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Rh amply defended. The strongest positions, after El Penon, seem to have been the very ones that General Scott designed first to march against, and these were, at the hacienda of San Antonio, Churubusco, Chapultepec, and Molino del Rey. On the 15th of August the army was set in motion, in four divisions, commanded by Generals Worth, Pillow, Quitman, and Twiggs, in the order named, while General Scott took his position in the centre. The Mexican, Alvarez, attacked them with his Pinto Indians, but they were soon driven away, and on the 18th the entire army entered the town of San Augustin, or Tlalpam, at the base of the south-western hills.

Santa Anna, commanding in the centre of the circle, about the circumference of which General Scott was moving, was able to concentrate his troops at any given point with great facility. Even at this late day, it is with feelings of concern that one views the situation of the American army at this juncture. Surrounded on every side by almost impassable hills and sedgy lakes, far distant from, and with a desperate foe between it and its base of supplies, with an active enemy comprising thirty thousand fighting men to contend with, this little handful of ten thousand men was indeed in a most perilous position. The country was at last aroused and united in the common endeavor to drive the hated invaders from its soil. Every resource was now being drawn upon; church bells were cast into cannon, and the military and religious leaders were using every endeavor to excite their followers to fanatic zeal in behalf of their country and their religion.

Beyond the town of San Augustin was a dreary waste called the Pédregal, a rugged lava field, impassable except by a single mule path. Through this the army must march if it would avoid the fortified positions of San Antonio and Churubusco, where Santa Anna had concentrated