There were brave men, too, before Agamemnon. Mexier and Perry and Nolan, names well known on the border, lived and fought, and died, alas in vain, before the adopted son of an Indian, sturdy Sam Houston, crowned the long struggle with victory. Filibusters all, if you will, but every one a man, in an age when manliness is none too highly prized, and a country which is belied as the chosen home of dollar worshippers merely. CHAPTER III The Lopez Expedition--Landing at Cardenas--Pickett's Fight--An Exciting Chase--Last Expedition--Execution of Lopez and Crittenden. Filibusterism under that name, however, was unknown to the people of the United States, until the famous descents of Lopez upon Cuba in 1850 and 1851. Narciso Lopez was a countryman of Miranda, and, like him, an officer in the Spanish service. Born at Caracas in 1799, he entered the royal army at an early age, attained the rank of colonel in his twenty-first year, and distinguished himself so well in the first Carlist war that he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and made Governor of Valencia. He went to Cuba in 1843 with Governor-General Valdes, who took him into high favour, and loaded him with honours. But O'Donnell, the successor of Valdes, did not continue the vice-regal favours, and Lopez consequently retired to private life, and ere long was discovered to be conspiring against the Government. He fled to the United States, where he found hundreds of adventurous spirits ready and eager for any undertaking that bade fair to be spiced with danger. His first attempt at invasion, in August, 1849, was checked at the outset by President Taylor, whose marshals captured the whole expedition as it was on the point of departure from New York. Nothing daunted by this mishap, Lopez travelled throughout the Southern and South-Western States, secretly enlisting men and making provision for their transportation to Cuba. At New Orleans he chartered a steamer and two barks and assembled his forces. From the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi and the Gulf States they came, a hardy band of adventurers, three-fourths of whom had served in the Mexican War, the officers being men of known courage and ability. Colonel Theodore O'Hara commanded the first detachment, numbering 250, which sailed on the bark _Georgiana_, on the 25th of April, 1850, under orders to rendezvous at the island of Mujeres. Their colonel had won an honourable fame in the Mexican War and was not without greater distinction in the world of letters. He wrote the "Bivouac of the Dead," a lyric which will live at least as long as the memory of those whom it celebrated. Three weeks after their departure they were joined at the island of Contoy (for the _Georgiana_ had not been able to make the rendezvous) by the steamer _Creole_, carrying Lopez and his fortunes and 450 followers. The whole command was then transferred to the _Creole_ and sailed away for the shores of Cuba.