from the Texians an exorbitant price in silver was demanded. This was equivalent to a refusal, and those persons who held these articles well knew it.4 As friends of the enemy, they did not intend that the Texians should have them if in their power to prevent it. Under this state of things, nearly the whole of the Montgomery regiment returned home under feelings of indignation and disgust. Colonel Bennett and about seventy of the regiment remained. By some, blame has been attached to the Montgomery troops for returning at this time; but they returned under the known sanction of President Houston; and the writer, knowing all the circumstances of the case, can more readily excuse them; for, said they, it was easy to foresee that no good to the country would be effected under General Somerville.5

[43] After the return of these Montgomery troops, and when general dissatisfaction prevailed in camp, through the urgent request of the quartermaster-general, Colonel Wm. G. Cook, he was permitted to press into service a few sacks of salt and some lead, while Captain Bogart, of Washington county, and the writer became individually responsible for iron to shoe the barefooted horses. Did General Somerville doubt his authority to take for the use of the army absolute necessaries? If so, why was that district of country declared to be under military law? Did our enemy do less? No! they not only took absolute necessaries for the camp, but everything else which their thieving propensities instigated them to take.6 Was it just to Texas that these people should do less for her than for the enemy? Or was it due to Texas that General Somerville should give to these people a protection which would enable them to keep Bexar as a military granary and magazine for the enemy? Or was it due to Texas that we required of them less than they were willing to furnish the Mexicans? The bad administration of the commissariat department was a fruitful source of complaint in the Texian camp. They had not been furnished with proper rations of beef or bread-stuff. Was it because they were not to be had? No! a large number of disaffected Mexicans, who had fled with General Woll to the Rio Grande, had left the most of their cattle behind them, and the most bountiful corn crop that had been raised [44] on the San Antonio for the last ten years. And though the troops were at this time using from fifteen to twenty beeves per day, a requisition was made upon the different ranches for fifty beeves to take them to the Rio Grande; a number barely sufficient for the army while these fifty were collecting. To the energy and promptness of Colonel Bennett, of the Montgomery regiment, the army was principally indebted for the beef it obtained. He detailed men from his regiment, and had three or four hundred beeves drove up, which were yet barely sufficient to last the army during its slothful march to Laredo.

That the Texian troops complained was most natural and just. They well knew that their Mexican enemies had in their neighbourhood three or four