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

CIHAPTER VIII.
FALSE reports.-Why and how we went to Saltillo.-The loan of a donkey.Forced march across the Sierra Madre.-Mountain scenery.-La Rinconada.The aloe plant.-Los Muertos.-The tierra templada.-Bivouac at the Palomas
pass.-Conduct of the natives.-A cotton factory.-Scarcity of fuel. —Sufferings
of the troops.-Rabbit hunts.-A visit to Saltillo. —Christmas-eve.-Another
stampede.-Christmas-day in Saltillo.-Lassoing a team.-Return to Monterey.
THE reader who traces on the map of Mexico, the long
line occupied by our troops in the winter of 1846, in distant
and small detachments, and then looks at the position of the
united Mexican forces at San Luis de Potosi, might perhaps
suppose that General Taylor had committed a palpable fault
in so dividing his army as to prevent its timely concentration
at any threatened point. But when he is informed that there
are no practicable passes through the rocky barrier of the
Sierra Madre, save at Tula and Rinconada, and that it is
impossible to transport artillery through the former; that
between San Luis and Saltillo, there is a vast desert,
which is of all natural obstacles the most difficult for an
army to overcome; he will perceive how the rules of war
are governed by the country in which it is waged, and admit
that the American arms were in no way comproinited by
the dispositions which followed the termination of the armistice. Our greatest difficulty was in obtaining reliable information of the enemy's designs, and we were consequently
annoyed by many false and vexatious alarms. On the other
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