e a raid over there three weeks ago, and
carried away some "renegadoes," one of whom, named Mongomery, they had
_left_ on the road to Brownsville; by the smiles of the other officers I
could easily guess that something very disagreeable must have happened
to Mongomery. He introduced me to a skipper who had just run his
schooner, laden with cotton, from Galveston, and who was much elated in
consequence. The cotton had cost 6 cents a pound in Galveston, and is
worth 36 here.

Mr Ituria and I left for Brownsville at noon. A buggy is a light gig on
four high wheels.

The road is a natural one--the country quite flat, and much covered
with mosquite trees, very like pepper trees. Every person we met carried
a six-shooter, although it is very seldom necessary to use them.

After we had proceeded about nine miles we met General Bee, who commands
the troops at Brownsville. He was travelling to Boca del Rio in an
ambulance,[1] with his Quartermaster-General, Major Russell. I gave him
my letter of introduction to General Magruder, and told him who I was.

He thereupon descended from his ambulance and regaled me with beef and
beer in the open. He is brother to the General Bee who was killed at
Manassas. We talked politics and fraternised very amicably for more than
an hour. He said the Mongomery affair was against his sanction, and he
was sorry for it. He said that Davis, another renegado, would also have
been put to death, had it not been for the intercession of his wife.
General Bee had restored Davis to the Mexicans.

Half an hour after parting company with General Bee, we came to the
spot where Mongomery had been _left_; and sure enough, about two hundred
yards to the left of the road, we found him.

He had been slightly buried, but his head and arms were above the
ground, his arms tied together, the rope still round his neck, but part
of it still dangling from quite a small mosquite tree. Dogs or wolves
had probably scraped the earth from the body, and there was no flesh on
the bones. I obtained this my first experience of Lynch law within three
hours of landing in America.

I understand that this Mongomery was a man of very bad character, and
that, confiding in the neutrality of the Mexican soil, he was in the
habit of calling the Confederates all sorts of insulting epithets from
the Bagdad bank of the river; and a party of his "renegadoes" had also
crossed over and killed some unarmed cotton teamsters, which had rouse