Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1859 — STARTLING NEWS FROM TEXAS. [ARTICLE]

STARTLING NEWS FROM TEXAS.

| The bandit chief, Cortinas, with a large ' band of followers, has been hovering on the ! outskirts of Brownsville, Texas, lor several : weeks, threatening the town with destruc- ' tion and some of the prominent American citizens with death. It appears that Cortinas had been imprisoned in the Brownsville ! jail for some crime, and after his release he threatened vengeance on the Sheriff and some of the lawyers of the town. A dispatch from New Orleans three or four days ago announced that he had put his threat in execution, laid the town in ashes,'killed one hundred American citizens, and was marching toward the Nonces with fifteen hundred men, laying waste the territory through he passed. This nows, however, is not believed, as a New Orleans merchant received I a letter from a Brownsville business house, dated at three o'clock of the same day on which the town was reported to have been destroyed, which said nothing about it.