in many folds of old shirts and blankets, and quietly awaited the second order. When the order came, his legs were in a high state of inflammation from their superabundance of clothing, so much so that the surgeon had the irons taken off his ankles. The consequence was, that Dan's first day of packing stones was his last. Afterward it was easy for him to increase the inflammation upon inspection days.

Dan's knowledge of the Spanish, and exemption from work, made him a kind of moving oracle among this ignorant population of Mexican soldiers and sergeants' wives. For a long time he was a favourite among the latter, to whom he generally paid our washing bills, and to whom he would, as usual, first translate, and then sing, "Long, long ago." When he would come to [280]

he would throw into the "long, long ago" such a pathetic physiognomy that he rarely failed to melt his fair hearers.

Alas! everything on earth is mutable, and Dan's favour met a check from which it never recovered.

If there are any people more than others tenacious of their religious tenets, it is the Catholics of Mexico. These women had a number of sprightly children, who became very fond of Dan. He had nothing to do, and could talk Spanish to them. They all had their Catechisms, and held the opinion that we had some immediate agency in killing their beloved Saviour, and not a very long time since; but Dan persuaded these little fellows that we were not the people who killed their beloved Jesus - that it was the Mexicans themselves: "for," said he, "do you not see that they have crowned him with a wreath of thorns? we have no thorns in our country: and do you not also see that there ranchéro spearing him in the side with a long lance? we have neither ranchéros nor lances in our country: we fight with the rifle." So soon as these good mothers found what an inroad Dan had made in the "young idea," he lost all favour; and when he would come about afterward, they would call in the little chaps with the most anxious care, and stand between them and Dan like an old hen between a hawk and her brood.[281]

If anything exceeded the horror which Dan's heresy inspired in these ignorant people, it was a scene we witnessed in the commencement of the campaign. While our volunteer army was collecting about Bexar, preparatory to the march upon the Rio Grande, a portion of them were encamped near the Mission Church of San José. Around the door-facing of this church, as most