March 12th. All hands rejoiced at the appearance of daylight, and the prospect of escaping from our most horrible lodgings. Four miserable small burros being furnished our sick and lame, we commenced our march after shaking off myriads of fleas. [208] After marching two leagues, Colonel Fisher and myself procured each a broken-down pack-mule, for which the owner exacted double price. At the end of seven leagues we were halted for the night, and the lieutenant-colonel had us lodged in two rooms, furnished with a pine table and a bench each. I saw but little furniture even in the best houses in Mexico. In fact, we usually see better furniture and more comforts in the most indifferent hotels of the United States than in the best in Mexico. There it is as usual for the traveller to pack his bed, as it is in the United States for the traveller to pack his saddlebags. The traveller, in stopping for the night, leases a room in the meson, inn, and pays for his provender according to the price stipulated and the amount furnished.

At ten o'clock this night the officer of the guard locked our door, which, when closed, was like an hermetical seal. Such a number, when confined in so small a place, had a reasonable prospect of suffocating. The suffocations in the black holes of India, and the prison-ships of England in the Revolutionary War of the United States, appeared to our imaginations in the full force of reality. Our little knowledge of the component parts of the atmosphere gave us no relief. We calculated how long the oxygen in a cubic foot would sustain life - how many cubic feet in the room - the number of persons in the room, and the length of time we had to occupy it. This calculation was the result of the instant, [209] and it left a woful quotient for our consolation. We rose from our pavement, struck a light, and Colonel Fisher and myself addressed the following note to the commandant: