Against them was arrayed a force, in all, of 21,000 Servile Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and San Salvadorians, with at least 10,000 Indian auxiliaries. The Allies admitted a loss of 15,000 in all the campaigns. One-third, perhaps, of the Americans died in Nicaragua. I take the assertions of General Henningsen, in the absence of any official figures. Some estimate of their deeds may be gathered from the surgical report, which showed that the proportion of wounds treated was 137 to every hundred men. Those who did not shirk their duty must have carried away many a scar, when they were fortunate enough to carry away their lives, to average the immunity of the cowardly and the false. It is not placing the proportion too high to say that about one thousand five hundred was the number of those who were steadfast and true. These were mostly Californians, when to be Californian meant to belong to that race of giants who had come from all parts of the earth in search of gold, and then journeyed two thousand miles further in search of adventure. Nine-tenths of them were Americans, of every rank in life, from college to prison graduates, who boasted that "California was the pick of the world, and they were the pick of California"; nor quarrelled with him who chose to put it, "California is the sink of the world, and we are the sewer of California." Young Southerners drifted to Nicaragua, as naturally as young Northerners ran away to sea. A son and a nephew of Senator Bayard ran away from school to join the filibusters, and might have added some military glory to the family name, but that Walker sent them home at the request of the American State department. Henningsen's first aid was a youth of nineteen, named Burbank, who had run away from the Virginia military institute, and would have been entitled, had he lived, to a fortune of 100,000 dollars, which in those days was esteemed wealth. A rather worthless sergeant did actually fall heir to a fortune of that amount, which he was summoned home to enjoy, but purposely missed the steamer and remained to die in Nicaragua. All the strange, wild natures for whom even California had grown too tame, drifted naturally into the filibuster's camp. "I have heard," says Henningsen, "two greasy privates disputing over the correct reading and comparative merits of Æschylus and Euripides. I have seen a soldier on guard incessantly scribbling strips of paper, which turned out to be a finely versified translation of his dog's-eared copy of the '_Divina Commedia_.'"