only after long hesitation.

At length night came on, and our men drew off,--foiled at every attempt,
having sustained great loss, and, apparently, made little impression on
the enemy. They lay on their arms, however, in the outskirts, expecting
to renew the attack during the night; and, to assist at this, a party of
rangers had orders to leave their horses in quarters, and march on foot
to join the others. Quitting our horses with regret, we walked to San
Jorge, where the foot lay, awaiting the hour of attack. We found them
stomach-qualmed with hunger, weary of fighting, thoroughly disheartened,
and provoked against their officers. One told how an officer, whose duty
it was to lead the charge, took shelter behind an orange-tree no bigger
than his wrist, and shouted, "Go on, men! go on!" when he should
have been saying, "Come on!" and how another, become stupid with
_aguardiente_, had tried to force his men to a barricade, when their
cartridge-boxes were empty, and their unbayonetted arms useless.
There seemed also to have been slackness among the men; and some
were lamenting, that the First Rifles were not what they used to
be;--anciently they only wanted to _see_ the greasers; to-day they were
found taking to the bushes. They all agreed that no great number of the
enemy had been killed,--whilst the filibusters, they doubted, must
have lost nearly one-third of their men and many of their best
officers;--among the number I recollect Major Dusenbury, highly praised.

There was one affair, however, over which they crowed and took fierce
satisfaction. They told it thus:--A detached party, of about thirty of
them, were seated on the roadside drinking _aguardiente_, preparatory
to advancing. On one side was a cactus-hedge, and a grove of plantain
a little in front. Whilst they sat here deeply absorbed in the
_aguardiente_, a considerable party of the enemy got amongst the
plantain-trees, and fired a hundred muskets into them at the distance of
a few rods. Strange to say, the greasers were so nervous at finding no
barricade between them, or were such contemptible marksmen, that not
a shot took serious effect; only the demijohn of _aguardiente_ was
shivered into a thousand pieces, and the liquor ran out into the grass.
The filibusters jumped up astounded and disordered; but, seeing so much
good liquor running away wastefully into the grass, they grew terrible.
It was an insult and injury which both men and officers appreciated