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

sCOTT98 CAMPAIGN. 333
lowed by official announcements of the victories, by salutes
and rejoicings in which every American heartily united.
The exploits of General Scott's army, rivaling upon the same
theater those of Cortes, even when viewed through the clear
medium of the present, before Time has thrown its magnifying mist around them, seem more like the highly-colored
pictures of romance than the sober truths of history. The
nineteenth century, so fruitful of great and remarkable events,
furnishes few more striking to the imagination than the second
conquest of NMexico. What American can contemplate that
campaign without feeling his heart swell and glow within
him! Commenced with a force of ten thousand men, who,
after pouring out their blood as freely as the clouds drop rain,
upon the thirsty sands of the coast, the rough slopes of the
mountains, the fertile valley of the capital; after warring
against every unpropitious circumstance, finally succeeded in
capturing a city of two hundred thousand people, splendidly
fortified, and prostrating the last standard the enemy dared
spread to the breeze, on the very spot where, more than five
centuries ago, its device of " the eagle, serpent and cactus
had originated.~"'
* The city of Mexico was founded in the year 1325, by one of those migratory
tribes of aborigines which entered the valley from the remote regions of the North.
Prescott gives the following account of the humble beginnings of this splendid
capital." After a series of wanderings and adventures, which do not shrink from a comparison with the most extravagant legends of the heroic ages of antiquity, the
Aztecs at length halted on the south-western borders of the principal lake, in the
year 1325. They there beheld, perched on the stem of a prickly-pear, which shot
out from the crevice of a rock that was washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in his talons, and his broad wings
opened to the rising sun. They hailed the auspicious omen, announced by the
oracle, as indicating the site of their future city, and laid its foundation by sinking