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

236 A VISIT TO MONTEREYo
In company with a friend, (who, alas, like many other
young companions of that period, is now among the dead,) I
spent a day in riding through Monterey and in examining
such places as were thought worthy of attention. A brief
sketch of that visit may not be unacceptable to the reader,
especially as he has obtained, in the preceding chapter, but a
distant bird's-eye view of the city. It was more than a
month after the battle, and the unburied carcasses of horses
and mules yet remained in the suburbs. Around these still
lazily stalked many of the voracious and insatiable vultures,
which, in anticipation of the banquet, had been observed to
descend from their mountain eyries to the field of carnage,
as soon as the last echoes of the combat had died away. We
entered the city by the road which passes under the eastern
wall of the citadel. That fortress, and indeed all the minor
Mexican works, were said to be constructed on scientific
principles; and so admirably arranged as a whole system of
defense, as to strengthen and protect each other. During
the battle, the citadel was commanded by Colonel Uraga,
who, I am forced to believe, tacitly permitted, if he did not
actually authorize, the slaughter of several volunteers captured near his position on the 21st of September. This
Colonel is probably the present General Uraga, the military
leader of the late successful revolution; I mean that based
upon "6 the plan of Guadalajara,"> by which President Arista's
government was overthrown in January, 1853.
From the citadel, we rode first to the western suburbs, and
gratified our curiosity with a view of the hights and works
captured by General Worth's division. At the base of the