During the latter part of February there were several encounters between the Rangers and small parties of the enemy. A few riflemen, too, would go out at night and alarm the camp of the Allies by firing on their pickets, and the enemy would, in the same manner, scatter small parties through the plantain patches and fire up the streets of Rivas. The Rangers in the employ of the commissary (of whom at one time there were about thirty) had some skirmishes with the Allies while the former were collecting subsistence for the Americans, and on the afternoon of the 4th of March the enemy took two wagons, several carts, and a number of oxen which had been sent out, in charge of the Rangers, for corn. This capture was made not more than a mile from Rivas, and on an estate belonging to the family of an officer in the Allied army. On the evening of the 4th of March, Caycee, with some forty Rangers, was sent to San Juan del Sur as an escort to Col. Jaquess, Mrs. Dusenberry, the widow of the major mortally wounded at San Jorge, and others going to the United States. They arrived at San Juan without seeing the enemy; but on the 5th, as Caycee was returning to Rivas, he found himself unexpectedly in the presence of 200 of the Allies, just after he passed the Half-way House, and was about to leave the Transit road. The enemy took Caycee by surprise, and he lost six of his men, four killed and two wounded, before he was able to extricate himself from the fire of the Allies. He fell back to San Juan, and remained there until the 7th. In the meantime, Walker having learned, through a native boy, that a Costa Rican force had left San Jorge, and was on the way to the Transit, ordered Sanders to get the Rifles ready for marching. The boy who brought the information to Walker had seen the Costa Ricans pass along the hill-side while he lay hid in the bushes, and he had thus been able to count almost every man. He reported them about 200 strong, and Sanders was sent out to join Caycee with 160 of the Rifles. In the afternoon of the 5th, Sanders, while on the march toward the Transit, met the enemy near a league from the Jocote farm. The Rifles were much scattered when the Costa Ricans first appeared, and Captains Conway and Higley were engaged in deploying their companies on either side of the road when they received the enemy’s attack. The Costa Ricans came on briskly and with confidence; the Rifles, on the contrary, hesitated, and in spite of the efforts of their officers began to give way. Waters, who was with Sanders, made several ineffectual attempts to check the disorder into which the Americans fell, but he could not get the Rifles to make head against the Costa Ricans, and the latter continued to press the rear of the Americans until they reached the point where the road forked—one fork leading to Rivas, the other to San Jorge. The enemy took the road leading to San Jorge; and no doubt the idea that they were cut off from