Walker ordered Schlessinger to march with this force into the Department of Guanacaste. His object was to strike the first blow of the war on the territory held by the enemy, and also to have a strong outpost at some distance south of the Transit, to guard against any surprise on the line of American travel across the Isthmus. With the same view companies were occupying Castillo and Hipp’s Point, at the mouth of the Serapaqui. It was necessary to hold the Transit with more tenacity than any other part of the State, not only because the property there had more need of protection than any other in the Republic from the foreign enemy, but also because of the new arrangements made it was from the Transit the Nicaragua force was to be fed and supplied with new troops. As there are very few people between the Transit road and the line of Guanacaste, the necessity for a corps of observation toward the south was the more urgent. The greatest difficulty in war, that of knowing accurately your enemy’s movements, is increased in Central America by the want of facilities for communication, and by the habit frequent revolutions have begot of spreading the most exaggerated reports about most trifling facts. You can always get some facts, however, from any report; so that, all things considered, it requires more labor to get facts from thinly settled than from populous districts. On the 16th, Schlessinger marched from San Juan del Sur toward the La Flor, a small stream which separates Guanacaste from the Meridional Department. Before leaving he had much irritated Major Brewster, who was commanding at Rivas, by the numerous irregularities he practised, but with natural reluctance that officer was slow in reporting such facts at headquarters. The march to the La Flor and beyond it to Salinas was characterized by the same irregularity which marked the command while on the Transit; and so great was the disorder that the surgeon of the command, a new-comer, and ignorant of the grave fault he was committing, left the force and returned to Granada with letters from Schlessinger. This fact, all too late, revealed the weakness of the commander who had permitted his only surgeon to leave at a time when he might any day engage the enemy. With such ignorance of duty, on the part of both commander and surgeon, it was necessary to carry on the war in the best manner possible. This instance of Schlessinger and his surgeon, one out of many, illustrates a difficulty which beset the Americans during the whole war.