d by a decrepit, half-naked negro, but our birds have
flown. The negro, who tells us he is a hermit, and that his name is San
Benito, can give us no information as to the whereabouts of the enemy,
so we make him a prisoner of war. The opposing forces have left nothing
but their patriotic banner behind them. This trophy our commander
possesses himself of, and bears off in triumph. Then we scour the
country in companies of fifty; but we meet with nothing more formidable,
than a barricade of felled trees and piled stones. Once we capture a
strange weapon, made out of the trunk of a very hard tree, scooped and
trimmed into the form of a cannon, and bound with strong iron hoops.
Upon another occasion we discharge our rifles into a thicket whence
sounds of firing proceed, and we make two more prisoners of war, in the
shape of a couple of runaway negroes.

Though we have had no encounter with the enemy, our 'losses' are not
inconsiderable; many of the soldiers having been attacked by those
terrible and invincible foes--fever and dysentery. In this manner at
least two-thirds of our force is put _hors de combat_. Our colonel is in
despair. As for the volunteers, their disappointment at the unsuccessful
issue is very great.

At length our colonel, disgusted with the result of the campaign, orders
a retreat. The troops willingly obey, and are preparing for their march
back, when twenty of the volunteers come to the front and propose making
one effort to storm the enemy's impregnable fortress. Finding our
colonel opposed to such a wild enterprise, these gentlemen, reckless of
the consequences, plunge headlong into an adjacent thicket, and thence
presently the sound of fire-arms proceeds. For upwards of an hour we
await the return of these mad adventurers, and during the interval the
firing is incessant. Finally the 'besiegers' are seen to emerge from a
distant part of the thicket. When we join them, we find that more than
half their number are wounded, and the rest bear between them no less
than three prisoners of war! For the first time I have the pleasure of
standing before veritable rebels! Two of the prisoners are whites and
are seriously maimed; the third is a mulatto youth of not more than
sixteen years. They are all attired in brown holland blouses, white
trousers, buff-coloured shoes and straw hats. The white men have been
disarmed, but the mulatto lad has still a revolver and machete-sword in
his belt.

The volunteers a