Placing, then, Waters with the Rangers in front, and Henningsen with the twelve-pound howitzer in the rear, while the wounded and the six-pounders occupied the centre of the column, Walker took the main road from San Jorge to Rivas. As he approached a small rise in the road, near a mile from San Jorge, the general-in-chief found Waters engaged with the enemy, posted some hundred and fifty or two hundred yards in advance, on each side of a deep cut in the road. The Rangers had been engaged for several minutes when the general-in-chief came up; and when Walker saw how the Allies were posted, taking the nearest company, which happened to be that of Captain Clark of the Infantry, he made a detour to the right, and coming suddenly on the enemy’s left flank, drove them across the road, and then from their whole position. Thus sweeping the road as they passed over it, the Americans reached the point known as Cuatro Esquinas, near half a mile from Rivas, without further serious interruption from the Allies. Several times they tried to close on the rear but the resolute and defiant air of Henningsen, kept them at a safe distance. While Walker was at San Jorge, Swingle remained in command at Rivas; and the enemy had once during the day approached the barricades, thinking they might enter the town with small risk. But Swingle was not a man to be trifled with; and the Allies soon gave up their efforts to get a foothold in the place. Then they occupied a house some six hundred yards from the Plaza of Rivas, and near the road between the town and the Cuatro Esquinas. The enemy had, during the afternoon, strongly barricaded this house, and as the head of the American column approached it, the Allies opened a sharp fire of musketry from the loop-holes they had cut through the walls of the building. The Americans were, to some extent, protected by the shelving ground between the house and the road, and many of them thus passed without much danger from the enemy’s fire; but several were hurt before they got under a steep bank which entirely screened them from the balls of the Allies. Walker himself pushed on to Rivas, and ascertaining that the road to the left from Cuatro Esquinas was clear of the enemy, sent orders to Henningsen to have the wounded brought in by that road. He also sent orders to have the guns brought in the same way; but before these orders reached Henningsen, the guns were already on the narrow road the main body had taken, and could not be withdrawn. After the general-in-chief passed the house the Allies occupied, Dolan, coming up with his Rifles, rode almost on to the muskets of the enemy, calling to his men to follow. His characteristic impetuosity carried him too far; he fell bleeding and apparently nigh dead, from several severe wounds; and he is indebted to a remarkably tough body for his recovery from the effects of that day’s rashness. Soon after dark nearly all the American force had reached the Plaza of Rivas;