158 RETURN TO GRANADA. Book I. 
less circumscribed. But by the course of events, his 
natural stubbornness and the narrowness of his views inces- 
santly increased, and his political ideas became more and 
more reactionary. Under his leadership the disinclination 
towards foreigners, which he had shown privately before, 
and which caused the legislature of the State to reject a 
proposition of law facilitating the settlement of foreigners 
in the country, became avowedly an essential part of the 
political creed of the conservative party of Nicaragua. 
One extreme called the other into life. The democratic 
party, seeing and understanding the degree of prosperity, 
progress, wealth and power derived by the United States 
from foreign emigration, and fully conceiving that, with all its 
natural wealth and advantages of situation, Central America 
has no other hope of escape from ruin than the acquisition 
of assistance in skill, intelligence, activity, enterprise and 
capital from the same source, demanded foreign assistance 
at any cost; and thus, while the revolution had again 
broken out at Leon in 1854, the party, under the leader- 
ship of Francisco Castellon, took the desperate resolution 
of calling in the military assistance of a band of North- 
American adventurers under William Walker. The sequel 
is known to the world. 
On the 28th of August I returned to Granada, where 
barricades obstructed every street. I did not, however, 
remain* to witness the farther development of affairs. I 
left Granada on the 2nd of September, on my way back to 
New York. At San Juan del Norte, which had consider- 
ably increased during the time I had spent in the interior, 
I made the acquaintance of Captain Samuel Shepherd, 
known by his claims to the proprietorship of I forget how 
many thousand square miles of land in the kingdom of 
Mosquitia. Captain Shepherd, who died a few years ago, 
