cations of a recent field of
battle. There were batteries near, with dismounted cannon, broken
carriages, fragments of shells, dead horses, whose riders lay by them,
dead too, and still unburied. Parties were strolling about, busied
with this sad duty, but heaps of mangled carcases still lay above
ground, exhibiting the swollen limbs and distorted features of
decomposition. The atmosphere was heavy with the disagreeable odor,
and the wounded man, turning upon his pillow, gently commanded the
escort to proceed. Four stout soldiers again took up the litera, and
the party moved slowly along the aqueduct, toward the Garita Belen.
The little escort halted at intervals for rest and to change bearers.
The fine trees that line the great aqueduct on the Tacubaya road,
though much torn and mangled by the cannonade of the 13th, afforded a
fine shelter from the hot sun-beams. In two hours after leaving
Chapultepec, the escort entered the Garita Belen, passed up the Paseo
Nuevo, and halted in front of the Alameda.

Any one who has visited the City of Mexico will recollect, that
opposite the Alameda, on its southern front, is a row of fine houses,
which continue on to the Calle San Francisco, and thence to the Great
Plaza, forming the Calles Correo, Plateros, &c. These streets are
inhabited principally by foreigners, particularly that of Plateros,
which is filled with Frenchmen. To prevent their houses from being
entered by the American soldiery upon the 14th, the windows were
filled with national flags, indicating to what nation the respective
owners of the houses belonged. There were Belgians, French, English,
Prussians, Spanish, Danes, and Austrians--in fact, every kind of flag.
Mexican flags alone were not to be seen. Where these should have been,
at times, the white flag--the banner of peace--hung through the iron
railings, or from the balcony. In front of a house that bore this
simple ensign, the escort, with the litera, had accidentally stopped.

The eye of the wounded officer rested mechanically upon the little
flag over his head, when his attention was arrested by noticing that
this consisted of a small, white lace handkerchief, handsomely
embroidered upon the corners, and evidently such as belonged to some
fair being. Though suffering from the agony of his wound, there was
something so attractive in this discovery, that the eyes of the
invalid were immediately turned upon the window, or rather grating,
from which the flag