In the United States, particularly in California, Walker's amazing success gave an impulse to filibustering of a different, because more sanguine, nature from that produced by the first expeditions of Lopez to Cuba. France and England also awoke to behold with dismay this solution of the Central American problem. Not less alarmed was the Conservative element in Spanish America, the more reactionary part of which talked wildly of calling in a European protectorate and of breaking off commercial intercourse with the North Americans. Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador, and Central America were threatened by invading expeditions, while Nicaragua was made the objective point of an actual invasion from the Atlantic coast. It will be remembered that the Mosquito king's grant to the Shepards had been transferred to a colonization company in the United States; upon the strength of which Henry L. Kinney, of Philadelphia, proceeded to occupy his property. But there were many difficulties in the way. The grant had been revoked by his Majesty in a lucid interval. Great Britain, as guardian of the kingdom, repudiated the contract. Nicaragua steadily declined to recognize the rights of either party to her territory; and, to complete the adventurer's misfortune, the Federal authorities arrested him when about to lead his first detachment of colonists to his tropical possessions. Not to rehearse the tedious litigation which followed, it suffices to say that the Kinney Expedition, having succeeded in embarking, was shortly afterwards wrecked on Turk's Island, finally reaching San Juan del Norte in a most forlorn plight. There new misfortunes overtook them. Most of the military colonists sailed up the river to share the more promising fortunes of Walker, to whom Kinney himself, despairing of success unaided, at last made overtures for an alliance offensive and defensive. But the messenger found Walker firmly entrenched in power and, as a member of the government, bound to consider all foreign claims on the Mosquito coast as mere usurpations. Had it been otherwise, he might perhaps have returned a less peremptory answer than the brief threat: "Tell Mr. Kinney, or Colonel Kinney, or whatever he calls himself, that if I find him on Nicaraguan soil, I will most assuredly hang him." The new element in Nicaragua did not fail to uphold the sovereign independence of the country with zeal, even if it may have sometimes lacked discretion. Walker was a stickler for dignity, and never failed to exact the respect due to himself, his office, and his flag. An English merchant, of Realejo, who had resisted a Government levy, and, with the sublime assurance of his race, had hoisted the Union Jack over his house, was caustically invited by Walker to lower the emblem or produce his Government's license to display the flag of a representative. "If he refuses," said Walker, "tear it down, trample it under foot, and put the fellow in irons." The