ould
accept none of the booty; and as time was now becoming to me a question
of great importance, we bade farewell to our Comanche friends, and
pursued our journey east, in company with the five Americans.

During the action, the Comanches had had forty men wounded and only nine
killed. Yet, two months afterwards, I read in one of the American
newspapers a very singular account of the action. It was a report of
General Smith, commandant of the central force of Texas, relative to the
glorious expedition against the savages, in which the gallant soldiers
of the infant republic had achieved the most wonderful exploits. It
said, "That General Smith having been apprised, by the unfortunate
Captain Hunt, that five thousand savages had destroyed the rising city
of Lewisburg, and murdered all the inhabitants, had immediately hastened
with his intrepid fellows to the neighbourhood of the scene; that there,
during the night, and when every man was broken down with fatigue, they
were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, who had with them some
twenty half-breeds and French and English traders. In spite of their
disadvantages, the Texans repulsed the Comanches with considerable loss,
till the morning, when the men were literally tired with killing, and
the prairie was covered with the corpses of two thousand savages; the
Texans themselves having lost but thirty or forty men, and these people
of little consequence, being emigrants recently arrived from the States.
During the day, the stench became so intolerable, that General Smith
caused the prairie to be set on fire, and crossing the river, returned
home by slow marches, knowing it would be quite useless to pursue the
Comanches in the wild and broken prairies of the north. Only one Texan
of note had perished during the conflict--the brave and unfortunate
Captain Hunt; so that, upon the whole, considering the number of the
enemy, the republic may consider this expedition as the most glorious
enterprise since the declaration of Texan independence."

The paragraph went on in this manner till it filled three close columns,
and as a finale, the ex-butcher made an appeal to all the generous and
"liberty-loving" sons of the United States and Texas, complaining
bitterly against the cabinets of St. James and the Tuileries, who,
jealous of the prosperity and glory of Texas, had evidently sent agents
(trappers and half-breeds) to excite the savages, through malice, envy,
and hatred of