These
hotel-keepers of Virgin Bay and San Juan, who came in the wake of the
Transit Company, and made their money by the California passengers,
seemed to be a good deal worried by General Walker. Their business was
no longer profitable, and their families lived in a state of continual
alarm between the combatants; yet they were not allowed the alternative
of flight; for it was General Walker's policy, wise or unwise, when he
had got a man into Nicaragua who was useful to him, to keep him there;
and the last Transit Company, being entirely in his interest, carried
no emigrant out of the Isthmus unfurnished with a passport from
President Walker himself.
That night we slept in an empty building, and were aroused next
morning at daybreak, and ordered to continue our march to Rivas, which
was said to lie nine miles to the north of us. We set forward,
grumbling sorely for lack of breakfast, and stiff from our
twelve-miles' march of the evening before. Our path led us sometimes
under the deep shades of a tangled forest, sometimes along the open
lake-beach, on which the waves rolled with almost the swell of an ocean
surf.
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