During the four months which followed the formation of the new government, Walker gathered about him a force of Americans and other foreigners numbering twelve hundred. They came from all parts of the Union, but chiefly from the Southern and Pacific states. Recruiting offices were opened in San Francisco, whose agents penetrated the mining camps and interior towns, unnoticed or unhindered by the Government authorities. Whenever any opposition was offered, the volunteers frequently bought through tickets to New York, and stopped at Nicaragua to enjoy a little filibustering. In the east more stringent precautions were taken by the authorities, though without much effect, as the colonists were responding to the invitation of the Nicaraguan Government, and could not be legally hindered. Among the adventurers were many idle and desperate characters attracted by visions of beauty and booty, with the broad license of a freebooter's camp. To such the reality proved a terrible revelation; they found, instead of a free lance's easy discipline, a system of military government emulating in its stringent laws that of the great Frederick. Walker's abstemiousness was supplemented by the virtue, much rarer in men of his class, of absolute personal chastity in thought, word, and deed. Drunkenness, debauchery, and profanity were vices which he abhorred. The man who was detected selling liquor to a soldier was punished by a fine of 250 dollars; the drunkard was sent to the guard-house for ten days. With whisky of a vile quality selling at two dollars and a half a bottle, and the terrors of punishment before the eyes of both buyer and seller, drunkenness was rare in Granada. On the outposts discipline was more lax, officers and men availing themselves of secrecy to evade their general's stern commands. The well-behaved, on the other hand, were treated with the greatest favour, receiving their regular pay of a hundred dollars a month, according to some--a quarter of that sum, according to others--and a contingent title to five hundred acres of land. The assurance of peace alone was needed to make Nicaragua, the veritable "Mahomet's Paradise" which its discoverers had named it. But there was no such assurance or prospect in view. Even had Walker been willing to rest content with his present wonderful success, he would not have been permitted so to curb his ambition. His enemies were too many and too powerful and implacable. Great Britain, which had been trespassing, secretly or openly, for half a century, on the rights of the weak Spanish-American republics, could not allow so rich a prize to pass into the hands of the hated "Yankee." Money, men, and arms were furnished to the neighbouring states, and every pretext was made use of to stir up a crusade against the Americans.