board three Mexican officers, who had taken passage on her from New Orleans to Matamoros. They were detained as prisoners of war, and transferred for custody to the Texan armed schooner Brutus, Captain Hurd. They were Captain Ocampo, another infantry captain, and an engineer named Hogan, a naturalized Irishman. In Hogan's trunk were found papers, containing some military suggestions and plans for fortified works in Texas, addressed to Santa Ana. All three had been on duty in Texas before the war, and Hogan had resided there as a civilian a short time before he took service. Putting all the circumstances together, Hurd made out their case to be that of malignants, plotting against the country where they had once lived. He wanted to retaliate Mexican cruelty anyhow, and not feeling that he had authority to shoot them, he ordered them to be flogged. Accordingly Ocampo and Hogan, the latter an old man of sixty or more, were, one after the other, cruelly scourged, and the other officer was about being put through the same torture, when Captain Brown, then the ranking officer of the flotilla, came on board, and indignantly put an end to the outrage. Hurd had been raised to his present position by a distinction that was rather accidental. He had been a respectable skipper; no one from ordinary intercourse would take him to be a ruffian, or anything else in particular; and I think that in this matter he may have been under the influence of associates lower than himself.

In August, when I thought Urrea's mind had become sufficiently unruffled for a tolerably candid view of matters, I drew up for the prisoners a petition in Spanish, asking for the liberation to which the decree of amnesty entitled them. They signed it, and I sent it to the General. I did not present it in person, nor seek an interview, which I knew would not aid the supplication; for Urrea, owing to the interest I had taken in the prisoners, or from some other cause, suspected me of having corresponded with the rebels and aided prisoners to escape. As Grant's men had been taken under the flag of 1824, their memorial appealed to him as men whose cause had died with their leader on the day of their captivity; as soldiers whom his own arms had conquered; as captives, whose lives his clemency had spared when higher authority demanded their blood. The appeal was made in vain. Urrea made no response to the petition, nor did I ever learn in what kind of temper he received it.

We learned, some time after, that General Bravo had been, or would soon be assigned to the command of the army at Matamoros, with which the Mexican Government hoped, ere long, to recommence opera

tions against Texas. He consented to take the command only on condition that a certain amount of force and means, which he deemed indispensable, should be placed at his disposal, and that a course compatible with the rules of civilized warfare should be observed. Both conditions were agreed to, but the event proved that the crippled government could not carry out its promise in regard to men and resources. Every one acquainted with the history of the Mexican Revolution, will remember the act which ennobled the life of Don Nicholas Bravo. During that struggle, when his father and himself both had commands in the field, the former was captured. It was a time when no mercy was shown by Spaniards to rebels. The younger Bravo knew that his father's fate was sealed, and that no threat of retaliation would save him, though the son had a number of Spanish prisoners in his hands. He immediately liberated those prisoners, saying he would not trust himself with the temptation to make a bloody reprisal. After his prisoners were beyond his reach he heard of his father's execution. From the high opinion I had ever held of General Bravo, I indulged strong hopes that, so soon as he should take command, he would deal justly with the prisoners, and give them the liberty which a public decree had pledged, and I advised them not to risk attempts at escape till the soundness of this hope had been tested. But the expected liberator did not come as soon as expected. At some time in the fall Urrea was relieved by General Amador; but as the new commander seemed a man of mere negative good qualities, and had only a temporary assignment, I knew that he would take no new action toward the prisoners, and made no attempt to obtain it.

General Bravo did not arrive till January, 1837. Before this time a slight change had occurred in the original number of the prisoners. Two out of the seven Mexicans of San Antonio, named Arriola and Zembrano, had been liberated early, before Fernandez's order for execution was issued. Their friends had brought some influence to bear on Santa Ana while he was at their native place, which plead effectively. The young Irishman, Mitchell, escaped soon after the reprieve, and later in the season two of the Americans, Brown and Mac Neely, also escaped. All of those succeeded in reaching Texas. Still later, another got away from the barrack and across the river, but was overtaken and brought back. Thus five of the original twenty-one were gone, but the two orderlies of Karnes and Teal had been added to the remainder, making the number eighteen.

As soon as General Bravo arrived I prepared a new petition. I at

first proposed to write it in Spanish, and submit it to a Cuban gentleman, who lived at Matamoros, for any correction it might need. "No," said he. "Do not hamper your ideas with a language not your own, but put your document into your best English, and I will engage to give it equal force in Spanish." His advice was good, and he did not overrate his own ability as a translator from my language to his, for he was the best I ever knew. Having made a good copy of the Spanish version, I got it signed by the prisoners, and so soon as the new General was well settled in his seat, I delivered the document into his own hand. It stated that the petitioners were the first taken and the last retained of all the prisoners made in the late campaign; that they had seen the sword three times suspended over them, when it was averted by the decree of amnesty; that they had petitioned General Urrea in vain for the liberation which that decree had pledged to all whom it relieved from the penalty of death; and that they supplicated from the General now in command the boon before denied. The closing appeal was in the English original, as follows: "Appealing to that heart which has known the agony of a father's martyrdom, and trusting in the generosity which refused to retaliate so cruel a blow, we call on your Excellency to consider the woes of our own parents and kindred, who have long bewailed us as dead, and would now view our reappearance among them as a return from the tomb. For the sake, not of us, but of those beloved mourners, grant that we may behold them again, and their prayers shall call down Heaven's choicest blessing on the head of the magnanimous Bravo."

When I presented this petition I got my first view of the tall, stately figure of Bravo, with what might be called a Spanish version of Washington's face. He motioned me to a seat, and taking another himself, proceeded to read with apparent close attention the paper I had handed him. How intently did I watch his manly, impassable features as he read down one page, and turned to another, till he came to the end. His face told nothing, but I thought or imagined there was a slightly longer breath when he came to the line which alluded to his father. Having finished the slow reading, he as deliberately refolded the paper, and turning to me said: "This is Tuesday. I will answer this communication on Thursday." On Thursday I again called, and in reply to my inquiry he said: "I have reported on this matter to the Government." My hopes sank. "When," inquired I, "may an answer be expected from the Government?" "Perhaps," said he, "in twelve days." My hopes did not rise. It was only three or four days after

the second interview that, when I had lain down for a siesta, a friend bolted into my room, and cried out, "The prisoners are free!" I said "let me see and I will believe." I went to the door, and the liberated men came flocking around me. Bravo, I have no doubt, had determined when he first read the petition to liberate the prisoners, if he found that their memorial gave a correct statement of facts, and his report to the Government probably stated that intent. The friends of the prisoners in the course of a week or two enabled them to secure passages to New Orleans; and with the end of their imprisonment and exile my narrative closes.

A NEW AND AN ANCIENT MAP OF YUCATAN

A map published in Paris, with the recent date of 1878, and representing the peninsula of Yucatan, must claim earnest attention in geographical circles. This map is somewhat of a novelty, but nevertheless a welcome and instructive novelty. It helps to fill a gap which has always existed. There is scarcely anything known of this region of the Central American isthmus beyond what relates to its coastlines, its bold jutting out towards the island of Cuba, the position of Cape Catoche as opposite to that of San Antonio de Cuba, and the channel between these capes, through which the current of the Gulf Stream forces its way from the Caribbean Sea into the Mexican basin. Only a few and very vague indications of the physical features and the political division of the interior of this peninsula are found even in our most commendable maps, all of which give the impression of a country that still remains an open field for all kind of exploration. Literary and scientific authorities also fail to give satisfaction respecting details. The little which is given has a certain flavor of hearsay, gathered and put together in order that the subject of Yucatan may not appear to be forgotten.

We read, for instance, that this peninsula is composed geologically of a single block, built up by calcareous strata. Its surfaces rise only a few feet above the surrounding waters. It presents no mountain ranges, and is as flat as the palm of the hand. No brook, no river bathes the gigantic trees; the luxuriant tropical vegetation feeding apparently but upon the moisture exhaled from the sea. There are rivers however, but these rivers run in invisible subterranean channels, and at a distance from the northern shore the fresh water bursts out amidst the salty surroundings, so that the manati, the heron, the fishermen in their canoes resort to the spot and slack their thirst. The inhabitants are described as Indians who are on the point of succeeding in reconquering their native soil from the Spaniards, by whom they were originally dispossessed. The Spaniards, when they landed on the shores in 1517, were told by the indigenous race that white and bearded people had come thither from the distant east, built houses, temples, palaces and cities, and ruled the country for more than a thousand years. The ruins of these ancient edifices indeed exist. They were discovered in the first decennial of our century, and the groundwork as well as the