There were men with families who
professed to have come there to settle and cultivate the soil, having
been persuaded that the war was ended and the country prepared for
peaceful immigration. Some had paid their own passage, purposing merely
to reconnoitre, and remain or not, as it pleased them; but when they
landed in Nicaragua, General Walker placed muskets in their unwilling
hands, and there he had kept them, fighting, not for himself or his
promises, but for life. It disgusted others that the service was not
only almost certain death and thankless, but was altogether
unprofitable. It was General Walker's practice, and had been always, to
discharge his soldiers' wages with scrip of no cash value whatever, or
so little that many neglected to draw it when due them. And this was
concealed at their enlistment. Indeed, the hatred towards General
Walker and the service seemed almost universal amongst the privates,
and they would have revolted and thrown away their arms at any moment,
had there been hope of escape in that. But they were held together by
common danger in a treacherous or hostile country, separated by broad
oceans and impassable forests from a land of safe refuge.
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