A short time after entering the city, on the morning of the 13th, Walker met, on the Plaza, D. Carlos Thomas, a foreign merchant, long resident in the place, and D. Fermin Ferrer, a landholder of Chontales, but who resided at Granada, and was familiar with the routine of public business. Ferrer was appointed prefect, and entered immediately on the discharge of his duties. Thomas rendered much service to Walker, by his knowledge of men and things in Granada; and among other functions he performed was that of writer of proclamations. He spoke and wrote English, French, and Spanish, with equal facility, and probably equal elegance, his English being, however, more Johnsonese than idiomatic, and his French and Spanish being probably tinged with the same fault. The swell of his sentences was perfectly Ciceronian, when, with a glass or two of brandy in his head, he began to dilate on the grandeur of the present crisis in Nicaragua; and the exuberance of his feelings overflowed in a proclamation he wrote out for Walker, and had published, somewhat to the annoyance of the latter, when he saw his signature appended in print to an address teeming with the rhetoric which characterizes Spanish-American productions. The proclamation, however, though offensive to taste, did some good; for the purport of it was, that protection would be given to all interests, and that none need refuse to return to their homes through fear of political persecution. For a short time after entering the city, Walker took up his quarters at the house of a woman of middle age, called generally, by the people, Niña Yrena. Her family name was Irish, and she was probably the descendant of an Irish officer in the Spanish service, sent to the colonies before the independence. A quick and minute observer, with all the gravity and apparent indifference of the native race, she had rendered much service to the legitimist party in days past; and even the stern nature of Fruto Chamorro owned her sway, and yielded to her influence, when all others failed to move him. The private relations which it is said, and probably with truth, existed between her and D. Narciso Espinosa, a leading man among the Legitimists, enabled her to breathe her spirit into the party after the death of Chamorro had taken away the unity it before possessed. The Niña was fertile in resources for sending intelligence to her friends; and hence the headquarters of the force occupying Granada were soon fixed at the government house on the Plaza.