Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/370

338 United States regiments were displayed. The shouts of the victors announced to the city that her stronghold had fallen.

The taking of Chapultepec was practically the end of the war. The city of Mexico was shortly after occupied, and although the negotiations for peace were long and tiresome, the end was obvious.

On the 2d of February, 1848, a treaty was confirmed, called that of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, from the name of the little suburb city where it was signed. Mexico received fifteen millions of dollars, by way of indemnity; but lost the territory of Alta California, New Mexico, Texas, and a part of her state of Coahuila, by the agreement to consider the windings of the Rio Bravo del Norte, or Rio Grande, as the boundary between the two nations, as far as it goes; that is, to a direct line parallel with San Diego on the coast of California.

No sooner had California fallen into the hands of the Americans, than it turned out to be full of gold. In that very year, 1848, began the gold fever of California, and emigration poured in from all parts of the States, so that rapidly the territory, unknown and neglected by the Mexicans, grew to be a most important State. San Francisco, then a little straggling Mexican port, is now a large and flourishing city.

This is a result of the war which must be viewed with impatience, to say the least, by the Mexicans, who saw themselves, at the time, forced to relinquish this large amount of territory without the power of refusal. On the other hand, there is room for thinking that California, left in the hands of that people,