Sketches of the campaign in northern Mexico : in eighteen hundred forty-six and seven / by an officer of the First Regiment of Ohio volunteers.

184 RETURN TO CAMP.
department for a supply of hand grenades, to be used by those
of his subalterns who were not swordsmen. It will at once
be presumled, by all who are familiar with the habits of
American boys, that the officer thus 1" in league with the
stones of the field," had but renewed a favorite alliance of
his youthful days. HIow often has the writer, and you,
reader, if ever a country boy, when " creeping like a snail,
unwillingly to school," halted to pelt the unfortunate groundsquirrels and cat-birds encountered by the way; or, with
pockets well crammed with stones, aided some truant troop
in the bombardment of a hornet's nest.
Worn down by fatigue we returned slowly toward our
beautiful camp at Santo Domingo. Now that the brazen
throat of war had ceased to roar,'the silence which had fallen
with the darkness upon the valley, seemed unnatural, and
was almost as appalling as the sudden thunders of the morning. Like that valorous Captain and veracious Chronicler,
Bernal Diaz, after the three months' siege of Mexico, we
felt " as if just released from a belfry." This quaint remark
of the old Knight, reminds me that as we retired from the
field, the Mexicans rang the bells of the city in menrry chimes,
that did not altogether harmonize with the groans of the
wounded and dying. But their boastful and ill-timed rejoicing neither convinced us, nor themselves, that they were, in
our Western phrase, " out of the wood." Though we had
not been prepared to witness so pertinacious a spirit in the
foe, yet with one of their works in our possession on the east
side, and two on the west side of the town, captured the
same day by Worth's division, as will be described, we knew