Before their onset, the Indians had secured almost all the enemy’s waggons and horses, so that flight to many became impossible.  At that particular spot the prairie was undulatory and bare, except on the left of the encampment, where a few bushes skirted the edge of a small stream; but these were too few and too small to afford a refuge to the Texans, one hundred of whom were killed and scalped.  The remainder of the night was passed in giving chase to the fugitives, who, at last, halted at a bend of the river, in a position that could not be forced without great loss of life; so the Indians left them, and, after having collected all the horses and the booty they thought worth taking away, they burnt the waggons and returned to their own camp.

As we quitted the spot, I could not help occasionally casting a glance behind me, and the spectacle was truly magnificent.  Hundreds of barrels, full of grease, salt pork, gin, and whisky, were burning, and the conflagration had now extended to the grass and the dry bushes.

We had scarcely crossed the river when the morning breeze sprung up, and now the flames extended in every direction, gaining rapidly upon the spot where the remaining Texans had stood at bay.  So fiercely and abruptly did the flames rush upon them, that all simultaneously, men and horses, darted into the water for shelter against the devouring element.  Many were drowned in the whirlpools, and those who succeeded in reaching the opposite shore were too miserable and weak to think of anything, except of regaining, if possible, the southern settlements.

Though protected from the immediate reach of the flames by the branch of the river upon the shore of which we were encamped, the heat had become so intense, that we were obliged to shift farther to the west.  Except in the supply of arms and ammunition, we perceived that our booty was worth nothing.  This Texan expedition must have been composed of a very beggarly set, for there was not a single yard of linen, nor a miserable worn-out pair of trousers, to be found in all their bundles and boxes.

Among the horses taken, some thirty or forty were immediately identified by the Comanches as their own property, many of them, during the preceding year, having been stolen by a party of Texans, who had invited the Indians to a grand council.  Gabriel, Roche, and I, of course, would 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