108 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



titution of the muskets to him. The State of Los Altos 

 refused. This state was at that time the focus of Liberal 

 principles, and Quezaltenango, the capital, was the 

 asylum of Liberals banished from Guatimala. Appre- 

 hending, or pretending to apprehend, an invasion from 

 that state, and using the restitution of the four hundred 

 worthless muskets as a pretext, Carrera marched against 

 Quezaltenango with one thousand men. The Indians, 

 believing that he came to destroy the whites, assisted 

 him. Guzman's troops deserted him, and Carrera with 

 his own hands took him prisoner, sick and encumbered 

 with a greatcoat, in the act of dashing his horse down 

 a deep ravine to escape : he sent to Guatimala Guz- 

 man's military coat, with the names of Omoa, Truxillos, 

 and other places where Guzman had distinguished him- 

 self in the service of the republic, labelled on it, and a 

 letter to the government, stating that he had sent the coat 

 as a proof that he had taken Guzman. A gentleman 

 told me that he saw this coat on its way, stuck on a pole, 

 and paraded by an insulting rabble around the plaza of 

 the Antigua. After the battle Carrera marched to the 

 capital, deposed the chief of the state and other offi- 

 cers, garrisoned it with his own soldiers, and, not under- 

 standing the technical distinctions of state lines, de- 

 stroyed its existence as a separate state, and annexed it 

 to Guatimala, or, rather, to his own command. 



In honour of his distinguished services, public notice 

 was given that on Monday the seventeenth he would 

 make his triumphal entry into Guatimala, and on that 

 day he did enter, under arches erected across the streets, 

 amid the firing of cannon, waving of flags, and music, 

 with General Guzman, personally known to all the prin- 

 cipal inhabitants, who but a year before had hastened 

 at their piteous call to save them from the hands of this 



