half of this fierce contest, and a great shout proclaimed that the bridge had given way, and Worth's troops were rushing over victorious. Half an hour more and the white flag of surrender fluttered from the convent walls. Still a little later, and the corps of Shields were pursuing the Mexicans along the road to the city. The impulsive Captain Philip Kearney, his left arm hanging wounded at his side, followed so close at the enemy's heels that he only reined up his horse at the very gates of Mexico, and was obliged to ride back again to rejoin his corps. When the sun set on the evening of the 20th of August, Contreras and Churubusco were both in possession of the Americans. The day after these victories Scott advanced to Tacubaya, only two miles and a half from the city. A messenger met him, bearing a flag from Santa Anna, who had retreated behind the city walls. He asked an armistice, or cessation of fighting, for a short time, while an American commissioner, who had arrived from Washington, might talk with the Mexican government about peace. Scott waited till the 7th of September, and then believing that Santa Anna had no real intention of making peace, but was strengthening himself with a view to further hostilities, he declared the armistice over, and proceeded to remove the last obstacles to his entrance into Mexico. "Grass The main barrier now was the heights of Chapultepec, or hopper Hill," a rocky precipice, on which was the military college of Mexico, now turned into a fortress, very strong and formidable. At the foot of these heights, about two thirds of a mile from Scott's camp, were two stone buildings, well guarded. The most important of these was Molino del Rey, which means "The king's mill." It was filled with arms and supplies of war, and a strong force rested there. A quarter of a mile distant in a straight line, was the Casa de Mata, another stone building also occupied by the Mexicans; while between the two buildings and connecting them, were stationed heavy batteries. This strongly fortified line guarded the foot of Chapultepec. Three o'clock in the morning of the 8th of September, the twilight not yet gray in the east, the troops were marching to attack this line. Their orders were to attack and capture the two buildings and the batteries, destroy all stores found in the strongholds, and then fall back to their encampment. Chapultepec was not to be stormed that day. The army had learned to obey orders literally. During the whole war to plan the capture of a fortification, had been only followed by the execution of the plan. The men had grown to believe that victory was always with their army, and this belief no doubt aided to success. The battle of Molino del Rey was no exception. The King's Mill was taken and sacked. Casa de Mata also was taken, and before evening the cannon of the enemy's batteries enriched Scott's camp at Tacubaya. Only the fortress crowned heights of Chapultepec remained. Chapultepec, as I said before, was a rocky hill, one hundred and fifty feet high. On three sides it was a rocky precipice, too steep to climb. On the west it sloped more gradually to the plain, and was quite thickly wooded. A stone wall surrounded its base, and a splendid building with domed roof, over which could be seen flying the tri-color of Mexico, surmounted it. It remained now the forlorn hope of the Mexicans. After this, nothing but the city walls could oppose the victorious course of their enemies. All night, on the 11th of September, the Americans were engaged in planting batteries at the point from which they would do most damage to the fortress. All next day these batteries rained shot and shell on the roof, the battlements, the walls of the beautiful building. At night, when the firing stopped, many a ragged aperture in roof and side showed how sure had been the destructive work of the guns. The next day Scott decided to storm the heights. Two columns, one under Pillow, the other commanded by Quitman, were to approach from points as widely diverging as the ascent would admit. They were each led by an advance of two hundred and fifty men, furnished with ladders to scale the walls of the building. Up they go, straight up the heights, in the very mouths of the cannon. Pillow falls wounded at the head of his column. "Take me up," he begs his soldiers, "that I may be in at the victory." His soldiers carry him up, still under the terrible fire. They gain the top of the heights, the ladders are thrown against the walls. The men scramble over, pell-mell, and meet the Mexicans hand to hand, inside the building. Among its defenders are a hundred boys, from ten to twenty years old, the students of the military school, fighting like lions to defend the walls, which only a little while before had been the scene of peaceful study, or of mock battle. "They were pretty little fellows, and fought gallantly," says one of our own officers, who was there that day. "Pretty little fellows!" I I am sad when I think of their faces dabbled with blood, or convulsed with the agony of a gunshot wound, or when I think of the mothers whose sons, hardly more than babies, were in that cruel fight. Soon the waiting army below gives a great shout, as they see the stars and stripes go up over the dome in token of victory; and thus the last battle of the Mexican War is ended. That night Santa Anna fled, with the government and all the officers of the republic. Next morning, before day-break, the city officers waited upon Scott to tell him there need be no more slaughter. The city was his. By seven o'clock on that morning, the 14th of September, 1847, General Scott, followed by his army, rode into the grand square of the city. Once more Mexico was conquered. From their first entrance into the republic, our soldiers had carried everything before them. A succession of victories marked their course from the Rio Grande. The Mexicans were glad to accept peace on our own terms. By February 2, 1848, the two nations signed a treaty by which we gained an undisputed right to Texas and the new Territories of California and New Mexico. For almost one hundred years the United States has been a nation. The Mexican War is the first and only war which she has waged to extend her borders. Let us hope in the name of humanity that it may be the last. While we were fighting the Mexicans, we settled peacefully a dispute with Great Britain which might have led to another war, if we had not been amicably disposed towards her. The dispute was about our northern boundary line in Oregon. The United States had claimed that its Territory of Oregon extended north to the fiftyfourth degree of latitude. You will see by looking on the map that this brought in a good slice of what is now the British possessions. In 1846, just as the Mexican War began, we signed an agreement to take the forty-ninth degree of latitude for our boundary line, and so the matter ended. The last event of Polk's administration was the admission of the thirtieth State into the Union. This was Wisconsin, which had been growing in population ever since it had been made a Territory twelve years before. over. Already the presidential election was at hand. Polk's work was His administration had seen the war begun and finished, and the president in whose time it was all accomplished, went quietly into retirement, and, like most other presidents, sank into the obscurity in which the life of any private citizen is passed. CHAPTER XXIII. THE NEW ELDORADO. General Taylor made President. - Gold in California. The Gold Fever. Death of Taylor. - Fillmore succeeds him. - Election of Franklin Pierce. THE Whigs who had failed by Harrison's death to get the government into their hands, and who had been the party out of power for so many years, looked about carefully for a man to represent them in the election of 1848, who would be sure to get votes enough to make him president. General Zachary Taylor seemed to be the man. He was honest and sincere. He was covered with glory won in the recent war. The soldiers he had led to victory would all vote for "Old Rough and Ready," and this name given him in the Mexican War was the catch-word of the new political campaign. It helped no doubt to elect him, for a man's popularity is often greatly aided by some familiar title, which brings him closer to the hearts of the people. Amid the great joy of the Whigs, Taylor began his political government as twelfth president of the United States. When California was joined to our territory, nobody supposed we had made a very valuable acquisition. To be sure she had a fine strip of the Pacific coast, with several good harbors, and intersecting the mountains she had numerous fertile valleys offering good farming lands. But the prospect of settlement there seemed remote, and, likely to be 7 Taylor the work of years. In February, 1848, however, the very month. in which Mexico and the United States signed their treaty, an event took place which gave an impulse to emigration to the Pacific, and made California an important State. An American resident of California named Captain Sutter, who had a great "ranche"-as the California settlers called their farms in the Sacramento Valley, sent a man up the river to run a mill built upon its banks. In the sands of the region where he was at work, this man discovered some glittering yellow particles. It occurred to him that it might be gold that shone so in the sunshine, and he was curious enough about it to submit it to the test. It turned out to be pure gold, and from that hour the fortune of California was made. You can hardly imagine the excitement that followed this discovery. People from every part of the United States, from England, France, Germany, even from the unsocial continent of Asia, were landed, ship-load after ship-load, upon the coast of California. In 1849 the little Spanish settlement of San Francisco, with its scattering adobe houses and its old mission church, became a swarming city of tents, wooden shanties, and unpainted hotels, all filled to overflowing with new-comers to the land of gold, the new "Eldorado." The whole surface of the country for miles and miles around where gold was first found, was torn up by the eager seekers after wealth. Golddust was used in place of coined money, and prices were so enor |