Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 by Various

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS

VOL. IV, DECEMBER, 1859, NO. XXVI

THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.

In the winter of 1856, the outlook of the present writer, known
somewhere as Samuel Absalom, became exceedingly troubled, and indeed
scarcely respectable. As gold-digger in California, Fortune had looked
upon him unkindly, and he was grown to be one of the indifferent,
ragged children of the earth. Those who came behind him might read as
they ran, stamped on canvas once white, "Stockton Mills. Self-Rising
Flour!"--the well-known label in California, at that day, of greatest
embarrassment.

One morning, after sleeping out the night in the streets of Oroville,
he got up, and read these words, or some like them, in the village
newspaper:--"The heavy frost which fell last night brings with it at
least one source of congratulation for our citizens. Soon the crowd of
vagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to go
forth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been
the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and
romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he
can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and
flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an
honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one
knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the head
of a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality by
the outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged and
spoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my feet, and
be gone!"

In this mood, I thought of General Walker, down there in Nicaragua,
striving to regenerate the God-forsaken Spanish Americans. "I will go
down and assist General Walker," said I. So next morning found me on my
way to San Francisco, with a roll of blankets on my shoulder and some
small pieces of money in my pocket. Arrived in the city, I sought out
General Walker's agent, one Crittenden by name, a respectable,
honest-looking man, and obtained from him the promise of two hundred
and fifty acres of Nicaraguan land and twenty-five dollars per month
for service in the army of General Walker, and also a steerage-ticket
of free passage to the port of San Juan del Norte by one of the
steamers of the Nicaragua Transit Line. Of my voyage down I do not
intend to speak; several unpublished sensations might have been picked
up in that steerage crowd of bog Irish, low Dutch, New Yorkers, and
California savages of every tribe, returning home in red flannel shirts
and boots of cowhide large; but my business is not with them, and I say
only that after a brief and prosperous voyage we anchored early one
morning in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, at that time part of the
dominions of General Walker.

Whilst the great crowd of home-bound passengers, with infinite din and
shouting, are bustling down the gangways toward the shore, our little
party of twenty or thirty Central American regenerators assemble on the
ship's bow, and answer to our names as read out by a small,
mild-featured man, whom at a glance I should have thought no
filibuster. It seems he was our captain _pro tem._, and bore
recommendations from the agent at San Francisco to a commission in the
Nicaraguan service. He had made the voyage on the cabin side of the
ship, and I saw him now for the first time. His looks betokened no
fire-eating soul; but your brave man has not necessarily a truculent
countenance; and I was, indeed, thankful for the prospect of fighting
under an honest man and no cut-throat outwardly.

We followed this our chief down the vessel's side to the shore,
catching a glimpse of Fate as we passed over the old hulk in our
course. It was one of Walker's soldiers in the last stage of fever. His
skin was as yellow and glazed as parchment, and seemed drawn over a
mere fleshless skeleton. Poor man! he lay there watching the noisy
passengers descend from the ship. "His eyes are with his heart, and
that is far away," carried back by the bustling scene to another
shore,--the goal of that passing crowd,--never more to gladden _his_
dim eye. The unrelenting grasp of death was on him; and even now,
perhaps, the waves are rolling his bleaching bones to and fro on that
distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all.
But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow
lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the
witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard fate
ahead of us.

When we came into the town of San Juan, we found there a general and
colonel of the filibuster army, and reported ourselves forthwith as a
party of recruits just arrived and at their service. The general was
altogether absorbed hobnobbing with the old friends whom he had
discovered in the passenger crowd, and would not listen to us; but the
colonel pointed out an empty building, and told us to drop our luggage
there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town
of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit
Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It
consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native
grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which
curves out into the sea and forms the southern rim of a beautiful
little harbor, completed by another less elevated point jutting out on
the north. The country inland is entirely shut out by a dense forest,
into which the Transit road plunges and is immediately lost. Whilst I
was walking about this sequestered place, now all alive with the
California passengers, a party of Walker's cavalry came riding in from
the interior, and at once drew all eyes upon them. They were mounted on
horses or mules of every color, shape, and size,--themselves
yellow-faced, ragged, and dirty; nevertheless, their deadly garniture,
rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives, and their fierce and shaggy looks,
kept them from being laughed at. They dismounted and tied their beasts
in front of one of the hotels, and then dispersed about the town in
search of whatever was refreshing.

From these men we learned that General Walker's prospects were never so
fair as now. His enemies, they said, worn out and ready to despair, had
drawn off to Granada, where they now lay irresolute and quarrelling
amongst themselves. General Walker held the Transit route from ocean to
ocean, and a single filibuster might walk all through the country
without danger. This news was not satisfactory to all of us. A small,
bright-eyed youth, from the California theatre, who had been noted on
the voyage down for his loud talking, declared that for his part he had
come to Nicaragua to fight, and, now that there was no more fighting to
be done, he would pass through and take ship for the United States. The
filibusters smiled at each other grimly, and told him, if that was the
difficulty, he had better not go, for Walker intended driving the enemy
out of Granada shortly, and he would there find all that he wanted. And
well it was that they satisfied him to stay; for on that day this youth
went without his dinner because he had no cent in his pocket to buy it,
and ship-captains refuse to assist all such as lie under that unhappy
cloud. Oh, thou light-bodied son of Thespis! Where art thou now? I saw
thee last, with heavy musket on thy shoulder, marching wearily to the
assault of San Jorge. Did the vultures tear thee there? Or art thou
still somewhere amongst men, blowing the great deeds wrought by thy
feathery arm that day? I hope thou wast not left on that dismal shore!

Late in the afternoon, when the Californians had departed for Virgin
Bay, where they were to embark on Lake Nicaragua, our party of recruits
took the road for the same place, on our way to Rivas, the
head-quarters of the filibuster army. A short distance from the
Pacific, we began the ascent of the Cordillera chain, not very
formidable here, but broken into spurs and irregular ridges, with deep
umbrageous hollows, and little streams of clear water winding noisily
among them. Coming down from this rugged high ground, we entered a wide
plain, stretching away to Lake Nicaragua, out of whose waters we saw
the blue cones of Ometepec and Madeira lifting their heads up above
all, and capped with clouds. Before we had crossed the twelve miles
between ocean and lake, and entered Virgin Bay, it was dark, and the
Californians were already hurrying aboard a little steamer, which
puffed and whistled at the wharf. In half an hour afterwards they were
steaming across the lake for the entrance or head of the Rio San Juan.

It was here that we ate our first meal at the expense of General
Walker, or, rather, at the expense of an innkeeper of Virgin Bay; for
he, our entertainer, looked upon us as little better than sorners,
declaring he had already fed filibusters to the value of six thousand
dollars, without other return than General Walker's promise to pay,
which he professed to esteem but slightly or not at all. 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. A few miles short of Rivas we emerged from the ragged forest, and
entered a beautiful, cultivated country, through which we passed along
green lanes fringed with broad-leaved plantains, bending oranges,
tufted palms, and all tropical fruit-trees,--a very Nicaraguan paradise
to the sore-footed wayfarer. At last this enchanting approach brought
us to the outskirts of Rivas, and we entered a narrow, mud-walled
street, and never halted until we came out upon the central and only
_plaza_ of the miserable town. Our incumbered march, without breakfast,
after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw
our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a
scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in
our little crowd of world-battered and battering strong men, topers,
and vagabonds.

The square we had entered was perhaps one hundred yards or more in
width, much overgrown with grass, and surrounded by buildings of mean
and gloomy aspect. Six narrow and sordid streets debouched into
it,--two coming with parallel courses from the west, two from the east,
and one entering at each eastern angle from the north and south. It was
at the opening of the last of these that we rested, and received our
first impressions of the wretched _plaza_,--since hung for us with a
thousand dirty reminiscences.

It displayed none of those architectural embellishments and attempts at
magnificence which usually centre about the _plazas_ of the
Spanish-American capitals,--not even a carved door-facing or trifling
ornament of any description. The entire side on our right, between the
two eastern streets, was occupied by the cracked and roofless walls of
an ancient church or convent, which had long been a neglected ruin. The
fallen stones and mortar had raised a sloping embankment high up its
venerable sides; and the small trees, here and there shooting above the
luxuriant grass and running vines which, covered this climbing pile of
rubbish, waved their branches over the top of the mouldering walls. The
interior of the crumbling structure was a wilderness of rank grass and
weeds, the elysium of reptiles, iguanas, centipedes, and ten thousand
poisonous insects. On our left, opposite the falling church, was
another ruin; but its vulgar features owned none of the green and mossy
dignity of age, which gave a melancholy beauty to the former. It was a
glaring pile of naked dust and rubbish, and its shot crumbled walls and
riddled doors told the tale of its destruction. The entire front on
that side of the _plaza_ was in ruins, with the exception of one stout
building on the corner diagonally opposed to us. The northern side was
inclosed by a long, low building, with its elevated doors partly hidden
by the far-projecting, red-tiled roof; and in front of it six or eight
grim pieces of cannon, mounted upon wheels, gaped their black mouths
toward us. Our own side of the square was occupied by a building
exactly like the one opposite. The low-reaching roof was supported by
wooden posts, and the long porch or corridor between the posts and the
wall was paved with large earthen tiles. The doors, elevated several
feet above this pavement to baffle the heat of a tropical sun, were
darkened by the overhanging roof; and this, together with the effect of
the small wooden-grated windows and the absence of furniture, gave the
rooms a gloomy and comfortless aspect. All these buildings, with the
exception of the ruined convent, which was of stone, were built of
_adobes_, or large sun-dried blocks of mud; and their walls, doors, and
staring red roofs were everywhere bruised or perforated with shot.

Such was the _plaza_ and middle spot of Rivas, a town of some two or
three thousand inhabitants, where General Walker stood at bay many
weary days against the combined Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, and
Chamorristas, and was netted at last. But these observations of the
squalid _plaza_ were of another date. At present our eyes and thoughts
fasten upon the crowd of melancholy, fever-eaten filibusters, who walk
with heavy pace up and down the corridors, and along the paths which
cross the grass-grown plaza. There was a morbid, yellowish glaze,
almost universal, on their faces, and an unnatural listlessness and
utter lack of animation in all their movements and conversation, which
contrasted painfully with the boisterous hilarity and rugged
healthiness of our late Californian fellow-travellers. Their appearance
was most forlorn and despicable in a military view,--no soldier's
uniform or spirit amongst them, only the poor man's uniform of rags and
dirt, and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men.
Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their trade; some, for
the most part with difficulty, carried muskets or rifles; some, the
better-dressed and healthier looking, wore swords,--a weapon, as I
afterwards found, distinctive of commissioned officers; some had with
them only their pistols or cartridge-boxes, which, belted around the
middle, served a double purpose in keeping up their ragged breeches.
Then almost all of them, as they moved about or lay in the shade of the
corridors, sucked or gnawed some fruit of the country,--the only thing
which they seemed to do with energy or due sensation.

Whilst I sat looking about at these miserable people, I was accosted by
an individual whom I had known in California. He professed to be glad
to see me; told me Nicaragua was the finest of countries; "but," said
he, with some latent humor of too ghastly a hue, "I'm sorry you didn't
come down with us three months ago, as you thought of doing; we've all
been promoted. The officers and two-thirds of the men have died, and
nearly all the rest of us are promoted. I myself am captain. You made a
great mistake, you see."

"My friend," said I, "you needn't try to frighten me. I've lived in a
tropical climate before, and it is the healthiest part of the world for
men of my temperament."

"Then you'll be promoted," said he. "A healthy man is sure of his
reward in this service. Do you see that fellow crossing the plaza with
the old shoes in his hand?"

"Yes," said I,--"poor man!"

"He has got them off of some dead man's feet out at the hospital. They
die out there night and day. All these men you see here will die in six
months."

After running through this humorous vein, he told me what adventures he
had seen since joining the filibuster army; which, however, I have no
intention to recount;--honor enough, if I may relate veridically, and
with passable phrase, my own tamer befallings.

Long after we had grown sufficiently hungry, one came from General
Walker, and led us to a house in the outer parts of the town, where, he
informed us, we had been allotted to quarter for the present. The same
person further instructed us to send to the commissary, and we should
obtain wherewith to satisfy our hunger. We did so gladly; and having
drawn a supply of beef, tortillas, and plantains, were comparatively
content for the rest of the day.

After several days of idle loitering about the camp, our party was
separated and ranked in divers old companies of the army. Myself and
some few others obtained seats amongst the horsemen, and had reason to
think ourselves happy; for the mounted part of the service was so much
more esteemed, that lieutenants of the foot companies had been known to
drop their rank voluntarily and take grade as private soldiers in the
saddle.

But first it was necessary to achieve our horses before we could mount;
and to that end we were permitted, and indeed commanded, by General
Walker, President of Nicaragua, to search the surrounding _haciendas_
and stables, until we were satisfactorily provided. Accordingly we set
out one morning on this errand, furnished, all of us, with rifles and
store of ammunition, against the possibility of collision with such
countryfolk as might desire over-ardently to keep their horses by them.
It will not be profitable to follow our search over that magnificent
country, diversified with groves of cocoa and plantain trees, patches
of sugar-cane and maize, with here and there a picturesque grange
embowered amidst orange and palm trees. Suffice it to say, that all the
animals in the vicinity of Rivas, fit for warlike purposes, had been
removed, and toward evening we found ourselves out amongst the hills to
the west, beyond the circle of cultivation, and as yet with no horses
in tow. From the summit of a high, grass-crowned hill we swept all the
surrounding country;--toward the east spread a vast sea of verdure,
rolled into gentle hollows and ridges, broken by the red roofs of
Rivas, San Jorge, and Obraja; and beyond all, the lake stretching into
misty remoteness, with its islands, and the ever-notable volcanoes,
Madeira and Ometepec, rising abruptly out of it. It was a glorious
scene, worthy of reverie. But we must scan it as Milton's Devil--to
compare us with one far above us--did the hardly fairer garden of
Paradise,--with thoughts of prey in our hearts. Nor were we
disappointed, any more than that other greater one; for on top of an
open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse,
tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here
amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky
owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into
the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon reappear on
the ridge beyond.

Whilst we stood about the horse, communing doubtfully, not knowing
where to find another, an old man approached us, and, with rueful look
and gesture, besought us not to deprive him of the sole support of his
life.

"Beyond that hill," said he, "the Padre has many better horses. _El
Padre está un rico hombre. Yo estoy muy pobre, Señores_."

Set it down to the credit of filibusters, that we gladly surrendered
this old man his horse, and betook ourselves to the rear of the hill
which he pointed out to us; and there, after some search, we found, in
close covert of tangled and almost impenetrable bushes, a small
_corral_ of mules and horses, which the Padre had begrudged the service
of General Walker. For my own share in the spoils of this Trojan
adventure, I chose a well-legged mule, young, lively, and well enough
looking generally; and thenceforward I was entitled to call myself
"Mounted Ranger," according to General Walker's rather high-sounding
classification.

Let no one reflect upon the writer because he assisted in robbing this
churchman of his horses. For him there was no choice; and if he is
chargeable with moral depravity, it must be elsewhere,--forsooth, in
joining with one who made war unprovided with a military chest
sufficient to cover expenses. However, this is no matter, one way or
the other. The private character of the relator, Samuel Absalom, is not
before the reader; nor is it to be expected that he will care to turn
his eye upon it for a moment.

The ranger company in which we had been ranked was stationed below, on
the Transit road; but as it would return to head-quarters as soon as
the California immigrants, now due, had crossed over to the Pacific, we
were ordered to await it there. We spent the interim foraging for our
animals or loitering about the camp. It may be that some short
exposition of filibuster spirit and circumstances, as we saw them at
this leisure time, will have interest for one or two. A few weeks
before our arrival, the prospect of the Americans in Nicaragua was
black enough, and, indeed, despaired of by most. General Henningsen,
with the greater part of the force, was cooped up and half starved in
Granada, by three or four thousand Costa Ricans and Chamorristas;
General Walker, with the remainder, lay lower down on the Isthmus,
watched by a second division of the enemy, and too weak to give him any
assistance. General Henningsen's men, reduced to a mere handful by
starvation and the bullets of the enemy, could hold out but a day or
two longer; and then the entire force of the allies would unite and
beat up General Walker, and end the squalid game. The Central Americans
were certain of their prey. But just at this juncture several hundred
healthy Americans landed on the Transit road, and, placing them on one
of the lake steamers, together with his old force, General Walker took
them up to Granada, sent them ashore in bungos under a heavy fire, told
them to do or die, and then paddled out into the lake with the steamer.
It was a good stroke. The men, without other hope, fought their way
over three successive barricades to General Henningsen, brought him
out, setting fire to the city, reembarked on the steamer, and finally
landed again at the fort of San Jorge, two miles east of Rivas. After
that, General Walker gathered all his force at Rivas, and the enemy
drew off to Granada, with some thirty or forty miles between.

When we reached Nicaragua, in the latter part of December, 1856, the
entire force of the filibusters was still in Rivas, with the exception
of a small party stationed on the Rio San Juan, beyond the lake, and
communicating with the Isthmus force only by means of two small
steamers, "La Vírgen" and "San Cárlos," which plied across the lake
between the head of the river and Virgin Bay, on the California
passenger-line. The allies had remained inactive at Granada, and were
said to be broken into factions, and daily deserting and returning home
in large bodies. The isthmus of Rivas was free ground to the
filibusters, and a score of rangers might forage with little danger
from the Costa Rican line almost to Granada. Their force outside of the
hospital, as we saw it at head-quarters, numbered probably from eight
hundred to one thousand men,--one-third mere skeletons, scarcely able
to go through drill on the _plaza_,--fit only to bury,--and the great
majority of the remainder turning yellow, shaken daily by chills and
fever, and soon to be as worthless as the others. They were all
foreigners,--Americans, Germans, Irish, French, and English,--with the
exception of one small company of natives, captained by a half-breed
Mexican. It was said, however, that many of the poorer natives were
willing to fight against the Chamorristas,--the aristocratic Nicaraguan
faction originally opposed to Patricio Rivas and the Liberals, now in
arms against General Walker,--but that they made miserable soldiers
outside of a barricade, and General Walker had no arms to throw away
upon them. For sustenance, the filibusters had the fruits around Rivas,
and a small ration of tortillas and beef, furnished them daily by
Walker's commissary. The beef, as we heard, was supplied by Señor
Pineda, General Walker's most powerful and faithful friend amongst the
natives; and the tortillas were bought from the native women in the
neighborhood of Rivas. It was the quality of the food--assisted largely
by exposure, irregular fasts, and _aguardiente_--which made Nicaragua
so fatal to the filibusters. The isthmus between the lake and the
Pacific, swept nine months of the year by cool eastern breezes, is not
unhealthy. But the ration of beef and tortillas (simple maize cakes
without salt) was too scanty and intermittent; and in the absence of
proper food, the men were driven to fill their stomachs with the
unwholesome fruits which everywhere surrounded their quarters, and but
few were able to stand it many months.

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