WEDNESDAY, DEC. 2. A party, well mounted and armed, started this morning in pursuit of the convicts. They overtook one of them and the two sentries about twenty miles distant. The sentries still had their arms, which they surrendered, and delivered themselves up without resistance. The convict was shot down through the impetuosity of one of the party. There is a degree of ferocity in shooting down an unarmed man at which humanity revolts. We can hardly find an apology for it, even in the brutal instincts of the savage. The fate of the two sentries concerned in liberating the prisoners whom they were posted to guard, is uncertain. If tried by a court-martial, their sentence will be death; if delivered over to the civil authority, they will be sentenced to the public works for a long term of years. THURSDAY, DEC. 3. The convict Edwards, found with the two sentries, and who had been shot after he had surrendered, was left in a dying condition on the public road. My constable left this morning to find him, but was unable to cross the Salinas river on account of the freshet, and its extreme rapidity. His horse got frightened and refused to swim him over. He fastened him on this side, and, divesting himself of his hat, shoes, and coat, plunged in; but the current after sweeping him down a mile or more, landed him on the same side from which he had started. He is a man of great humanity as well as courage and resolution, and it was not with his consent that Edwards was left at night-fall, wounded and dying, exposed to a pitiless storm, and to be devoured by wild beasts. It was inhuman to leave him in this condition, when he might have been brought in, or taken to some house in the neighborhood. Those in fault, now that the wrong has been done, and is irretrievable, would gladly veil it from the public eye. There is a tongue in cruelty, which those who inflict it can never silence. It will speak out and awaken pangs in the most callous conscience. If we have no mercy on others, how can we expect it for ourselves in that day when we most need it? “Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide the faults I see; The mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.”