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220 up grandly in the distance across the plain. Our road led through a wide avenue lined with immense pepper trees in full green foliage, contrasting vividly with the brilliant red berries which loaded down every bough.

All was quiet and peaceful as a New England Sabbath in the olden time. But three years since, this same tree-embowered road presented a far different scene. The usurping "Emperor" and his foreign mercenaries and domestic traitors, brought to bay, at last, and rendered desperate by the hopelessness of their position were making a sortie, for the purpose of cutting their way out towards Morelia and the Pacific Coast, when they saw, streaming down through the wide avenue, the victorious "Army of the West," under Ramon Corona, from Sinaloa, who, with wild yells rushed directly into the thickest of the fight, and closed the last avenue of escape to them forever.