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

ACTION OF CEIRRALVO. 311
our part, we could not refrain from again lamenting that it
had not been our fortune to march fiom MVionterey with the
escort alone, as at first designed. Arrested in our progress
more by the train in our rear. than by the foe in front, we
could, if unembarrassed with the former, have thrown the
latter from our path as easily as a buoyant ship casts the
billows from her prow. Encouraged by our apparent inactivity, a party of the enemy dismounted, approached under
cover of the chaparral and opened a rattling fire of escopetts
upon our left flank. Their balls pattered among the mass of
wagons then collected, but beside wounding a few mules did
no damage. Our four-pounder was moved in that direction,
and with a few raking discharges swept the skulking gentry
from the bushes. While the fight was in progress, a gamecock, that courageous and vigilant bird, which the ancients,
with their nice perception of the fitness of such things, dedicated to Mars, belonging to a soldier, flew upon a bow of the
wagon in which he had been confined, and crowed in a style
that would have caused the whole tribe of overgrown and
loutish Shanghaes to hide their diminished heads. His
clarion notes were greeted by the men with cheers and shouts
of applause.
Among the laughable little incidents was the following, to
which my attention was called by a gentleman near me. In
one of the foremost iwagons of the park was a beardless
youngster,-perhaps a clerk,-whose only weapon was a
little brass pocket-pistol. But he fought with that, as if
victory depended upon his single efforts; discharging it with
the most astonishing rapidity,-now disappearing in the