Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/205

 *eral Worth and staff, in their great-coats, upon their horses, had paused. The general was eagerly surveying the line. Then he exclaimed:

"Gentlemen! Look at that! Just look at that column! Isn't it enough to cheer the heart of any man?"

By mid-afternoon the whole valley was in view. There were numerous towns; several large lakes; the City of Mexico was disclosed as a patch of sparkling towers and turrets, thirty miles distant. And after a time the ranks began to pick out the camps of the Second and Fourth Divisions, blue with soldiers and slightly marked by the few tents of officers.

"That first is Twiggs."

"No, it's Quitman. I can see the Mohawks 'atin'!"

"B' gorry, 'tis Twiggs; for there's Ould Fuss an' Feathers, big as anny thray men!"

"Column, close up—march!"

The ranks closed, the men fell into the cadenced step. Drum Major Brown ordered "Coming Through the Rye"; and with the fifes and drums of the Fourth Regiment playing "If a body meet a body," and the other music and the bands playing what they chose, they all marched past the first camp (that of the Quitman Volunteers and Marines); before reaching the camp of the Second they turned into a road branching off to the southwest, as if for a round shining lake; and at sunset, while the clouds promised rain, they made camp at a village named Chalco, near the eastern border of the lake.

The evening was rainy. Under orders from the officers the company sergeants soon billeted the men