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security for liberty of speech, said that if Morazan's horses had not been so tired, every man of Figoroa's would have been killed. Unhappily, I could not but see that our news would have been more acceptable if we could have reported Morazan completely prostrated, wounded, or even dead. As we advanced I could perceive that the sides of the houses were marked by musket-balls, and the fronts on the plaza were fearfully scarified. My house was near the plaza, and three musket-balls, picked out of the woodwork, were saved for my inspection, as a sample of the battle. In an hour after my arrival I had seen nearly all my old friends. Engrossed by my own troubles, I had not imagined the full extent of theirs. I cannot describe the satisfaction with which I found myself once more among them, and for a little while, at least, at rest. I still had anxieties; I had no letters from home, and Mr. Catherwood had not arrived; but I had no uneasiness about him, for he was not in the line of danger; and when I lay down I had the comfortable sensation that there was nothing to drive me forward the next day. The captain took up his abode with me. It was an odd finale to his expedition against Guatimala; but, after all, it was better than remaining at the port.

Great changes had taken place in Guatimala since I left, and it may not be amiss here to give a brief account of what had occurred in my absence. The reader will remember the treaty between Carrera and Guzman, the general of the State of Los Altos, by which the former surrendered to the latter four hundred old muskets. Since that time Guatimala had adopted Carrera (or had been adopted by him, I hardly know which), and, on the ground that the distrust formerly entertained of him no longer existed, demanded a res-·

titution of the muskets to him. The State of Los Altos refused. This state was at that time the focus of Liberal principles, and Quezaltenango, the capital, was the asylum of Liberals banished from Guatimala. Appre hending, or pretending to apprehend, an invasion from that state, and using the restitution of the four hundred worthless muskets as a pretext, Carrera marched against Quezaltenango with one thousand men. The Indians, believing that he came to destroy the whites, assisted him. Guzman's troops deserted him, and Carrera with his own hands took him prisoner, sick and encumbered with a greatcoat, in the act of dashing his horse down a deep ravine to escape: he sent to Guatimala Guzman's military coat, with the names of Omoa, Truxillos, and other places where Guzman had distinguished himself in the service of the republic, labelled on it, and a letter to the government, stating that he had sent the coat as a proof that he had taken Guzman. A gentleman told me that he saw this coat on its way, stuck on a pole, and paraded by an insulting rabble around the plaza of the Antigua. After the battle Carrera marched to the capital, deposed the chief of the state and other officers, garrisoned it with his own soldiers, and, not understanding the technical distinctions of state lines, destroyed its existence as a separate state, and annexed it to Guatimala, or, rather, to his own command.

In honour of his distinguished services, public notice was given that on Monday the seventeenth he would make his triumphal entry into Guatimala,, and on that day he did enter, under arches erected across the streets, amid the firing of cannon, waving of flags, and music, with General Guzman, personally known to all the principal inhabitants, who but a year before had hastened at their piteous call to save them from the hands of this

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same Carrera, placed sidewise on a mule, with his feet tied under him, his face so bruised, swollen, and disfigured by stones and blows of machetes that he could not be recognised, and the prisoners tied together with ropes; and the chief of the state, secretary of state, and secretary of the Constituent Assembly rode by Carrera's side in this disgraceful triumph.

General Guzman was one of those who had been liberated from prison by General Morazan. He had escaped from the plaza with the remnant of his forces, but, unable to endure the fatigues of the journey, he was left behind, secreted on the road; and General Morazan told me that, in consequence of the cruelty exercised upon him, and the horrible state of anxiety in which he was kept, reason had deserted its throne, and his once strong mind was gone.

From this time the city settled into a volcanic calm, quivering with apprehensions of an attack by General Morazan, a rising of the Indians and a war of castes, and startled by occasional rumours that Carrera intended to bring Guzman and the prisoners out into the plaza and shoot them. On the fourteenth of March intelligence was received from Figoroa that General Morazan had crossed the Rio Paz and was marching against Guatimala. This swallowed up all other apprehensions. Carrera was the only man who could protect the city. On the fifteenth he marched out with nine hundred men toward Arazola, leaving the plaza occupied by five hundred men. Great gloom hung over the city. The same day Morazan arrived at the Coral de Piedra, eleven leagues from Guatimala. On the sixteenth the soldiers commenced erecting parapets at the corners of the plaza; many Indians came in from the villages to assist, and Carrera took up his position at the Aceytuna,

a league and a half from the city. On the seventeenth Carrera rode into the city, and with the chief of the state and others, went around to visit the fortifications and rouse the people to arms. At noon he returned to the Aceytuna, and at four o'clock intelligence was received that Morazan's army was descending the Questa de Pinula, the last range before reaching the plain of Guatimala. The bells tolled the alarm, and great consfernation prevailed in the city. Morazan's army slept that night on the plain.

Before daylight he marched upon the city and entered the gate of Buena Vista, leaving all his cavalry and part of his infantry at the Plaza de Toros and on the heights of Calvario, under Colonel Cabanes, to watch the movements of Carrera, and with seven hundred men occupied the Plaza of Guadaloupe, depositing his parque, equipage, a hundred women (more or less of whom always accompany an expedition in that country), and all his train, in the Hospital of San Juan de Dios. Hence he sent Perez and Rivas, with four or five hundred men, to attack the plaza. These passed up a street descending from the centre of the city, and, while covered by the brow of the hill, climbed over the yard-wall of the Church of Escuela de Cristo, and passed through the church into the street opposite the mint, in the rear of one side of the plaza. Twenty-seven Indians were engaged in making a redoubt at the door, and twenty-six bodies were found on the ground, nine killed and seventeen wounded. When I saw it the ground was still red with blood. Entering the mint, the invaders were received with a murderous fire along the corridor; but, forcing their way through, they broke open the front portal, and rushed into the plaza. The plaza was occupied by the five hundred men left by Carrera, and two

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or three hundred Indians, who fell back, closed up near the porch of the Cathedral, and in a few moments all fled, leaving the plaza, with all their ammunition, in the possession of the assailants. Rivera Paz and Don Luis Bartres, the chief and secretary of the state, were in the plaza at the time, and but few other white citizens. Carrera did not want white soldiers, and would not permit white men to be officers. Many young men had presented themselves in the plaza, and were told that there were no arms.

In the mean time, Carrera, strengthened by masses of Indians from the villages around, attacked the division on the heights of Calvario. Morazan, with the small force left at San Juan de Dios, went to the assistance of Cabanes. The battle lasted an hour and a half, fierce and bloody, and fought hand to hand. Morazan lost some of his best officers. Sanches was killed by Sotero Carrera, a brother of the general. Carrera and Morazan met, and Carrera says that he cut Morazan's saddle nearly in two, Morazan was routed, pursued so closely that he could not take up his equipage, and hurried on to the plaza, having lost three hundred muskets, four hundred men killed, wounded, and prisoners, and all his baggage. At ten o'clock his whole force was penned up in the plaza, surrounded by an immense mass of Indian soldiers, and fired upon from all the corners. Manning the parapets and stationing pickets on the roofs of the houses, he kept up a galling fire in return.

Pent up in this fearful position, Morazan had time to reflect. But a year before he was received with ringing of bells, firing of cannon, joyful acclamations, and dep utations of grateful citizens, as the only man who could save them from Carrera and destruction. Among the few white citizens in the plaza at the time of the entry