Mexicans with them." James Ogden, with his usual equanimity of temper, smiled at his fate, and said, "I am prepared."

Young Robert W. Harris behaved in the most unflinching manner, and called upon his companions to avenge the murder, while their flowing tears and bursting hearts, invoking heaven for their witness, responded to the call. I have the utmost confidence that this pledge, so solemnly plighted, will be redeemed.15

They one and all invoked their country to do both them and herself justice. Captain Cameron, in taking his leave of these brave men, and particularly of Turnbull, a brother Scotchman, with whom he had been in many dangers, wept bitterly, and implored [174] the officers to execute him and spare his men.

Just previous to the firing they were bound together with cords, and their eyes being bandaged, they were set upon a log near the wall, with their backs to their executioners. They all begged the officer to shoot them in front, and at a short distance; that "they were not afraid to look death in the face." This he refused; and, to make his cruelty as refined as possible, fired at several paces, and continued the firing from ten to twelve minutes, lacerating and mangling these heroes in a manner too horrible for description.16 [see plate facing page 112]

Our interpreter, who was permitted to remain with them to the last, says that "fifteen times they wounded that iron-nerved soul, Henry Whaling; and it would seem that Providence had a special care in prolonging his existence, that he might demonstrate to his enemies the national character they had to contend with; for he gritted his teeth at and defied them in terms of withering reproach, until they placed a gun to his head and blew his brains against the wall. Such was the effect of this horrible massacre upon their own soldiers, who were stationed as a guard upon the wall above, that one of them fainted, and came near falling over, but was caught by his comrades.

During the martyrdom of these noble patriots, the main body of our men were separated from them by a stone wall of some fifteen feet high, and heard [175] their last agonized groans with feelings of which it would be mockery to attempt the description. The next morning, as they were marched on the road to Mexico, they passed the mangled bodies of their dead comrades,17 whose bones now lie bleaching upon the plains of Salado, a perishing remembrance of exalted patriotism, but a lasting one of the infamy of their President, Sam Houston, who caused them to be falsely executed as robbers and marauders upon Mexico.18

We repeat that we look upon the 11th of February, 1843 with unspeakable national pride; and had we been with our men on that occasion, I would have preferred, and it would have been vastly more to the honour of myself and country, to have perished in that attempt to regain our liberty, than to have tamely submitted to such slavery. Those who have denounced it as a "piece of moonstruck madness," perhaps in their judgments they are sustained by the uninformed,