After the return of the Americans to Granada an enemy fiercer and more malignant than the Costa Ricans began to ravage their thinned ranks. The fever which had before carried off many, re-appeared in an even aggravated form. Major Brewster was one of its first victims; and few could have been more missed than he. He had the calmness of spirit no danger disturbed; and it was only in the hour of trial and misfortune his full value could be known. It was the loss of officers—dying just as they began to be formed, and as their character and value began to be known—which prevented the American force from acquiring the discipline and steady virtue it might otherwise have attained. During the earlier as well as the later stages of the war in Nicaragua, it was the officer, ambitious of gaining a knowledge of his profession, and zealous in the pursuit of duty, who was most apt to seek the post of danger, and was therefore most likely to fall by the bullets of the enemy; and at times, too, it seemed as if disease also seized on such with more avidity than it did on others who might have been better spared. New-comers, however, began to arrive to take the place of those cut off by battle and disease. On the morning of the 21st of April the steamer arrived at Granada with about two hundred men in charge of General Hornsby, who had been absent on business in the United States. As the Americans had been re-organized after the 13th in two battalions, one rifle, the other light infantry, the new recruits were formed into a second infantry battalion, with Leonidas McIntosh as major, and James Walker and James Mullen as captains. Upward of twenty men had come at their own expense to Granada, and they were enlisted for four months, and put into the rangers under Captain Davenport. This addition to the numbers of the army of course re-animated the old troops—for some of them, considering the services they had seen, might with propriety be called old troops; and after the arrival of the new men all were as eager as ever to march against the enemy at Rivas. And while the Nicaraguan force was increasing, that of Costa Rica was rapidly sinking from the double cancers of cholera and desertion.