While our wide-expanding nostrils drank the distant scent of death.
As we marched along the prairie, creeping, cat-like, from the day,
We could see the spotted jaguar, stealing from his human prey,
While in flocks the huge, majestic condor with his mighty wings
Flapped from his unusual feast, and swept above the plain in rings,
Shrieking, as he clove the air, some desperate necromantic charm
Over the pale, enchanted bodies that had lost the power of harm.
Here and there, as we proceeded, lying wounded in our way
We would meet some pallid victim, perishing in the face of day;
He was, yesterday, a foeman—now, a helpless, suffering man,