court-room he said, "I would rather die than return to
slavery."

A fugitive slave was arrested at Syracuse on Wednesday,
October 1, and brought before the Commissioner
for examination. The bells of the different churches
commenced tolling, and handbills were distributed calling
on the citizens to congregate and see a negro
kidnapper. The Commissioner's office was soon crowded,
and a rescue was successfully carried out. The negro
was at once put on his way to Canada, and the agent of
the claimant arrested for attempting to kidnap a citizen
of the country. The slave was afterwards re-captured,
and two military companies called out to guard him.
Several white men were arrested for assisting the negro
in his attempted flight. It being the county fair day, a
large concourse of people surrounded the police-office,
where the negro and the white men were undergoing
an examination. About dusk the crowd began to throw
stones into the window of the police-office pretty freely,
which caused the adjournment of the court till eight
o'clock the following morning. For a while after the
adjournment, the crowd seemed to disperse; but at
about half-past eight o'clock they began to break in the
windows and doors, and thus made an entrance into
the building, and carried off the negro. All sorts of
weapons were used in the affray. Pistols were fired
from both sides, and several persons were badly hurt
from clubs and stones.

Accounts from Mexico state that the revolution in
progress there has hitherto proved successful. It
commenced at Camargo, where the patriots attacked the
Mexicans. The patriots came off victorious, having
taken the town by storm, with a loss on the side of the
Mexicans of 60. The government troops were intrenched
in a church, with artillery. The revolutionists are
commanded by Carabajal, who has also with him two
companies of Texans. At the last accounts they were
marching on Matamoras and Reynosa. General Avalos,
who is at Matamoras, has only 300 troops. He had
made a requisition on the city for 2000, but the city
refused to raise a single man. The plan of the
revolutionists was a pronunciamento, which was widely
circulated. Tampico and its vicinity was in the hands of the
insurgents. The people of Matamoras were quietly
awaiting the arrival of the liberating army.

Two terrible Executions by Lynch Law have taken
place in California, the one at San Francisco, the other
at Sacramento. The victims in the first place were two
men, named Whitaker and Mackenzie, described as
atrocious criminals. They had been rescued from the
hands of the "Vigilance Committee" by the regular
authorities, and had been lodged in prison. But the
gaol was stormed by the multitude, and the criminals
were taken out and again brought before the Committee,
who ordered them for instant execution. We
abridge the description of the scene, given by a San
Francisco paper. From every ward in the city, and
from the most remote suburban parts within the sound
of the Vigilance bell, people came flocking, breathless
and excited, to the scene of execution. The streets
presented a scene of furious, mad disorder. Living masses
surged down the byways, through the thoroughfares,
and over the planked roads, until the tramp and roar of
the multitude sounded like the beating of the waves
upon shore. Every moment the crowd grew more
intense, and the pulse of the excited populace beat higher.
Montgomery Street poured its tide of human masses into
California Street, and California emptied its living
contents, like a mighty river, upon the spot where the
prisoners had been taken by their captors. Here are the
Vigilance Committee Chambers—two large frame houses,
ranged side by side, of two-story construction, their
"gable ends" fronting Battery Street, in the block
between California and Pine Streets. The lower floors of
these buildings are occupied as stores; the upper
apartments are the Vigilance chambers, and have each heavy
double doors, opening upon Battery Street, above which
project timbers and pulleys, such as are used in store-
lofts for the purpose of hoisting goods from the ground.
The Committee had assembled, and were preparing to
execute justice upon the criminals! A carriage dashed
round the corner and up California Street. It was
greeted with cheer after cheer. The driver stood up in
his box, waved his hat, and huzzaed in reply. This was
the carriage in which the prisoners had been carried off
from the county gaol, and which was now returning
from the committee rooms. Heads were thrust forth
from the windows all along the line of the street in
which the crowd was gathered. Women were crushed
between the restless, swaying bodies of the more rugged
portion of animal life. A confused, busy hum of low
voices pervaded the air, and might have been heard
blocks distant. Still the crowd increased. Members
of the Vigilance Committee, arriving on the ground,
after jostling through the dense mass of human beings,
found the passage to the chambers completely blocked
up and closed, the doors being fastened inside, so as to
resist the pressure from without. In the southern
chamber a rope had been "reeved" through the block
attached to the beam above the left door, and several
members, appearing at the fall, lowered the rope to
their comrades below, and swung them up from the
ground, thus giving them access to the committee.
Twelve minutes had elapsed since the alarm was sounded
on the fire-bell, when the door of the northern chamber
opened, a few members appeared without their coats,
and addressed a few words to the heaving, surging
masses below. The din of human voices that arose
completely drowned the speakers' words. It was understood
that the capture of the prisoners was announced.
Cries of "Hang them up!" "Now and here!" ensued,
and the tumult and noise each moment grew greater. A
member of the committee waved his hand, significant of
assent to the proposition, and in a momentary lull we
could catch the remark, hurriedly and energetically
made, "We have them—never fear—it is all right!"
and a thundering shout of wild congratulation announced
that the people below were as fully bent upon witnessing
justice done as their representatives in the chambers
above. A few of the committee then dashed out the
glass above the door of the southern chamber, and one
of their number mounted into the opening, holding one
end of a rope. Dexterously clinging to the clapboards
on the outside, he managed to pass the rope through
the block, and returned with the two ends to the floor.
Both doors of the committee-rooms were then closed,
the fatal ropes inside. Ten thousand faces were
upturned, and every eye was fixed upon the doors of the
committee chambers. The vast concourse was stilled
almost to the hush of death; but this was only for a few
seconds. Two minutes only had passed after the ropes
were drawn in, and already the crowd showed symptoms
of impatience. The first murmur had scarcely arisen,
however, when the doors of both chambers were
simultaneously jerked open, presenting to view each of the
prisoners, half surrounded at each door by members of
the committee. A terrific shout rent the air. The
multitude tossed to and fro—above all, amid all, calmly
but sternly stood the band of the Brothers of Vigilance,
and in their hands the fainting, drooping, gasping
criminals, their arms pinioned and their feet secured. The
rope was about their necks, their coats having been
removed, and they stood aghast and trembling in the brief
second of lifetime allowed them to confront the stormy
sea of human beings spread far out below them.
Another second of time and they were tossed far out into
space, and drawn like lightning up to the beam's end.
Both were executed at one and the same instant, the
signal being given throughout the chambers, and the
members rushing back with the rope until the culprits
each had been dragged to the block, and hung almost
motionless by the neck. While they were hanging the
crowd below vented in whispers, and some of the more
thoughtless in shouts, their approval. One or two of
the committee very indecorously appeared at the
threshold from which the poor wretches had the instant
before passed into eternity, and seemed to recognise
acquaintances among the populace, exhibiting very little
reverence for the sacredness and solemnity of death, to
say the least. The bodies being cut down, a coroner's
inquest was held upon them, and the jury found a
verdict, that Samuel Whitaker and Robert Mackenzie
came to their death by being hanged by the neck,
thereby producing strangulation, by the act of a body of