That most entertaining cosmopolitan, Laurence Oliphant, came very near adding the distinction of being a filibuster to his other experiences. He did, in fact, join an expedition which set out from New Orleans in December, 1856, for San Juan del Norte, with the intention of reinforcing Walker at Rivas. But the good steamer _Texas_ reached her destination too late, Spencer and his Costa Ricans having closed the Transit. Among the adventurous spirits in the company was one who had taken part in the last ill-fated expedition of Lopez to Cuba, and spent a year and a half in a Spanish dungeon. "The story of his escape from a more serious fate," says Oliphant, "was characteristic of many other stirring narratives of a similar description, with which on moonlight nights we used to beguile the evening hours." He had served as an officer on General Lopez's staff during one of the expeditions to Cuba. When that officer, together with many of the more prominent members of the expedition, after a desperate resistance, was captured by the Spanish troops, my friend, who was one of the number, found himself with many of his countrymen thrown into the Havanna jail, and informed that he was to prepare for his execution on the following day. As an act of grace, however, permission was given to all the captives to indite a farewell letter to their friends, informing them of their approaching execution. Most of his fellow-victims could think of some one belonging to them to whom such a piece of information might prove interesting; but the poor captain racked in vain the chambers of his memory for a solitary individual to whom he could impart the melancholy tidings without feeling that his communication would be what in polite society would be called an 'unwarrantable intrusion of his personal affairs upon a comparative stranger.' He could think of nobody that cared about him; revolving this forlorn state of matters in his mind, ashamed to form the only exception to the general scribbling that was taking place, he determined to choose a friend, and then it flashed upon him, that as all the letters would probably be opened, he had better choose a good one. Under his present circumstances, who more appropriate than the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at Washington, then Daniel Webster? Not only should he make a friend of him, but an intimate friend, and then the Spanish Governor might shoot him if he chose, and take the risk. He accordingly commenced: