hat you may fall an
easy prey. Then look to your liberties, your property, the chastity
of your wives and daughters. Take a retrospect of the conduct of the
British army at Hampton, and other places where it entered our
country, and every bosom which glows with patriotism and virtue, will
be inspired with indignation, and pant for the arrival of the hour
when we shall meet and revenge these outrages against the laws of
civilization and humanity.

The General calls upon the inhabitants of the city to trace this
unfounded report to its source, and bring the propagator to condign
punishment. The rules and articles of war annex the punishment of
death to any person holding secret correspondence with the enemy,
creating false alarm, or supplying him with provision. The General
announces his determination rigidly to execute the martial law in all
cases which may come within his province.

By command. THOMAS L. BUTLER,
_Aid-de-camp_.

BAYOU BIENVENUE AND THE BRITISH SPIES OF THE FISHERMEN'S
VILLAGE.

Bayou Bienvenue, formerly called St. Frances River, drains all the
waters of a swamp-basin, of triangular form and about eighty square
miles in surface, bounded on the west by New Orleans, on the northwest
by Chef Menteur, and on the east by Lake Borgne, into which it empties.
It receives the waters of several other bayous from the surrounding
cypress swamps and prairies. It is navigable for vessels of one hundred
tons burden as far as the junction with old Piernas Canal, twelve miles
from its mouth. It is about one hundred and twenty yards in width, and
has from six to nine feet of water at the bar, according to the flow of
the tides. Its principal branch is Bayou Mazant, which runs to the
southwest and receives the waters of the canals of the old plantations
of Villere, Lacoste, and Laronde, on and near which the British army
encamped, about eight miles below New Orleans. The banks of these
bayous, which drain the swamp lands on either side of the Mississippi,
are usually about twelve feet below the banks of the river, which have
been elevated by the deposit of sediment from overflows for centuries.
These slopes, from the banks back to the swamps, usually ten to eighteen
hundred yards, drain off the waters and form the tillable lands of the
sugar and cotton planters. They are protected from overflows by levees
thrown up on the banks of the river. These plantation l