This island is one of the healthiest places in the country, being a volcanic upheaval, with a mountain towering from its centre to a height of five thousand feet. A few families of native Indian fishermen, rude and savage, are its only inhabitants, and their frail huts dot the margin of the lake. In the interior a dense jungle bars the road to the mountain top. The rank growth of the tropics hides the ruined monuments of a civilization which preceded Conquistador and Aztec. The traveller who cuts his way through the rank vegetation finds himself, here and there, in the presence of quaintly sculptured, hideous idols overturned. In remoter nooks, whither his Indian guide cares not to lead him, he would see the gods whom the Christians threw down, reinstated on their pedestals; and the good folk of Granada say in whispers, that thither, at stated times, flock silent, dusky worshippers, to offer up unholy rites and pray for the return of the gods of their fathers, who fed on human victims, and spoke to their people in the awful accents of the volcano. Little knew or recked the bold filibusters, quarantined beneath the frowning peak of Omotepe, of the alleged idolatrous practices or the evil repute in which the islanders were held by their mainland neighbors. They nursed their wounds with scant patience, recovered, and sought a chance to get new ones, or died and were forgotten, as though their passports to the realm of Death had been viséd by the most legitimate of all lawful war-makers. Walker, having entrusted to Henningsen the duty of destroying Granada, set out for Rivas. Upon his departure, many of the men and some of the officers, feeling that the severe restraints of discipline were withdrawn, plunged into a wild debauch. Henningsen, with the aid of such as were in decent condition, began the work of firing the town. As the smoke of the burning houses arose in the air the enemy's pickets saw and reported it to General Belloso, who rightly surmised the cause and ordered an immediate attack. The miserable debauchees awoke from their stupor to find that they had aroused a formidable foe. Five thousand furious Serviles were pouring into the city, and had already secured a strong strategic point in the church of the Guadaloupe, whence their sharpshooters were keeping in play the useful men whom Henningsen could gather about him.