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

A PARTY ON THE SADDLE. 235
hlaps confirm the belief that it is ignigenous, so forcibly suggested by its appearance. Standing on the east side of Monterey and a short distance in advance of the Sierra Madre
chain, it was scarcely a league from San Domingo. Yet,
though probably not over five thousand feet in hight, so steep
and rugged are its sides, that the persons who essayed to climb
it, were usually absent two days from camp. Some officers
of our brigade who had made the ascent in a sweltering day
in November, determined to pass the night among the bare
rocks, on the very pommel of the Saddle; and from that
lofty perch, to behold the whole gorgeous panorama of the
dawn. Before they had been many hours in that situation, one
of those sudden and not unfrequent commotions in the atmosphere occurred, changing its temperature almost immediately
from "India's fire to Zembla's frost." A freezing Norther
swept across the plains and howling up the dark ravines of
the mountain, broke with the fury of a hurricane upon our
unprotected adventurers. With its first breath, all the loose
articles in their bivouac were carried away; and it was only
by prostrating themselves upon the rocks, that the heaviest
men avoided being borne off by the tempest. It is needless
to add that the unlucky party, now chilled to the bone,
awaited the god of day with increased impatience; not,
however, that they might see him in the brightness of glory,
glancing from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley,
and causing the whole earth to glow with a thousand hues
in his dazzling flight, but that they might take the "wings
of the morning,'" and fly from that bad eminence to our more
genial camp below.