cturesque confusion. Wolves and carrion birds were
tearing and rending the bodies of the unfortunate patriots. From one wall
near the entrance of the town a hundred Indians were hanging; a little
further on, a like number had been literally torn in pieces as if by wild
horses, and their heads and limbs lay scattered about, so frightfully
mangled that even the coyotes turned aside and left them. A fine feast day
must that have been for Calleja, thought I--but pshaw! we had as yet seen
nothing.

"The bridge over the canada had been broken down, but a new one replaced
it; the piles consisted of human bodies, upon which boards were laid. We
were now in the city itself. Truly, they had made clean work of it. Of the
thousands of houses that had nestled themselves along the banks of the
stream, nought remained but fragments of blackened wall and smoking
timber. Among these ruins were other things, fat stinking things, stumps
and shapeless masses, which lay scattered, and in some places piled up,
amid the reeking embers. We took them at first for stones and pieces of
rock; but we were mistaken. They were the roasted carcasses of Guanaxato's
wretched inhabitants--hideous lumps! the feet, hands, and heads burnt
away, the bodies baked by the fire. In many of the huts, or at least on
the places where the huts had stood, heaps of these bodies had burnt
together in one pestilential mass, and now emitted an unbearable stench.
Not a living human creature to be seen, but thousands of wolves and
vultures; although even these neither snarled nor screamed, but seemed
almost as if they felt the desolation by which they were surrounded. My
Indians did not utter a word; our mules scarcely dared to set their feet
down; they pricked their ears, bristled up their manes, refused to
advance, stayed, and some even fell. No wonder. Their path lay over
corpses!

"We reached the Plaza Mayor. It was there that Calleja had held his chief
banquet, and wallowed with his Spaniards in Mexican blood. We waded
through a red slime which covered the whole square to the depth of six
inches; the bodies were heaped up like maize sacks. In the Alhondega we
found a thousand young girls in a state--God be merciful to our poor
souls! The Gachupins had first brutally outraged, and then slain them, but
slain them in a manner--_Jesus, Maria, y Jose!_ Can it be true that
Spaniards are born of woman? Senores! on the market-place alone, fourteen
thousand Mexicans, young wo