92 NEW TEACKS IN NOETH AMEEIOA. 



) 



Wliile I was enjoying tlie Inxury of a comfortable niglit's 

 rest in a bed (a rare luxm-y), the corpse of tliis miserable 

 man swung to and fro from a tree in the coralle within a 

 few yards of my window. Our landlady was mueb grieved 

 that all her eloquence had failed in making a penitent of the 

 mnrderer. She had lectured him for fully an hour, and yet 

 he remained unmoved. It was evident, therefore, that he 

 fully deserved the fate which Lynch law had decreed for him. 

 Barbarous and uncivilised as this rough kind of justice is 

 especially amongst Europeans in the nineteenth century, I 

 doubt whether it is not better than the systematic evasion of 

 justice which is so commonly practised tlu'oughout the Western 

 country where the formalities of law are gone through, either 

 by local magistrates or the officers of military establishments, 

 but where criminals of all kinds. usually escape with little or 

 no punishment. I speak from actual knowledge when I say 

 that my horse is safer in a coralle at Trinidad, than in an 

 officer's stable in Fort Union. 



• It was impossible for a passing visitor to tell how the 

 Americans and Mexicans managed to get on together. There 

 appeared to be every prospect of peace at the time I was 

 there, but before the autumn had far advanced, a very different 

 state of things seems to have arisen. As far as I could make 

 out from the reports which reached me at San Francisco, one 

 of the Americans had shot a very popular man amongst the 

 Mexicans in a midnight brawl, and as the fi'icnds of the\ 

 former refused to give him up, the Mexicans united m a 

 body of five hundred sti'ong, and attacked the place. The 

 Americans were so greatly in the minority, that they were 

 obliged to take refuge in their houses, and sustain a siege for 

 nearly a fortnight, during which time some seven Mexicans 

 were shot by the defenders. As military assistance did not 



