h ten to twenty years his senior, followed him to
death, and never questioned his judgment nor his right to command.

At this time in Nicaragua there was the usual revolution. On the
south the sister republic of Costa Rica was taking sides, on the north
Honduras was landing arms and men. There was no law, no government. A
dozen political parties, a dozen commanding generals, and not one strong
man.

In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco _Herald_, Walker, searching
the map for new worlds to conquer, rested his finger upon Nicaragua.

In its confusion of authority he saw an opportunity to make himself
a power, and in its tropical wealth and beauty, in the laziness and
incompetence of its inhabitants, he beheld a greater, fairer, more kind
Sonora. On the Pacific side from San Francisco he could re-enforce his
army with men and arms; on the Caribbean side from New Orleans he could,
when the moment arrived, people his empire with slaves.

The two parties at war in Nicaragua were the Legitimists and the
Democrats. Why they were at war it is not necessary to know. Probably
Walker did not know; it is not likely that they themselves knew. But
from the leader of the Democrats Walker obtained a contract to bring
to Nicaragua three hundred Americans, who were each to receive several
hundred acres of land, and who were described as "colonists liable to
military duty." This contract Walker submitted to the Attorney-General
of the State and to General Wood, who once before had acquitted him of
filibustering; and neither of these Federal officers saw anything
which seemed to give them the right to interfere. But the rest of San
Francisco was less credulous, and the "colonists" who joined Walker
had a very distinct idea that they were not going to Nicaragua to plant
coffee or to pick bananas.

In May, 1855, just a year after Walker and his thirty-three followers
had surrendered to the United States troops at San Diego, with fifty new
recruits and seven veterans of the former expedition he sailed from
San Francisco in the brig _Vesta_, and in five weeks, after a weary and
stormy voyage, landed at Realejo. There he was met by representatives of
the Provisional Director of the Democrats, who received the Californians
warmly.

Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achilles Kewen, who had been fighting
under Lopez in Cuba, a lieutenant-colonel, and Timothy Crocker, who had
served under Walker in the Sonora expedition, a major. The c