Sabine, had halted at the Nueces. Now it
was to advance across this wild region to the Rio Grande. Thus did smug
James Polk keep his promises!

Among these tangled mesquite thickets ran sometimes long bayous, made
from the overflow of the greater rivers--_resacas_, as the natives call
them. Tall palms sometimes grew along the bayous, for the country is
half tropic. Again, on the drier ridges, there might be taller detached
trees, heavier forests--_palo alto_, the natives call them. In some such
place as this, where the trees were tall, there was fired the first gun
of our war in the Southwest. There were strange noises heard here in the
wilderness, followed by lesser noises, and by human groans. Some faces
that night were upturned to the moon--the same moon which swam so
gloriously over Washington. Taylor camped closer to the Rio Grande. The
fight was next to begin by the lagoon called the Resaca de la Palma. But
that night at the capital that same moon told us nothing of all this. We
did not hear the guns. It was far from Palo Alto to our ports of
Galveston or New Orleans. Our cockaded army made its own history in its
own unreported way.

We at the White House ball that night also made history in our own
unrecorded way. As our army was adding to our confines on the Southwest,
so there were other, though secret, forces which added to our territory
in the far Northwest. As to this and as to the means by which it came
about, I have already been somewhat plain.

It was a goodly company that assembled for the grand ball, the first
one in the second season of Mr. Polk's somewhat confused and discordant
administration. Social matters had started off dour enough. Mrs. Polk
was herself of strict religious practice, and I imagine it had taken
somewhat of finesse to get her consent to these festivities. It was
called sometimes the diplomats' ball. At least there was diplomacy back
of it. It was mere accident which set this celebration upon the very
evening of the battle of Palo Alto, May eighth, 1846.

By ten o'clock there were many in the great room which had been made
ready for the dancing, and rather a brave company it might have been
called. We had at least the splendor of the foreign diplomats' uniforms
for our background, and to this we added the bravest of our attire, each
one in his own individual fashion, I fear. Thus my friend Jack Dandridge
was wholly resplendent in a new waistcoat of his own devising, and an
eveni