While in Jamaica, Bolívar was as active as he had been in Venezuela. While he used his pen to teach the world the meaning of the South American Revolution, and to try and obtain friends for the cause of freedom, he worked actively in the Island and in other parts of the West Indies to organize an expedition to the continent. In this work he was very greatly helped by Luis Brion,--a wealthy merchant of Curaçao,--who sacrificed practically all of his private fortune in helping the cause of Liberty. The influence exercised by the Holy Alliance on the governments of Europe had some effect on the authorities of Jamaica, who hindered the assembling of munitions of war by Bolívar. He then decided to go to the Republic of Haiti, after having escaped almost by a miracle, an assassin who, believing that he was asleep in a hammock where he usually rested, stabbed to death a man occupying Bolívar's customary place. The assassin was a slave set free by Bolívar. On his way to Haiti he learned of the surrender of Cartagena. The President of Haiti, Alexander Pétion, received Bolívar in a most friendly way, and gave him very substantial assistance in the preparations for his expedition to the continent. The men who had succeeded in escaping from Cartagena were also well received by Pétion, and treated in a most hospitable manner. Among them many were personal enemies of Bolívar. None the less, Bolívar was elected supreme head of the expedition, and the refugees from Cartagena followed him in his new undertaking, with Mariño as Major General of the Army and Brion as Admiral. About 250 persons constituted the party, but they carried enough ammunition to arm six thousand men, whom they hoped to gather together on the continent. Once more Bolívar seemed to undertake the impossible, but, as ever, he had full confidence in the ultimate triumph of liberty. The proportion of his enemies to his followers was 100 to 1. Public opinion was still against him, but he was still the same man who, at that time more than any other, had become a symbol--the symbol of America's freedom. Bolívar made his way to the Island of Margarita, where the Spanish commander had systematically carried on a work of destruction of wealth and humiliation of families.