174 



NARRATIVE OF A 



ated, as in all Spanish American towns, the town-hall and 

 the church. There were also a number of little shops 

 round the plaza, and a fountain in the centre of it. Many 

 of the streets were barricaded, and the barricades furnished 

 with loop-holes to fire through. This was a means of de- 

 fence which had been adopted "on the occasion of a recent 

 attack on the place by Carrera, who, as I have already 

 stated, was repulsed and defeated there with considerable 

 loss. Exasperated by his ill success in this expedition, 

 the rebel chief, it seems, wreaked his vengeance on the 

 neighbouring estates and farms, especially on one called 

 the hacienda de St. Geronimo. This is the largest and 

 most valuable estate in the country. It was formerly the 

 properly of the friars of the order of St. Jerome, who used 

 to derive from it a revenue of forty thousand dollars, but 

 on the extinction of the religious orders, was claimed by 

 the Government as public property, and sold. The pur- 

 chaser was an English gentleman, who paid for it two 

 hundred and fifty thousand dollars in paper money, 

 which had cost him only twenty-five thousand dollars in 

 specie. The estate, being English property, was singled 

 out by Carrera, and given up to the rapacity of his fac- 

 tious band, who fell upon it like a swarm of locusts, and 

 after plundering it, burnt or destroyed what they were 

 unable to carry off. The dependents of the estate, who 

 were mostly Englishmen, took to flight, and thought 

 themselves fortunate in escaping with their lives. 



Such were, only a few months since, the evils with 

 which the inhabitants of Central America were afflicted, 

 and such the distracted state of that unfortunate country, 

 which, blessed as it is with a delicious climate and a fer- 

 tile soil, and rich in its mineral and vegetable produc- 

 tions, only wants a good government and good laws to 

 make it the envy of the world. 



