86 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



only one comfort : the fellows who had broken our rest 

 the night before, and scared the inhabitants from their 

 homes, were now looking out for lodgings in the mount- 

 ains themselves. I felt sorry for Figoroa and his aid, 

 and, on abstract principles, for the killed. As for the 

 rest, I cared but little what became of them. 



In a few moments a party of officers came down to 

 our house. For six days they had been in constant 

 flight through an enemy's country, changing their direc- 

 tion to avoid pursuit, and only stopping to rest their 

 horses. Entering under the excitement of a successful 

 skirmish, they struck me as the finest set of men I had 

 seen in the country. Figoroa had come upon them so 

 suddenly, that General Morazan, who rode at the head 

 of his men, had two bullets pass by his head before he 

 could draw his pistol, and he had a narrower escape 

 than in the whole of his bloody battle in Guatimala. 

 Colonel Cabanes, a small, quiet, gentlemanly man, the 

 commander of the troops massacred in Honduras, 

 struck the first blow, broke his sword over a lancer, and, 

 wresting the lance out of its owner's hands, ran it 

 through his body, but was wounded himself in the hand. 

 A tall, gay, rattling young man, who was wiping warm 

 blood from off his sword, and drying it on his pocket- 

 handkerchief, mourned that he had failed in cutting off 

 their retreat ; and a quiet middle-aged man, wiping his 

 forehead, drawled out, that if their horses had not been 

 so tired they would have killed every man. Even 

 they talked only of killing ; taking prisoners was nev- 

 er thought of. The verb matar, to kill, with its in- 

 flexions, was so continually ringing in my ears that it 

 made me nervous. In a few minutes the widow Padil- 

 la, who, I am inclined to believe, was secreted some- 

 where in the neighbourhood, knowing of General Mora- 



