better sign to go anywhere than to take any more chances in that
steamer. Come to find out afterward, instead of being opposite the port
that morning, we were twenty miles from it, the currents of the ocean
having carried us that distance while we were sailing around in a
circle, which they had not ciphered on, and thus came so near wrecking
us. By chance we saw a sailing vessel. The captain gave orders for the
steamer to follow it, and, when we overtook it, we found it was bound
for Relago. There was a man on board of it who was acquainted with the
port. They got him to come on our steamer and had him pilot us to that
port, so I expected to go ashore, and got my baggage in readiness, and,
when the time came, had it brought up on deck. They did not enter the
port, but came to outside. There were two passengers, it seems, that
would not sign the paper to go to Panama, and it was to land them he had
come to, and when I went to have my baggage put in the small boat the
captain informed me I had signed to go to Panama, and some of the other
passengers said I was very foolish to risk my life in that sea in so
small a boat. Before I scarcely knew it the boat had pushed off without
me, and, consequently, the whole current and course of my life was
changed. Upon such little incidents often do the events of human life
depend. It may have been fortunate for me that I did not land there.

There was in Nicaragua at the time a filibustering expedition under the
command of Captain Walker, who went from California to overthrow the
government there by taking sides with the revolutionary movement that
had been started, and to get an American control of the government,
which I did not approve of, for I considered it a dishonorable movement;
but still, if I had landed, they being my countrymen, I might have got
mixed up with them. They were conquered and all sentenced to death, and
shot. It is barely possible I might have shared their fate. I have often
thought since I made a good escape by not landing.