brought myself to tolerate a colony of them, which had taken up their quarters in the adobe walls of my court-yard in Leon. During the day we passed an island near the place of divergence of the Juanillo, upon which an adventurous Nicaraguan from the interior had established a plantain-walk. His house was nothing more than a shed, and under it was strung a couple of hammocks, in which the master and his spouse swung slowly to and fro, complete impersonations of idleness and ease. A couple of naked children were rolling in the sand of the shore, upon which was drawn up a graceful canoe, the whole constituting a picture of primitive simplicity, to be found nowhere except under the tropics. Our men shouted, and were answered by a couple of wolfish-looking dogs, while the children scampered for the hut in apparent alarm, but neither father nor mother took the trouble to rise. Why should they? That night we came to anchor a few miles below the mouth of the Serapiqui, and next morning passed the spot where the Nicaraguan boatmen had made their stand against the English, after the capture of San Juan. The position was well chosen, at the head of a long reach, where the river takes a sudden bend, and where the hills, for the first time, come down to the water. Here they had cleared off the trees, and with their trunks had constructed a hasty breastwork, fronting the river. This rude fortification was manned by about one hundred and twenty men, some armed with old fowling-pieces, but others having no weapons except their machetes. They had also one or two rusty pieces of artillery, which none of them knew how to use, and with these preparations they awaited the ascent of the English. The latter, made up of three hundred picked men, from the vessels-of-war “Alarm” and “Vixen,” in launches carrying guns at their bows, reached this place on the 12th of February, 1848. There could, of course, be but one result. The Nicaraguans were dislodged, with the loss of some fifteen or twenty killed, and about the same number wounded. With an equal force and equipments, the issue might have been different. The English commander reported his loss at two killed and fourteen wounded, but the Nicaraguans protest that it was four or five times that number, and the men were anxious to convince us of the fact by opening the grave where the English had buried their dead. We did not, however, take interest enough in the matter to stop, and were consequently obliged to keep our doubts, if we entertained any, to ourselves. Certain it is, that the British commander did not include in his statement the loss of Mr. Walker, “British Consul and General Agent on the Mosquito shore,” who, with a boon companion, was reported “accidentally drowned.” Walker was the most effective agent in getting up the attack on San Juan, and in organizing the British pretensions, being always at hand to manufacture “historical evidence,” and his death almost consoled the Nicaraguans for their defeat.