20 Mcknight and comrades. 



Santa Fe in safety. But these new adventu- 

 rers were destined to experience trials and 

 disappointments of which they had formed 

 no conception. Beheving that the declara- 

 tion of Independence by Hidalgo, in ISIO, 

 had completely removed those injurious re- 

 strictions which had hitherto rendered all 

 foreign intercourse, except by special permis- 

 sion from the Spanish Government, illegal, 

 they were wholly unprepared to encounter 

 the embarrassments with which despotism 

 and tyranny invariably obstruct the path of 

 the stranger. They were doubtle 



that the patriotic chief Hidalgo had aheady 

 been arrested and executed, that the roy- 

 alists had once more regained the ascend- 

 ency, and that all foreigners, but particulaily 

 Americans, were now viewed with unusual 

 suspicion. The result was that the luckless 

 traders, immediately upon their arrival, were 

 seized as spies, their goods and chattels con- 

 fiscated, and themselves thrown into tlie 

 calahozos of Chihuahua, where most of them 

 were kept in rigorous confinement for the 

 space of nine years; when the repubhcan 

 forces under Iturbide getting again in the 

 ascendant, McKnight and his comrades 

 were finally set at liberty. It is said that 

 two of tlie party contrived, early in 1821, 

 to retin-n to tlie United States in a canoe, 

 which they succeeded in forcing down the 

 Canadian fork of the Arkansas. The stories 

 promulgated by these men soon induced 

 others to launch mto the same field of enter- 



