Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/599

Rh numbers; men, women, and children came running from their cottages to see the soldiers, and honoring them with speeches, firing off firearms, etc., which were answered on our side by firing off a small cannon belonging to the steamboat.

After having discharged some of our living freight, and the same sort taken on, we left Madison in the midst of firing off firearms, cheering, and clapping of hands by the citizens on shore and on the steamboats.

We arrived at Cincinnati, O., about 4 o'clock, Before we arrived at Cincinnati, on both sides of the river, on shore, people had gathered in large numbers. Many ladies and gentlemen were on horseback, cheering; and the fair damsels waving their handkerchiefs in the air.

Our arrival was signaled by the roar of artillery. By the time our boat touched the wharf the people had gathered in immense numbers on board of the steamboats, flatboats, and on shore. The firemen with their engines came dashing along, bursting forth wild and continued cheering, clapping of hands, and firing off cannons, small-arms, etc. Such wild and enthusiastic cheering and roaring of artillery I have not heard since the treaty of peace was declared at the capital of Mexico. We begin to feel ourselves, "who wouldn't be a soldier of the Mexican war."

These people, by their applause, must have formed an idea that the soldiers were great men who landed before Vera Cruz, on the land of the Aztec, without the loss of a single man or the slightest accident, and captured that strongly fortified city, Vera Cruz, mounting nearly one hundred cannons, and the castle of San Juan de Ulloa—second Gibraltar—mounting over four hundred cannons; after which, with ten thousand men, triumphantly marched towards the city of Mexico, a distance of three hundred miles, through a country both by art and nature extremely difficult of passing; fought numbers of bloody battles, parrying everything before them by storm in the face of extraordinary odds; capturing cities, towns, and the strongest positions for defenses in their country; capturing