture, gave the rooms a gloomy and comfortless aspect. All these buildings, with the exception of the ruined convent, which was of stone, were built of adobes, or large sun-dried blocks of mud; and their walls, doors, and staring red roofs were everywhere bruised or perforated with shot.

Such was the plaza and middle spot of Rivas, a town of some two or three thousand inhabitants, where General Walker stood at bay many weary days against the combined Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, and Chamorristas, and was netted at last. But these observations of the squalid plaza were of another date. At present our eyes and thoughts fasten upon the crowd of melancholy, fever-eaten filibusters, who walk with heavy pace up and down the corridors, and along the paths which cross the grass-grown plaza. There was a morbid, yellowish glaze, almost universal, on their faces, and an unnatural listlessness and utter lack of animation in all their movements and conversation, which contrasted painfully with the boisterous hilarity and rugged healthiness of our late Californian fellow-travellers. Their appearance was most forlorn and despicable in a military view,—no soldier's uniform or spirit amongst them, only the poor man's uniform of rags and dirt, and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men. Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their trade; some, for the most part with difficulty, carried muskets or rifles; some, the better-dressed and healthier looking, wore swords,—a weapon, as I afterwards found, distinctive of commissioned officers; some had with them only their pistols or cartridge-boxes, which, belted around the middle, served a double purpose in keeping up their ragged breeches. Then almost all of them, as they moved about or lay in the shade of the corridors, sucked or gnawed some fruit of the country,—the only thing which they seemed to do with energy or due sensation.

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