Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-11-27

and others become obnoxious from any
cause to =" the powers that be, they are
uncomfortably in danger of receiving a
sudden and eternal quietus at the hands OF
midnight assassins or highway robbers,
whose identity is never established.
According to the Constitution of Mexico,
capital punishment is not inflicted except
for very rare offenses yet they have sure
and effectual way of
DIsPosING OF CRIMINALS
Who are liable to become troublesome. The
offenders are perhaps banished for term
of years to Yucdtan-a much-dreaded pun
ishment which few if any, SURVEYOR
are condemned to some terrible prison
like that of San Juan de Ulloa in Vera Cruz
harbor On the way thereto the prisoner
is purpcsely given every opportunity to
escape, and if he takes advantage of the
offered temptation, the guard Immediately
shoots him, and that is the end of it.
By the way, President Disz's action in
the late terrible affair at Monterey does not
tally well with his oft-repeated assertion
during the Cutting ARRAY, of being entirely
powerless TO interfere with any decision of
the State Courts concerning crimes and
misdemeanors committed within their
limits. The papers have told you how a
jealous Mexican, Don Vicente Recendez by
name, boarded railroad car near Nuevo
Laredo, which contained his wife and chill
dren, and murdered them in cold blood,
amid the shrieks of the passengers. He
was imprisoned in Monterey, and a few
days later was led out and shot by order of
the locai authorities thereupon Diaz tele-
graphed from the City of Mexico his I'M
called-fOr approval-an unnecessary pro-
Il 90. t,,1a
the subject of State rights. AS an instance
of how
LITTLE REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE
Is entertained by the Government, let me
tell you pitiful story. Some three years
ago child was missing from one of the
great haciendas at the edge of Zacatecas !;
and, after weeks of fruitless searching, the
distracted parents concluded that he had
been kidnapped. Thereupon-since blind
folded justice demanded some sort of salts
faction-more than twenty persons, most
of them laborers about the mines, were
hastily tried and shot on the merest sus-
picion that they might know something
sided in Zacatecas at that time, and was
acquainted with the circumstances tells
me that no words can describe the heart
rending scenes when the innocent men
were dragged from the clinging arms of
their wives and children to be thus Judi
cially murdered.
About three months afterwards, some
body happened to look down into deep
hollow probably an abandoned prospect
hole-not far from the fathers house, and
dimly discerned something at the bottom
which excited his curiosity. Ladders were
brought, and closer investigation revealed
a small skeleton, its head covered with the
little cap which the missing child had
worn on the day of its disappearance
This then was the solution of the mystery.
The lad was subject to epileptic fits, and in
one of them had undoubtedly fallen into
the hole; and being unable to make him
self heard from such a depth, had slowly
starved to death within hundred yards of
home. My informant was present when
the moldy jacket and muddy little shoes
were brought up with the bucketful of
bones, and says that the crowd wept loudly
in sympathy with the mourning mother
but nobody seemed to have a thought for
the score of innocent men as needlessly
sacrificed, nor for the twenty widows and
their hungry children. SO like Mexi-
cans ~ we both exclaimed
FANNIE B. WARD.