Part 10 (1/2)

His followers called him, and later, when he was thirty-two years old, he was known all over the United States as the ”Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny”

Fronized that in order to establish hiua hefrom San Francisco and New York, and that to do this he must hold the line of transit from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific At this ti vessel around the Cape, one over the Isthua By a charter froht to transport passengers across this isthmus was controlled by the Accessory Transit Company, of which the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was president

His company owned a line of ocean steamers both on the Pacific side and on the Atlantic side Passengers _en route_ froold-fields were landed by these latter steaua, and sent by boats of light draught up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua There they were er lake steain Bay Froes and on mule back, they were carried twelve miles overland to the port of San Juan del Sud on the Pacific Coast, where they boarded the co the year of Walker's occupation the nue of about two thousand a month

It was to control this route that immediately after his first defeat Walker returned to San Juan del Sud, and in a smart skirin Bay, the halting place for the passengers going east or west In this fight Walker was outnumbered five to one, but his losses were only three natives killed and a few Aitimists lost sixty killed and a hundred wounded This proportion of losses sho fatally effective was the rifle and revolver fire of the Californians Indeed, so wonderful was it that when soo I visited the towns and cities captured by the filibusters, I found that the marksmanshi+p of Walker's Phalanx was still a tradition Indeed, thanks to the filibusters, to-day in any part of Central America a un No native ait for hiin Bay, Walker received from California fifty recruits--a very welcome addition to his force, and as he now commanded about one hundred and twenty Auans, under a friendly native, General Valle, and two brass cannon, he decided to again attack Rivas Rivas is on the lake just above Virgin Bay; still further up is Granada, which was the head-quarters of the Legitiitimist troops were hurried south frohtly protected

Through intercepted letters Walker learned of this and deterht, in one of the lake steamers, he skirted the shore, and just before daybreak, with fires banked and all lights out, drew up to a point near the city The day previous the Legitiood luck or Walker's ”destiny” would have it, the night before Granada had been celebrating the event Much joyous dancing and uardiente had buried the inhabitants in a drugged sluarrison slept, the sentries slept, the city slept

But when the convent bells called for early mass, the air was shaken with sharp reports that to the ears of the Legiti They were not the loud explosions of their own muskets nor of the smooth bores of the Democrats The sounds were sharp and cruel like the crack of a whip The sentries flying fro truth ”The Filibusteros!” they cried

Following theallop came Walker and Valle and behind them the men of the awful Phalanx, whoiants in red flannel shi+rts who at Rivas on foot had charged the artillery with revolvers, who at Virgin Bay ounded had drawn fro bowie knives and hurled them like arroho at all ti upon a squawking hen

There was a brief terrified stand in the Plaza, and then a coan at once to loot the city But Walker put his sword into the first one of these he met, and ordered the A, and to return the goods already stolen Over a hundred political prisoners in the cartel were released by Walker, and the ball and chain to which each was fastened stricken off More than two-thirds of them at once enlisted under Walker's banner

He noas in a position to dictate to the enemy his own terms of peace, but a fatal blunder on the part of Parker H French, a lieutenant of Walker's, postponed peace for several weeks, and led to unfortunate reprisals French had made an unauthorized and unsuccessful assault on San Carlos at the eastern end of the lake, and the Legiti half a dozen peaceful passengers, and at San Carlos by firing at a transit steaiti the lake steamers as transports it was impossible for them to knohether the boats were occupied by his uilty ones, Walker held responsible for their acts their secretary of state, who at the taking of Granada was a the prisoners He was tried by court-martial and shot, ”a victim of the new interpretation of the principles of constitutional govern the theory of responsibility to the breaking point, its i about a hasty surrender and a enerals of the two political parties Thus, four months after Walker and his fifty-seven followers landed in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was arranged, and the side for which the Aht was in power Walker was made commander-in-chief of an army of twelve hundred men with salary of six thousand dollars a year A man named Rivas was appointed teht was ave hianize his men for the better accoua He now had under him a remarkable force, one of the h six anization he now coht adventurers ere driven back at Rivas, as were Falstaff's followers froiment of picked men commanded by Colonel Roosevelt Instead of the undisciplined and lawless now being in the majority, the ranks were filled with the pick of the CaliforniaSoutherners of birth and spirit, and with soldiers of fortune froreat armies of Europe

In the Civil War, which so soon followed, and later in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, were several of Walker's officers, and for years after his death there was no war in which one of the uish hilishh he had taken part in soreatest battles of the Civil War he would pit a thousand ainst any five thousand Confederate or Union soldiers And General Henningsen was one who spoke with authority Before he joined Walker he had served in Spain under Don Carlos, in Hungary under Kossuth, and in Bulgaria

Of Walker's iment of which he commanded, he writes: ”I often have seen them march with a broken or co the other to fire the rifle or revolver Those with a fractured thigh or wounds which rendered them incapable of ree of everyday life, nor do I ever expect to see their like again All iven field before such assailants, who caht little of charging a gun battery, pistol in hand”

Another graduate of Walker's army was Captain Fred Townsend Ward, a native of Saleanized and led the ever victorious ar rebellion, and perforlory for which Chinese Gordon received the credit In Shanghai, to the memory of the filibuster, there are to-day two temples in his honor

Joaquin Miller, the poet, ure on the hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was one of the young Californians as ”out with Walker,” and who later in his career by his verse helped to preserve the na to-day in Guthrie, Oklahoain came, as it did within four months, these were thethe four months in all but title he had been president, and as such he was recognized and feared It was against hi republic of Costa Rica declared war

For threefortunes until the Costa Ricans were driven across the border

In June of the saeneral election for president, announcing himself as the candidate of the Democrats Two other Deiti in their former enemy the real ruler of the country, no15,835 votes to 867 cast for Rivas Salazar received 2,087; Ferrer, 4,447

Walker noas the legal as well as the actual ruler of the country, and at no ti Walker's adoverned so justly, so wisely, and so well But in his success the neighboring republics saw a menace to their own independence To the four other republics of Central A of the filibusters bore a sinisterwas only too unpleasantly obvious At once, Costa Rica on the south, and Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras froua, declared war against the foreign invader

Again Walker was in the field with opposed to hith of his own force varied On his election as president the backbone of his arnificently trained body of veterans to the number of 2,000 This was later increased to 3,500, but it is doubtful if at any one time it ever exceeded that nu his entire occupation of Nicaragua there were enlisted, at one time or another, under his banner 10,000 men While in his service, of this number, by hostile shots or fever, 5,000 died

To describe the battles with the allies would be inter In every particular they are ht ic positions either of the barracks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza, the hand-to-hand fighting frohts sometimes varied, but the final result was never in doubt, and had no outside influences intervened, in time each republic in Central America would have come under the five-pointed star

In Costa Rica there is awoht a truth-loving American will place a can of dynamite at the foot of that statue, and walk hurriedly away Unaided, neither Costa Rica nor any other Central American republic could have driven Walker froh his own people, and through an act of his which provoked them

When Walker was elected president he found that the Accessory Transit Company had not lived up to the teruan Government His efforts to hold it to the terms of its concession led to his overthrow By its charter the Transit Coua ten thousand dollars annually and ten per cent of the net profits; but the company, whose history the United States Minister, Squire, characterized as ”an infamous career of deception and fraud,” manipulated its books in such a fashi+on as to show that there never were any profits Doubting this, Walker sent a coate The commission discovered the fraud and demanded in back payments two hundred and fifty thousand dollars When the company refused to pay this, as security for the debt Walker seized its steaave a new charter to two of its directors, Morgan and Garrison, who, in San Francisco, orking against Vanderbilt In doing this, while he was legally in the right, he committed a fatal error He had made a powerful enemy of Vanderbilt, and he had shut off his only lines of coed at the presumption of the filibuster president, Vanderbilt withdrew his ocean stea Walker without h upon a deserted island He possessed Vanderbilt's boats upon the San Juan River and Nicaragua Lake, but they were of use to hi the centre span of a bridge of which every span on either side of him has been destroyed

Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing his stea the Costa Ricans with money and ton he fought Walker through Secretary of State Marcy, who proved a willing tool