When the Americans retired from Rivas, the Costa Ricans were encumbered with so many dead that instead of regularly burying the bodies they threw them into the wells of the town. Their surgical staff, too, was weak; and the hospitals being crowded and ill-regulated, the festering sores of the wounded soldiers tended to produce disease even if the cholera had not appeared. The epidemic which began to prey on their camp soon after the 11th of April, was probably the same _colerin_ that attacked the Democrats at San Juan del Sur the year before, and afterward troubled the Americans at Virgin Bay. The spasms of this form of disease are not so violent as those of the Asiatic cholera, nor does the patient sink so rapidly. Its fatal effects were increased in the Costa Rican camp by the general depression of spirits which pervaded the officers as well as the men after they saw the results of the first conflict with the enemy they had come to drive, as they imagined, by easy marches, and by the mere force of their numbers, out of Central America. Walker soon heard, through the people of San Jorge, the condition of the Costa Rican camp. Far from receiving recruits from the Nicaraguans, all fled the infected town. Mora began to build barricades as soon as the Americans retired; and this of itself showed fear of another attack. But when cholera and desertion supervened, the invader lost the hope of holding his ground even behind the adobes of Rivas. Nor was it possible for the Costa Rican officers to conceal from the soldiers the fact that the Americans were receiving reinforcements. Increased depression followed the growing apprehension of attack; and the pestilence found its victims each day yielding more readily to his deadly grasp. Then, too, there were vague rumors of movements in Costa Rica against the rule of the Moras. The people, beginning to feel the burden of the war, were asking why it was made; and the party which had for years been banished from the business of the State, was heard to raise its voice against the unjust war an ambitious executive was waging for the increase of his own personal power. D. Rafael Mora saw he must leave Rivas and return to San José; so, placing his brother-in-law, General José Maria Cañas, in charge of the army, with orders to lead it back to Costa Rica, the troubled President mounted his horse, and almost alone took the road to Guanacaste.