in the month Canales and other Mexican officers of the Federal army embarked at Galveston on the schooner Cornelia for Live Oak Point.[129]  The steamer Zavala, bearing dispatches from Colonel Canales to General Anaya in Yucatán, left Galveston on July 22 for Sisal,[130]  and was soon followed by the Austin and the San Bernard.

Colonel James Power reported on July 31 that at Lipantitlán there were about 230 foreigners (Anglo-Texans and Americans) with some Mexicans under Canales.[131]  The editor of the Ancla at Matamoros declared, probably as of late August, that the forces under Canales and Molano consisted of 700 men, of which 500 were foreigners and the rest Indians and Mexicans.[132]

Meanwhile roving bands, represented as Federals by the newspapers loyal to the Centralist authority, but just as likely highwaymen obligated only to self, were described as plundering the frontier settlements and driving off horses to Texas. It was reported in May that Romualdo Martínez, with Manuel Flores and others from the scattered Federals, had robbed Pantaleon Treviño at the Capazon Rancho of horses which were allegedly to be taken to Texas.[133]  Also in May Eusebio Guajardo (alias Novedad) with four armed men from the dispersed Federalists entered Reinosa and had gone thence to the Mesa with the intent to plunder, and, perhaps because they were Federalists, had not been reported even a few weeks later, either by the subprefect, the alcalde, the priest, or the clerk of Reinosa.[134]  Several hundred Centralist cavalry in mid-July were ranging east of the Río Grande between Laredo and Camargo, endeavoring to prevent the Federalists from driving cattle and horses from the vicinity of the Río Grande settlements for the use of their army on the Nueces, and to intercept Mexican traders from the Río Grande.[135]

A writer, under the name of "El Gato" ("The Cat") in El Tigre spoke of the accursed tactics pursued by the "gangs of thugs" under Canales and other Federal leaders who, secreting themselves in the woods, refused to come out in the open and fight, thus proving that they were the "guerrilla geniuses" born to change the present system