was denied him within it.
While Walker and his men were battling for their lives in Rivas, during
the months of March and April, 1857, another and a bloody scene in the
tragedy of filibusterism was being enacted on the stage which had
witnessed the failures of De Boulbon and Walker. Towards the end of
March one hundred and fifty men from California were led across the
boundary line into the northern part of Sonora by Henry A. Crabbe, a
former friend of Walker, and like him, a man of bold and ambitious
character. He had been one of the most useful agents in organizing the
latter's expedition to Nicaragua, and through him Walker had secured
some of his most efficient officers, Hornsby, Fisher, and De Brissot,
all of whom had been concerned in a contract between Crabbe and Jerez
similar in its terms to that afterwards made between Castellon and
Walker.
Crabbe was an ex-Senator of the State of California; in his party were
seven former members of the legislature and one present senator,
together with the former State treasurer and State comptroller; men who
had outlived their popularity, perhaps, or who had become tired of
humdrum life and sought a new career in Sonora, the graveyard of
adventurers. Nor was the military element lacking. Colonel Watkins, who
had been with Walker in his expedition to the same country, and a
former lieutenant in the regular army, Colonel T. D. Johns,
superintended the military department as the expedition crossed the
line. They marched through the country without hindrance until they
passed Sonoyta and approached Caborca, on the Gulf of California, near
Point Lobos. There for the first time the Mexicans showed a hostile
front. Crabbe had issued an address to the inhabitants, in which he
claimed that his business in the country was peaceable, his object
being the prosecution of a mining scheme in Sonora; and maintained
that, while his party were armed, they had come so only for
self-defence against the Apache Indians. The truth of the matter was
that Crabbe had been invited to Sonora by the partisans of a political
minority, whose leader, Don Ignacio Pesqueira, had meanwhile gained his
political ends without the aid of foreign allies, and was much
disturbed lest the inopportune arrival of the latter should reflect
upon his present loyalty. Crabbe, who had at much cost and labour
organized his immigrants and arranged for the future immigration of
nine hundred more men, was not disposed to abandon his project. He was
allied by marriage with some of the leading families in the State, and
may have cherished hopes of exchanging places with Pesqueira in
Sonorian affairs. If he counted upon the assistance of the native
population he was doomed to a cruel disappointment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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