HOSTILITIES. 



2a9 



with, and unless also the Indian capitation tax was 

 reduced to one third of its amount ; but he softened 

 his asperity against foreigners to the demand that 

 only those not married should be expelled the coun- 

 try, and that thereafter they should be permitted to 

 traffic only, and not to radicate in it. The atrocious 

 priest Padre Lobo, his constant friend and adviser, was 

 with him. The arguments of the Canonigo Castillo, 

 particularly in regard to the folly of charging the gov- 

 ernment with an attempt to poison the Indians, were 

 listened to with much attention by them, but Carrera 

 broke up the conference by asserting vehemently that 

 the government had offered him twenty dollars a head 

 for every Indian he poisoned. 



All hope of compromise was now at an end, and 

 General Morazan marched immediately to Matasquint- 

 la ; but before he reached it Carrera's bands had disap- 

 peared among the mountains. He heard of them in 

 another place, devastating the country, desolating vil- 

 lages and towns, and again, before his troops could 

 reach them, the muskets were concealed, and the In- 

 dians either in the mountains or quietly working in the 

 fields. Mr. Hall, the British vice-consul, received a 

 letter from eleven British subjects at Salama, a dis- 

 tance of three days' journey, stating that they had been 

 seized at night by a party of Carrera's troops, stripped 

 of everything, confined two nights and a day without 

 food, and sentenced to be shot, but finally ordered to 

 leave the country, which they were then doing, destitute 

 of everything, and begging their way to the port. A 

 few nights after, at ten o'clock, the cannon of alarm 

 was sounded in the city, and it was reported that 

 Carrera was again at the gates. All this time party 

 strife was as violent as ever ; the Centralists trembling 



