Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 2.djvu/119

Rh the genial suburb of Tacubaya. Keeping on in the same general direction for nearly six miles and traversing Mixcoac at about half-way, one came to San Angel, a pretty but narrow town of some importance on the skirt of the foothills. Two miles from here toward the east at Coyoacán, a garden spot loved by Cortez and Alvarado, the fine brigade of Pérez, which consisted of about 3500 infantry, was now placed; and at san Angel itself a high military officer, followed by some 5000 troops from Guadalupe, drove up in a coach about noon on Tuesday, the seventeenth of August. The man was of average height but unusually broad, with a bull-neck deep in his shoulders, as if some person had tried to force a good idea into his head with a pile-driver, a hard, cruel, domineering look about his blue eyes, small side-whiskers, and a heavy mustache. It was Valencia, whose imputed schemes and intrigues had of late been keeping every tongue busy.

Valencia's instructions were to block the way from Coyoacán to Tacubaya with men and works; but he mounted at once, rode on south by the turnpike, passed Ansaldo — a farmhouse buried in its orchard, two miles and a half or so from San Angel — and a strong half-mile beyond it paused. On his right, open ground sloped gradually back into a rounded hill, some three or four hundred yards from the road; and below him on the left flowed a small but lively stream at the bottom of a deep, wide ravine, near the opposite side of which stood the adobe buildings of Padierna farm.

From this point a mule-path, barely practicable for horses, wriggled off in the direction of San Agustín, here about four miles distant in a straight line; and — covering the whole intermediate plain from San Antonio and San Agustín on the one side to Padierna and San Angel on the other, from Coyoacán on the north to the mountains on the south — extended a pedregal or lava bed, which looked as if a raging sea of molten rock had instantly congealed, had then been filled by the storms of centuries with fissures, caves, jagged points and lurking pitfalls, and finally had been decorated with occasional stunted trees and clumps of bushes. After pursuing the mule-path for some distance, ordering a camp and batteries established on the slope of the rounded hill, and instructing experts to reconnoitre the ground thoroughly, Valencia