Page:History of the War between the United States and Mexico.djvu/377

Rh dragoons, the volunteer company of Captain St. Vrain, and one company of the 2nd Missouri under Lieutenant White, to dislodge the enemy.

Pushing rapidly forward, Captain Burgwin found between six and seven hundred of the enemy, Mexicans and Indians, occupying both sides of the gorge, at a point where it scarcely admitted of the passage of three men marching abreast. They were likewise protected by dense masses of rock, and the bushy cedars covering the hills, whose sides were so precipitous as to be almost impossible of ascent. Flanking parties were thrown out on either hand, and the Americans advanced boldly upon the enemy, springing up the rugged acclivity, and clinging with one hand to the branches of the trees, as with the other they fired the rifles whose unerring balls hurtled through the pass. During the action Captain Slack, of the 2nd Missouri, arrived from La Joya, where the firing had been heard, with twenty-five of his men mounted, the horses of this company having joined them at Cañada. A more vigorous onset was now made, when the Mexicans abandoned their position and retreated in haste beyond Embudo, with the loss of twenty men killed and sixty wounded. The Americans lost one man killed and one wounded. Captain Burgwin entered the town without opposition, and on the 30th instant proceeded to Trampas, where he awaited the arrival of the main body.

Colonel Price left Trampas on the 3lst of January, with his whole command. Crossing over the Taos mountain, through roads filled with new-fallen snow — the soldiers marching in front of the artillery and wagons, with unwearied patience and constancy, in order to break the way, and many of them being frost-bitten on the route, — they entered San Fernando de Taos on the