Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/224

218 first right conception of the character of the Mexican people I have often thought that our villages were beautiful, but for beauty, neatness and cleanliness, I am afraid the Mexicans will carry of the prize.

The town is about two miles square. It is laid out a-good deal like Lancaster, Pa.; the houses are built principally of brick, laid in mortar, in the shape of our pavement in our towns and cities. It contains a population of about ten thousand, and the people seem to be thriving and persevering. The next day we left Amozoquco, and passed over a beautiful rolling country of great fertility in truck gardens and vegetables, which supplies the inhabitants of Puebla with food In the rear of Puebla are hills and mountains, some of which are covered with snow nearly the whole year around. Behind which many of the most prosperous and enterprising people in Mexico, fled and hid from being persecuted and massacred by an infuriated mob; also some of the most outrageous wretches in the world for fear of getting their just dues. The city of Puebla should be called the "city of spires and domes," for it is full of both.

We marched to a church (a good place for soldiers to go to quarter); the haciendas and houses in this city are like all the rest we have saw that are of any note, (particularly halls and inns) built like a barrack, with high, strong, stone walls, having big gates, doors, bars, hinges and bolts like a prison The roofs are bomb proof, with battlement walls, all built to protect themselves from being robbed and murdered, not by us Yankees, but by their own people.

In the evening we were taken from the church to the bull ring, which is built in the shape of a theatre or circus; it is called plaza de toras, (Bull Square). This building is built entirely of wood, four stories high, but without a roof, that is the ring part; but the boxes are all closed. It is surrounded by a cemented stone wall ten feet high, and is capable of containing fifteen thousand people.