Into Mexico with General Scott / When attached to the Fourth United States Infantry, Division of Major-General William J. Worth, Corps of the famous Major-General Winfield Scott, known as Old Fuss and Feathers, campaign of 1847, lad Jerry Cameron marched and fought beside Second Lieutenant U. S. Grant all the way from Cera Cruz to the City of Mexico, where six thousand American soldiers planted the Stars and Stripes in the midst of one hundred and fifty thousand amazed people

by Edwin L. Sabin

The northers, as everybody should know, were the terrific winds that blew in the winter and early spring; they blew so fiercely, from the gulf and a clear sky, that anyone lying for a few moments in the sand would be covered up. Neither man nor beast could face a norther, there in the open where the sand drifted like snow.

And the vomito, or yellow fever! Ay de mi! That was worse. It came in the spring as soon as the northers ceased and stayed all summer. Some days and nights it appeared like a yellow mist, rising from the lagoons of the coast and spreading toward the city; men and women and children died by the hundreds, even in the city streets, so that the buzzards feasted on the bodies. The City of the Dead: this was the name for Vera Cruz during the vomito season. Everyone who was able fled to the higher country inland, and stayed there above the vomito fog.

Until ten o’clock this night the American boats landed the American soldiers; by token of the twinkling lights and the distant shouts the beach was occupied for a mile of length, and the bivouacs extended back into the dunes.

II
A SURPRISE FOR VERA CRUZ

“Boom!”

It was such a tremendous explosion that it shook the solid buildings of the city. It also brought Jerry upon his feet, all standing, where he had been asleep for the night in a vacant niche against a stone warehouse. A great many of the people slept this night in the open air, just where they chanced to be, so that they might miss no excitement.

The explosion awakened them all. There was a rush for good viewpoints; perhaps the battle had begun. Right speedily Jerry had scrambled atop the wall at a place between batteries, from which he could see the harbor and the Americans’ beach eastward. Nobody objected to him, here.

“Boom—Boom!” A double explosion well-nigh knocked him backward. A cloud of black smoke had spurted from the walls of San Juan de Ulloa castle, a quarter of a mile before; but yonder amidst the sand hills the louder “Boom!” had raised a much greater, blacker smoke, where the shell had burst.

The people upon the wall cheered.