The prisoners were scattered amongst various strongholds, where many sank under disease, starvation, and cruelty. The survivors when freed were turned adrift, penniless, to make the best of their way home to the United States. General Thomas J. Green was one of those who escaped by tunnelling the walls of the castle of Perote; the story of which exploit, with his subsequent adventures, he has told in a book little known but of vast interest.
It needs a Scott to tell to the world the story of our border romance, though no fiction ever surpassed the thrilling facts which were then of almost daily occurrence. Fame is a curious gift of the gods. Colonel Crockett, the daring soldier, is all but forgotten, while the whimsical, semi-fabulous "Davy" Crockett, hero of a hundred wild stories, seems likely to live for ever. Few remember how heroically he "went ahead," to the last extremity, after first making sure of what was "right" and fit in a patriot. Knightly scutcheon never bore a nobler device than that of the simple backwoodsman, nor lived there ever a _preux chevalier_ who set a higher value upon his plighted word.
There were brave men, too, before Agamemnon. Mexier and Perry and Nolan, names well known on the border, lived and fought, and died, alas in vain, before the adopted son of an Indian, sturdy Sam Houston, crowned the long struggle with victory. Filibusters all, if you will, but every one a man, in an age when manliness is none too highly prized, and a country which is belied as the chosen home of dollar worshippers merely.
The Lopez Expedition--Landing at Cardenas--Pickett's Fight--An Exciting Chase--Last Expedition--Execution of Lopez and Crittenden.
Filibusterism under that name, however, was unknown to the people of the United States, until the famous descents of Lopez upon Cuba in 1850 and 1851. Narciso Lopez was a countryman of Miranda, and, like him, an officer in the Spanish service. Born at Caracas in 1799, he entered the royal army at an early age, attained the rank of colonel in his twenty-first year, and distinguished himself so well in the first Carlist war that he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and made Governor of Valencia. He went to Cuba in 1843 with Governor-General Valdes, who took him into high favour, and loaded him with honours. But O'Donnell, the successor of Valdes, did not continue the vice-regal favours, and Lopez consequently retired to private life, and ere long was discovered to be conspiring against the Government. He fled to the United States, where he found hundreds of adventurous spirits ready and eager for any undertaking that bade fair to be spiced with danger.