'No circumstantial account of our remarkable success would be complete without recording, in the highest and the most grateful terms, the zeal with which the very noble the Municipality (_ayuntamiento_) of Tenerife took part in winning our laurels. Since July 22, when the first alarm-signal was made at Santa Cruz, Don Josef de Castilla, the Chief Magistrate (_Corregidor_), with the nobility and men at arms (_armas-tomar_) assembled in force on the main square of La Laguna (_Plaza del Adelantado_). The Mayor (_Alcalde Mayor_), Don Vicente Ortiz de Rivera, presided over the court (_cabildo_), at which were present all those members (_ regidores _) who were not personally serving against the enemy. These were the town deputies, Don Lopo de la Guerra, Don Josef Saviñon, Don Antonio Riquel, Don Cayetano Pereza, Don Francisco Fernandez Bello, Don Miguel de Laisequilla, and Don Juan Fernandez Calderin, with the Deputy Syndic-General, Don Filipe Carillo. Their meetings were also attended by other gentlemen and under-officers (_ curiales _), who were told off to their respective duties according to the order laid down for defending the Island. After making a careful survey of the bread and provisions in the market, also of the wheat and flour in the bakeries and of the reserve stores, they promptly supplied the country-people who crowded into the city. Wind being at this season wanting for the mills, we were greatly assisted by a cargo of 3,000 barrels of flour taken before Madeira from an Anglo-American prize by the Buonaparte, a French privateer, who brought her to our port. This supply sufficed for the militia stationed on the heights of Taganana, in the Valle Seco, near the streams of the Punta del Hidalgo, Texina, Baxamar, the Valley of San Andrés, and lastly the line of Santa Cruz, Guadamogete, and Candelaria, whose posts cover more than twenty-four miles of coast between the north-west and the south of the island.