He was too much absorbed with avarice, however, to be greatly disturbed by any other passion; and had his senior officer been a better man, perhaps Guts would have been a kinder master. This senior officer, who watched him so closely that he had to watch us with like diligence, was the Mayor de la Plaza, and next in command to the governor.4

When Admiral Baudin turned loose his French crackers upon them at Vera Cruz in 1838,5 it is said that this officer, in scampering out of danger, ran against a stone corner and knocked off his knee-pan, from which his leg has never since straightened. He walks with a staff, and upon the tip ends of his [268] toes, which gives him a gait uneven as that of the kangaroo. This old chap, whose temper, if possible, is even more uneven than his gait, and whose mother entailed upon him the misery of a name that Texians never could pronounce, for short we called "Old Limpy." If we met worse men in Mexico, we certainly never met so mean a wretch as "Limpy." He would slip round the corners, and take all the low, eaves-dropping turns upon us of a mean negro. He would, by every means in his power, endeavour to curtail our liberties and comforts, the greatest of which was, after a cold night, to get on the sunshiny side of the wall and kill the vermin.

This operation in Mexico occupies a large portion of the daylight of that nation; and I am told that from long habit, vermin-killing is almost as necessary an excitement to the vitality of this race as bread and meat is to ours. "There were lice upon man and beast," and it would be difficult to imagine that there could be a greater number in the country, even had the dust of the earth been "smote with the rod of Aaron."

There were certain hours between the opening of our prison doors and the "turning off of the guard," when our men would seek the sunshine, spread out their blankets, and down upon their all-fours, not to hunt the vermin as a matter of amusement, but to make upon them flagrante bello. The rays of the sun would start these night-walkers from their hiding-places, and their motion would make [269] them the more easily seen. The Texians, for decency's sake, called this operation "driving:" nor did they ever drive in vain. At times, when one of these animals showed himself particularly fleet of foot, he would be captured and saved for the races. How greatly does early education influence our lives! the early prejudice against crushing this hideous insect between the thumb nails always operated adversely upon my appetite; and I do confess that I can maintain a better stomach at the killing of a Mexican than at the killing of one of these prison-associates after the above manner. Though I frequently scalded and swept my "3 by 6" sleeping-place, and changed my clothes almost every day, yet, upon an average, each morning I would have from thirty to forty of these provoking bedfellows upon me. In one thing I was peculiarly fortunate.

In the same prison-cell with me was Simeon Glenn, one of my "old '36