Page:History of the War between the United States and Mexico.djvu/282

240 town, promptly dispatched Major Shepherd with three companies and two pieces of artillery, to the relief of Lieutenant Colonel Irvin. The advance guard of Major Shepherd encountered the enemy on the road, and a slight skirmish took place. The pieces were discharged upon the right and left, and a volley of musketry fired into the chaparral, when the detachment moved forward without interruption, and reached Marin in the morning of the 25th. Several skirmishes had already taken place, but the enemy retired on the arrival of the reinforcement.

Meanwhile Colonel Morgan, of the 2nd Ohio volunteers, was advancing with eight companies of his regiment, about two hundred men, from Seralvo. He had received instructions from General Taylor on the 23rd, to concentrate his regiment at that point, and march to Monterey forthwith. He left Seralvo in the morning of the 24th, and in the evening was met by a courier, who informed him that a most atrocious act of barbarity had just been committed by a portion of the force commanded by General Urrea; that a wagon-train under the escort of Lieutenant Barbour, with forty men, had been surrounded near Ramos; and that the soldiers had been killed or taken prisoners, and the wagoners butchered. He proceeded on his march during the night, and at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 25th reached the scene of the disaster, where he found the bodies of between forty and fifty of the wagoners horribly mutilated, some of them