Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/159

Rh It is now over eight weeks since Gen. Scott landed at Vera Cruz. Since that we have taken about eight thousand prisoners, among them were ten Generals, two cities, two famous castles (San Juan de Ulloa and Perote), over five hundred pieces of cannon and ten thousand stand of arms, besides this we have pursued the enemy with such vigor that Gen. Santa Anna's army is scattered to the winds, and their great General wandering in and around the mountains of Orazaba. Yet the Mexicans still cry "war to the knife and knife to the hilt."

In the afternoon a party of the Illinois Volunteers started out in pursuit of guerillas to avenge the death of their lost comrades. I wish them many successes in their revengeful undertaking, but I am afraid the Illinois boys are not strong enough.

Later in the afternoon they returned to camp, and sorry to say, with a similar fate. Two of their men were lassoed around their necks and dragged on the ground for some distance at full speed. After which the guerillas killed them with their vanallos (huntsman's spear). It seems from the little that I can learn that the Illinois men were at a spring filling their canteens with water, when suddenly these lanza (lancers) sprang from behind an ambush and lassoed two of their men before they saw any danger, and made off with them before they could get to their muskets to fire.

This outrage has caused another great excitement among the Illinois boys, and the Third and Fourth Illinois Regiments were about getting ready to go in pursuit of the guerillas, but Gen. Pillow heard of it, when he instantly stopped them, and issued orders that no soldier or party of soldiers be allowed to leave camp, unless they have a written order from him (Gen. Pillow), that this straggling, carousing out from camp must and shall be stopped, that it has caused us more lives than we lost in battles.

In the evening these men were buried, wrapped up in their blankets, with all the honors of war, on the same plot of ground