The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 428

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

treaty, for the Mexicans claimed the Nueces as the only boundary,
nor did the Governor of Santa Fe, regard the treaty Gen. McLeod
made with the Governor; only under these conditions the Texans
gave up their arms. We could have whipped his cohorts, but we were
betrayed by one of our own officers, and the Mexicans, treacherous
and ignorant as they were, felt not bound by our treaty stipulations.
But years afterwards retribution met them.
II
When I reached camp about three miles from Austin, I found
men salting and drying beef for our proposed journey.
Merchants were invited by Mirabeau Lamar, then President of the
Republic of Texas, to join the expedition to sell goods to the Mexi-
cans, the Government furnishing them ox teams and wagons free
of expense. The firm of Crocheron Sc Cunningham, of Bastrop, fur-
nished me with a lot of shoes to be sold on commission, but being
poor, I also enlisted as a volunteer in the army to draw my monthly
pay, besides the profits of goods I might sell.
The Republic being poor in funds, only issuing her own paper
without having any specie basis, we started out with second hand
ox wagons, often needing repair by our mechanics, and greatly re-
tarding the progress of the expedition, for we had to halt too often
to make those repairs.
The supply of corn meal for bread hardly lasted over two weeks,
flour or crackers we were not furnished, coffee we had only for about
a month, and not even salt enough to last more than two months,
but more after a while.
All men were volunteers, some furnished themselves with horse or
mule, or such arms as they had, others the government furnished
with ponies and old muskets; the pay for service was according to it,
(which we got eight years afterwards.)
Before we started off we had a nice parade, traveling from camp
to the residence of the French Consul,s who indeed had the only
nice two story frame building in Austin; even Government officers
were then only kept in log cabins and scattered along in the village.
From thence we marched through the only street there was at Austin,
and at Bullock's hotel we received a handed dinner, and thereafter
retired to our camp, and shortly afterwards started off, when we had
on Brushy4 a general inspection by the President. Government officers
and the elite of Austin came also to see it.
*Count Alphonse de Saligny served as French charg6 d'affaires to the Republic
of Texas from 1839 to 1841. The French Embassy, which he built in 1841, has been
preserved as a museum at the present time (1963) . Joseph William Schmitz, Texas
Statecraft 2836-1845 (San Antonio, 1941), 79-8o; Mildred Alice Webb, The French
Embassy of the Republic of Texas (Austin, 1946).
'Brushy Creek, twenty miles north of Austin, was the site of Kenney's Fort and

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