Looking at the shaggy hills and ravines on his left, Santa Anna declared that a rabbit could not get through there. Perhaps not, thought many a soldier, but the Americans are not rabbits. About seven hundred yards in front of El Telégrafo stood a similar though somewhat lower hill called La Atalaya, which commanded a wide expanse of the rough country, and the engineers felt it should be fortified and strongly held; but the President would merely station twenty-five men there. Robles himself believed that Scott could turn the main position, and wanted fortifications erected at the extreme left; but Santa Anna would listen to no advice, and his cocksureness itself excited alarm. In private, officers talked of a disaster, and even Canalizo foreboded it. The tinder of a panic was ready.[14]
TWIGGS’S ADVANCE
Meanwhile Twiggs with two field batteries,[15] six 24-pounders, two 8-inch howitzers, four 10-inch mortars, and a squadron of dragoons—in all some 2600 men—set out in the footsteps of Cortez.[16] Most fortunately the troops had a stock of enthusiasm, for the beginning of the march was terrible. After going three miles along the beach they struck off at a right angle for six or eight on a deep, sandy road, sometimes three or four feet below the level of the ground, with a blazing sun overhead, not a breath of moving air, and Twiggs’s horse for a pace-maker. Many threw away everything detachable, and the greater part of the division—at least four fifths, it was said—fell by the way. Some died, and many others did not rejoin the command for days. Unbroken mules and drivers ignorant of their business added to the difficulties. The meagre facilities for transportation did not permit even officers to have tents, and some of the scanty supplies were lost through the breaking down of wagons.[19]
The next day, happily, a change took place. The column set out before sunrise, marched more slowly, and halted occasionally; and the national highway, no longer buried in sand, proved to be a spacious, comfortably graded cement avenue, carried over the streams by handsome bridges of cut stone, and flanked on both sides by the estates of Santa Anna.[17] Now it penetrated a dark forest of palms, cactus, limes and countless other trees festooned with vines, and now it crossed rolling prairies. Here it was cut through solid rock; here it skirted a beautiful hill, with a charming vista of leafy glades; and presently it was clinging as if in terror to the face of a cliff. Bowers carpeted with many soft hues and perfumed with heliotrope recalled ideas of Eden, while marshes full of strange bloated growths, bluish-green pools rimmed with flowers of a suspicious brilliancy, and thick clumps of dagger plants tipped with crimson offered suggestions of a different sort.[19]
Matted tangles of leafage spattered with gold, big tulipans gleaming in the shadows like a red rose in the hair of a Spanish dancer, blossoms like scarlet hornets that almost flew at one’s eyes, and blooms like red-hot hair-brushes, the sight of which made the scalp tingle, were balanced with big, close masses of white throats and purple mouths, and with banks of the greenish-white cuatismilla, discharging invisible clouds of a fragrance that seemed to be locust blended with lily of the valley. Trees with tops like balloons, like corkscrews and like tables, trees drained almost dry by starry parasites that swung from their branches, trees covered with strawberry blossoms—or what appeared to be strawberry blossoms—that were to graduate into coffee beans, trees bare of everything except great yellow suns, the Flower of God, that fascinated one’s gaze—these and countless other surprises followed one another; and then would come a whole grove netted over with morning glories in full bloom. Amid scenes like these our exhausted troops quickly regained their spirits.[19]
Toward the end of the march on the eleventh, when about thirty-seven miles from Vera Cruz, the troops crossed a branch of the Antigua, and soon came to the river itself. In the triangular space thus bounded rose a hill crowned with an old fort.[18] Here stood the national bridge, a magnificent structure more than fifty feet high and nearly a quarter of a mile in length, commanding romantic views of the rapid stream winding through towering vistas of luxuriant vegetation. On leaving the bridge the road made a sharp turn to the left at the foot of a high and very steep bluff; and it seemed as if a battery planted at the top of the bluff, as La Vega’s had been, might stop an army until overpowered with siege guns. But Canalizo had been wiser than his chief, for there were fords above and below and cross-roads in the rear, that made it possible to turn the position. So amidst a wondrous illumination from glow-worms and fireflies, the troops made their third camp here in peace.[19]
Beyond this point the influence of Canalizo could be seen. The bamboo huts thatched with palm-leaves were all vacant and empty. Scarcely one living creature could be seen except flitting birds. These, however, still abounded: parrots, macaws, hawks, eagles, orioles, humming-birds, mocking-birds, cardinals brighter than cardinals, cranes larger than cranes, talkative chachalacas, toucans as vociferous as their bills were huge—every color from indigo to scarlet, and every note from the scream to the warble; and the same ocean of green still rolled its vast billows, warmed and brightened by the same golden sun.[19]
At the end of this march, about thirteen miles from the national bridge, the highway narrowed and pitched down a long, steep, winding descent, with overhanging trees and rocks on one side and a precipice on the other, as if making for the centre of the globe. Then it crossed Río del Plan, and came to a small, irregular opening, where a few scattered huts could be seen. This was Plan del Río. Views of superb heights delighted the eye, but the hot breath of the coast could be felt in the valley. Even the hollows between the sand-hills of Vera Cruz were thought less pestilential. But the men lay down, and, as a soldier wrote, covered themselves with the sky.[19]
In the midst of scenery like this, “Old Davy” Twiggs appeared like a perfectly natural feature. His robust and capacious body, powerful shoulders, bull-neck, heavy, cherry-red face, and nearly six feet of erect stature represented physical energy at its maximum. With bristling white hair and, when the regulations did not interfere, a thick white beard, he seemed like a kind of snow-clad volcano, a human Ætna, pouring forth a red-hot flood of orders and objurgations from his crater of a mouth; and he was vastly enjoyed by the rough soldiers even when, as they said, he “cursed them right out of their boots.” In a more strictly human aspect he made an excellent disciplinarian, and he could get more work out of the men than anybody else in the army; but as a warrior, while he always looked thirsty for a fight, he was thought over-anxious to fight another day—to be, in short, a hero of the future instead of the past; and as a general, Scott had already said that he was not qualified “to command an army—either in the presence, or in the absence of an enemy.” His brains were, in fact, merely what happened to be left over from the making of his spinal cord, and the soldiers’ names for him—the “Horse” and the “Bengal Tiger”—classed him fairly as regarded intellect.[20]
Twiggs had been warned by Scott that a substantial army, commanded by Santa Anna, lay in his front; lancers were encountered on April 11; and a reconnaissance of that afternoon, made because the enemy were said to be in force just ahead, proved that guns commanded the pass of Cerro Gordo; yet the next morning he advanced in the usual marching order. Nothing saved his division but the eagerness of the Mexicans. They opened fire before he was entirely within the jaws of death, and he managed to retreat—extricating his train with difficulty, however. The enemy have given up and withdrawn, boasted Santa Anna, while the Americans felt ashamed. Further reconnoitring on that day gave a still more impressive idea of the problem ahead; but the General, as if intoxicated by holding an independent command, ordered an assault made at daybreak the next morning. The Volunteer Division, consisting at present of two brigades, a field battery and a squadron of cavalry, then arrived. Patterson, who led it, seemed, however, by no means eager to accept the responsibility of command, and, as no confidence whatever was felt in Pillow, the second in rank, he placed the entire force under Twiggs on the ground of illness. Pillow and Shields, who were thought no less willing than Twiggs to make a bid for glory at the expense of their men, then demanded a day for rest and preparation; and accordingly, about sunset on the thirteenth, orders for the attack were issued.[20]