In addition to the regular force of the Americans there were more than five hundred men capable of bearing arms engaged in civil business either at Granada or along the line of the Transit. At the capital there were numbers of Americans employed in the civil offices, besides the laborers engaged in building a wharf at the old fort; and at Virgin Bay and San Juan del Sur, the Transit Company had scores of persons engaged in the construction of their works at these two places. Some of these were organized as volunteer companies, and at Virgin Bay a company of this description, with a good uniform, and commanded by George McMurray, had nearly fifty members. Many persons supposed these men could be relied on, in case of disturbance, with as much certainty as the regular force, and hence it was estimated that in the event of invasion nearly twelve hundred Americans could be brought into action for the defence of Nicaragua. A few days afterward, on the 9th of March, the regular force was largely increased by the arrival at Granada of more than two hundred and fifty men, under the direction of D. Domingo de Goicouria. The night before these recruits arrived a bearer of despatches from San Salvador, Col. Padilla, had reached Granada; and on the morning of the 9th, dressed in a ludicrous uniform, and wearing a cocked hat he had brought all the way over the mountains from Cojutepeque, he sallied forth on a visit to the general-in-chief. The new men had just reached the Plaza, and were drawn up so as to show their numbers to the best advantage, when Padilla entered the general’s quarters. The surprise of the San Salvadorian, at the sight of so many strange-looking men, was equal to the amazement the Americans found in his long, lank person, run into trowsers too short for his legs, and with the chest and arms tightly encased in a small military coat, buttoned up to the throat, and obstinate in the habit of slipping its lower edges above the pit of the stomach. As Padilla had brought despatches from the Minister of Relations at Cojutepeque, Señor Hoyos, asking why Americans were being introduced into Nicaragua, the arrival of Goicouria and his recruits was not inopportune.