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

ARISTA'S PALACE. 237
castle hill, we saw a giant cactus, more than twenty feet
high, and which, when in bloom, must be a magnificent
floral spectacle. We next directed our course to Arista's
palace, and its adjacent gardens, then filled with luscious
and tempting fruits. The building possesses little architectural beauty, but its lofty and spacious rooms and breezy corridors formed agreeable quarters for the sick and wounded
soldiers who occupied them. The massive edifice inclosed
three sides of a smoothly-paved patio or court, which was
filled with vases of flowers and fountains of crystal water,
that shed a grateful coolness over the atmosphere. The
fourth side of the square opened upon an extensive garden,
which, in its arrangement, displayed a degree of horticultural
taste and knowledge not often surpassed in our own country.
Parterres of flowers, hedges of pomegranates, alleys of limes,
clumps of orange trees, bowers formed by the grape, the
broad-leafed fig and the golden shaddock, the air filled with
perfumes and the melody of birds; altogether formed a scene
that Shenstone might have envied, and that Downing might
have been pleased to contemplate.
From that delightful spot we turned to examine a widely
different place, the Campo Santo, or cemetery, situated
between Arista's palace and the town. It was surrounded
by a high wall, and, like almost everything else built by
Spanish hands, strong enough to withstand an ordinary siege
or earthquake. A large body of Mlexican troops had occupied it at the commencement of the battle, but, after the fall
of the Bishop's Castle, it was evacuated, a few balls skillfully
thrown from Duncan's battery having caused them " to bile