rom five thousand throats, and answered by twice that
number from the anchored ships. It echoed along the shores, and back
from the distant battlements.

A colour-sergeant, springing forward, rushed up the steep sides of a
sand-hill, and planted his flag upon its snowy ridge.

As the well-known banner swung out upon the breeze, another cheer, wild
and thrilling, ran along the line; a hundred answering flags were hauled
up through the fleet; the ships of war saluted with full broadsides; and
the guns of San Juan, now for the first time waking from their lethargic
silence, poured forth their loudest thunder.

The sun was just setting as our column commenced its advance inward.
After winding for a short distance through the defiles of the
sand-hills, we halted for the night, our left wing resting upon the
beach.

The soldiers bivouacked without tents--sleeping upon their arms, with
the soft sand for their couch and the cartridge-box for their pillow.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note. Cuartel is the quarter of the city.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE CITY OF THE TRUE CROSS.

Vera Cruz is a fortified city. Round and round it is girt by a wall,
with regular batteries placed at intervals. You enter it from the land
side by three gates (_garitas_), and from the sea by a beautiful pier or
mole that projects some distance into the water. The latter is a modern
construction; and when the sun is descending behind the Mexican
Cordilleras to the west, and the breeze blows in from the Gulf, this
mole--the seat of but little commercial activity--becomes the favourite
promenade of the dark-eyed Vera-Cruzanas and their pallid lovers.

The city stands on the very beach. The sea at full tide washes its
battlements, and many of the houses overlook the water. On almost every
side a plain of sand extends to a mile's distance from the walls, where
it terminates in those lofty white sand-ridges that form a feature of
the shores of the Mexican Gulf. During high tides and "northers" the
sea washes over the surrounding sand-plain, and Vera Cruz appears almost
isolated amid the waves. On one side, however, towards the south, there
is variety in the aspect. Here appear traces of vegetation--some low
trees and bushes, a view of the forest inward into the country, a few
buildings outside the walls, a railway-station, a cemetery, an aqueduct,
a small sluggish stream, marshes and stagnant poo