Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/248

242 Almost every house you come to here has a portico or open yard in the middle, around which the rooms are built, and their stables are below. These yards are always full of flowers which bloom nearly the whole year around. In the upper class they have a fine fountain in the centre, surrounded with fine trees, principally orange.

The climate is pleasant; the air has a clear and pure smell; the sun, particularly in the middle of the day, is very hot and very powerful in its light, dry atmosphere; but the moment it goes behind the mountains, and more particularly when it is cloudy, a sudden chill pervades the air. At nights we have to sleep under our blankets to keep warm, however much we may perspire during the day. Water left in our canteens, or in other vessels, over night, is nearly as cold as ice-water the next morning.

I see a statement in the American Star (a paper published in this city), that after leaving the sick, wounded and a garrison at Puebla, our marching forces to go to the capital of Mexico, will be over ten thousand men. This is a small force to march to a city whose population is over two hundred thousand, besides a standing army of thirty thousand soldiers, to assault a carefully and well fortified position.

Gen. Scott, with the victories already won, and the confidence of his gallant little army, which never retreated an inch, will advance with his present force and give battle to the confident foe. I again bid you farewell, for many of us will have to fall before this bloody conflict is over, and many, I hope, will live to tell the true history of the battles about to be fought in the Valley of Mexico. I am fully prepared to go into this fight; and, as I said before, if it should be my time to fall it will be on the field of Scott's fame.

I am well and in good spirits.

Your brother, J. J. O.

P. S.—I have been informed by some of the oldest inhabitants that the city of Puebla was named after a race by that