robbers. Last fall, after Captain Dawson's company of Texians had surrendered to the Mexican army, four fifths of them were put to the sword, after their arms were given up. To the shame of humanity I have to record the basest perfidy on their part yet. At the battle of Mier, on the 26th of December last, after the Texians had fought them for nineteen consecutive hours, killing and wounding more than double their own numbers, the Mexican commander sent in a flag of truce, summoning them to surrender, and promising in the most solemn manner, through his leading officers and one of the fathers of the Church, that "we should be treated with all the honours and consideration of prisoners of war." These officers, among whom were General De la Vega, and Colonels Carasco and Blanco, pledging with uplifted eyes the straps upon their shoulders, and the priest of Comargo, Padre De Lire, pledging the holy Catholic religion to their observance. The Texians, ever credulous, as brave men are, surrendered, while still they had formidable means of resistance in their hands. The result of that surrender produced from the general in command the enclosed articles of capitulation, [294] which were read to all of our officers by his Mexican interpreter, "with all the honours and considerations of prisoners of war," we not being allowed our interpreter at the reading. We afterward learned the true reading of this article to be, "with all the considerations consequent upon the magnanimous Mexican nation." As representatives of a people unused to such low cunning, and believing that with any civilized nation the obligation of good treatment would be as binding under this article as under the one which had been so solemnly promised, we were for a time content, and the more so under the disposition which the Mexican commander, General Ampudia, evinced in carrying out his promises. Soon after which we were sent to the capital of Mexico, from whence we have been incarcerated in this prison, coupled together with cumbrous iron chains, and made to do not only the servile labour of policing the filth - not of our creation - but doing the work of mules and oxen in packing in stones and sand about one mile, and upon the most indifferent rations. The greatest infamy is still untold! When General Fisher, myself, Captain Reese, and Lieutenant Clarke remonstrated against the performance of degrading labour, we were gravely told by the governor-general here that we were not prisoners of war, and could claim nothing under our articles of capitulation. Let me tell the worst! I have just learned that seventeen of my brave companions have been lotteried for, and shot in cold blood.[295]

If this catalogue of human outrage on the part of our enemy, and their sending, time after time, emissaries into your country, to stir up the Indians to their murderous warfare upon our borders, with other and