Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[51] brigades and one regular field battery. The cavalry, in consequence of the difficulty of maritime transportation, was reduced to five hundred horses, a most insignificant number compared with that of the Mexicans. The American heavy wagons having failed for the transportation of provisions and ammunition, a convoy of the sumpter animals of the country was substituted.

The circumstances which obliged the Americans to abandon their communications with Puebla rendered it necessary for them to keep their lines as close during their march as the difficulties of the roads and the necessity of collecting provisions permitted. The divisions were kept apart at intervals of three leagues, so as to be able mutually to support each other. The park with the large impedimenta followed first. The dragoons, well officered, scouted the roads sufficiently, notwithstanding the smallness of their numbers. It was in this order that the Americans crossed the table-lands and the high chain of mountains which separate Puebla from the interior basin of Mexico. The heavy rains of that year had swelled the torrents and damaged all the roads. The American soldier does not possess the art of procuring food in a poor or exhausted country. The administrative department, accustomed to campaigns in which the troops carried everything with them, did not know how to make a country contribute to the necessary wants of the army, while lightening as much as possible the burdens of war. Provisions were scarce. Invisible but stubborn guerillas surrounded the Americans like an elusive mist; and they advanced rapidly to escape from their clutches. It was especially around the large supply-train, the preservation of which was a matter of vital importance, that it became necessary to be doubly vigilant. Consequently, when the mules, strung along like a chaplet of beads, pricked up their ears, and shaking the little bells attached to their parti-colored trappings, entered one of those defiles favorable to ambuscades, the alarms were frequent; the least impediment, the shouts of the Mexican arrieros, of doubtful fidelity, the very echo of the animals' feet striking against the rocks, seemed to the officers charged with this heavy responsibility the signal of some treachery.

The Americans, however, arrived without fight or accident in the valley of Mexico, where Santa Anna, with an army which