a fabrication; but accidentally, in retreating from Guatimala, he found himself in the very house where the attempt was said to have been made; and the man of the house told him that Carrera, having offered outrage to a member of his family, he himself had stabbed him, as was supposed mortally; and in order to account for his wounds, and turn away inquiries from the cause, it was fastened upon Morazan, and so flew all through the country. One of his officers accompanied the story with details of the outrage; and I felt very sure that, if Carrera ever fell into his hands, he would shoot him on the spot.

With the opinion that he entertained of Carrera and his soldiers, he of course considered it unsafe for us to go on to Guatimala. But I was exceedingly anxious to set out; and the flush of excitement over, as the captain's trunks had gone on, he was equally so. Carrera might arrive at any moment, in which case we might again change owners, or, at all events, be the witnesses of a sanguinary battle, for Morazan would defend the frontier town of his own state to the death.

I told General Morazan my wish and purpose, and the difficulty of procuring a guide. He said that an escort of soldiers would expose us to certain danger; even a single soldier, without his musket and cartridgebox (these being the only distinguishing marks of a soldier), might be recognised; but he would send for the alcalde, and procure us some trusty person from the town. I bade him farewell with an interest greater than I had felt for any man in the country. Little did we then know the calamities that were still in store for him; that very night most of his soldiers deserted, having been kept together only by the danger to which they were exposed while in an enemy's coun

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try. With the rest he marched to Zonzonate, seized a vessel at the port, manning her with his own men, and sent her to Libertad, the port of San Salvador. He then marched to the capital, where the people, who had for years idolized him in power, turned their backs upon him in misfortune, and received him with open insults in the streets. With many of his officers, who were too deeply compromised to remain, he embarked for Chili. Suffering from confinement on board a small vessel, he stopped in Costa Rica, and asked permission for some of them to land. He did not ask it for himself, for he knew it would be refused. Leaving some of them behind, he went on to join his family in Chili. Amid the fierceness of party spirit it was impossible for a stranger to form a true estimate of the character of a public man. The great outcry against General Morazan was hostility to the church and forced loans. For his hostility to the church there is the justification that it is at this day a pall upon the spirit of free institutions, degrading and debasing instead of elevating the Christian character; and for forced loans constant wars may plead. His worst enemies admit that he was exemplary in his private relations, and, what they consider no small praise, that he was not sanguinary. He is now fallen and in exile, probably forever, under sentence of death if he returns; all the truckling worshippers of a rising sun are blasting his name and memory; but I verily believe, and I know I shall bring down upon me the indignation of the whole Central party by the assertion, I verily believe they have driven from their shores the best man in Central America.

The population of the town was devoted to General Morazan, and an old man brought to us his son, a young man about twenty-two, as a guide; but when he learned

that we wanted him to go with us all the way to Rio Paz, he left us, as he said, to procure a horse. We waited nearly an hour, when the old man reappeared with a little boy about ten years old, dressed in a straw hat and shirt, and mounted on a bare-backed horse. The young man had disappeared and could not be found; in fact, he was afraid to go, and it was thought this little boy would run less risk. I was never much disturbed by general reports of robbers or assassins, but there was palpable danger in meeting any of the routed troops. Desperate by defeat, and assassin-like in disposition; not very amiable to us before; and now, from having seen us lounging about the town at that inauspicious moment, likely to connect us with the movements of Morazan, I believed that if we fell in with them we should be murdered. But, on the other hand, they had not let the grass grow under their feet; had probably been flying all night, in apprehension of pursuit; shunning the main road, had perhaps crossed the Rio Paz, and, once in Guatimala, had dispersed to their own villages; besides which, the rout had been so total that they were probably escaping three or four together, and would be as likely to run from us as we from them. At all events, it was better to go than wait till Carrera came upon the town.

With these calculations and really uncomfortable feelings, we bade farewell to some of the officers who were waiting to see us off, and at nine o'clock set out. Descending from the table-land on which the town is built, we entered an open plain, over which we could see to a great distance, and which would furnish, if necessary, a good field for the evolutions of our cavalry. We passed the Lake of Aguachapa, the beauty of which, under other circumstances, would have attracted our

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admiration; and as our little guide seemed at fault, we stopped at a hut to inquire the road. The people were afraid to answer any questions. Figoroa's soldiers and Morazan's had passed by, but they did not know it; they could not tell whether any fugitive soldiers had passed, and only knew the road to the Rio Paz. It was easy to see that they thought of nothing else; but they said they were poor people, and at work all the time, and did not know what was going on. In half an hour we met three Indians, with loads of pottery on their backs. The poor fellows pulled off their hats, and trembled when we inquired if there were any routed soldiers on before. It occurred to us that this inquiry would expose us to the suspicion of being officers of Morazan in pursuit, and that, if we met any one, we had better ask no questions. Beyond this there were many roads, all of which, the boy said, led to the Rio Paz; but he had never been there before, and did not know the right one. We followed one which took us into the woods, and soon commenced descending. The road was broken, stony, and very steep; we descended rapidly, and soon it was manifest no horses had passed on this road for a long time before. Trees lay across it so low that we dismounted, and were obliged to slip our high-peaked saddles to pass under them. It was evidently an old cattle-path, now disused even by cattle. We descended some distance farther, and I proposed to return. My only argument was that it was safer; we knew we were wrong, and might get down so low that our physical strength would not carry us back. The captain said that I had chosen this path; if we had followed his advice, we should have been safe, and that now it was impossible to return. We had an angry quarrel, and, fortunately, in consideration of my having VOL. II.-N

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led into the difficulty, I gave way, and very soon we were cheered by hearing below us the rushing of the river. After a most difficult descent we reached the bank; but here there was no fording-place, and no path on the opposite side.

The river itself was beautiful. The side which we had descended was a high and almost perpendicular mountain, and on both sides trees spread their branches over the water. It was called the River of Peace, but was now the dividing-line of deadly war, the boundary between Guatimala and San Salvador. The inhabitants of the opposite side were in an enemy's country, and the routed troops, both of Morazan and Figoroa, had fled to it for refuge. Riding some distance up the stream, we worked our way across, and on the opposite side found a waccal or drinking-shell, which had probably been left there by some flying soldier. We drank from it as if it had been intended for our use, and left it on the bank for the benefit of the next comer.

We were now in the State of Guatimala, on the banks of a wild river, without any visible path, and our situation was rather more precarious than before, for here the routed soldiers would consider themselves safe, and probably many, after a day and night of toil and fighting, would lie down to rest. We were fortunate in regard to a path, for, riding a short distance through the woods along the bank of the river, we struck one which turned off to the left, and terminated in the camino real leading from the regular fording-place. Here we dismissed our little guide, and set out on the main road. The face of the country was entirely changed, broken and stony, and we saw no one till we reached the hacienda of Palmita. This too seemed desolate. We entered the yard, and did not see a single person till