and well supplied with ammunition. Our loss was very severe. Twelve officers and one hundred and eight men were killed. Thirty-one officers and three hundred and thirty-seven men were wounded. The loss of the enemy is not known; but it must have been dreadful, as our balls and shells tore through their streets and dwellings.

An eye-witness thus describes the appearance, as our troops were in the distance storming one of the heights: "Each flash looked like an electric spark. The flashes and the white smoke ascended the hillside as steadily as if worked by machinery. The dark space between the apex of the height and the curling smoke of the musketry grew less and less, until the whole became envel oped in smoke, and we knew that our gallant troops had carried it. It was a glorious sight, and quite warmed our cold and chilled bodies."

Gen. Worth's division had left camp with only two days' rations, and much of this was spoiled by the rain; yet they climbed these cliffs and charged these batteries for forty-eight hours, many of them without any food except raw corn.

Gen. Taylor, consolidating his strength at Monterey, sent out divisions of his army to occupy important posts in the vicinity. Santa Anna was commander-in-chief of the Mexican armies. He collected twenty thousand men at San Luis Potosi, a city of four thousand inhabitants, about two hundred and fifty miles south of Monterey. Gen. Scott was placed in command of all the landforces in Mexico. As he was preparing to advance upon the city of Mexico by the way of Vera Cruz, nearly all of Gen. Taylor's forces were withdrawn from him. For five months, Gen. Taylor remained in Monterey, with merely sufficient men to garrison his defensive works; but in February, having received re-enforcements which raised his army to six thousand men, he commenced a forward movement. When about fifty miles south of Monterey, he learned that Santa Anna was rapidly advancing upon him with twenty thousand men. To meet such a force with but five thousand, it was necessary that Gen. Taylor should have every possible advantage of position. He found a field such as he desired, on a plateau, a short distance from the small hamlet of Buena Vista. Having posted his little band to the best possible advantage, Gen. Taylor, with his staff, stood upon an eminence at a little distance, from which he could see the clouds of dust raised by the