The Times of Tuesday publishes a vivid account from a
special correspondent in Mexico of the attack of the Constitu- tionalists on Monterey, where he had arrived after a perilous cross-country journey three days earlier. The attack was unexpected, for the Federals were unprepared, and, had it been pushed home, might easily have succeeded, but after a great deal of desultory fighting, barbarous reprisals, looting, and wanton destruction, the Federal reliefs arrived in time to dis- lodge and drive off the enemy. The foreigners appear to have kept their heads and accepted the situation with humorous resignation, while two Irish ladies behaved with conspicuous gallantry, o,ne risking her life in rescuing the women and children from the house of the British Vice-Consul, which was in the thickest of the fight. The demoralisation of Monterey, one of the richest and most prosperous cities in Mexico, seems to support the correspondent's view that civil war has become endemic in Mexico, and that large numbers of Mexicans engaged in it neither expect nor desire it to cease.
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