While General Taylor was away with the bulk of his army, the little
garrison up the river was besieged. As we lay in our tents upon the
sea-shore, the artillery at the fort on the Rio Grande could be
distinctly heard.

The war had begun.

There were no possible means of obtaining news from the garrison, and
information from outside could not be otherwise than unfavorable. What
General Taylor's feelings were during this suspense I do not know; but
for myself, a young second-lieutenant who had never heard a hostile gun
before, I felt sorry that I had enlisted. A great many men, when they
smell battle afar off, chafe to get into the fray. When they say so
themselves they generally fail to convince their hearers that they are
as anxious as they would like to make believe, and as they approach
danger they become more subdued. This rule is not universal, for I have
known a few men who were always aching for a fight when there was no
enemy near, who were as good as their word when the battle did come.
But the number of such men is small.

On the 7th of May the wagons were all loaded and General Taylor started
on his return, with his army reinforced at Point Isabel, but still less
than three thousand strong, to relieve the garrison on the Rio Grande.
The road from Point Isabel to Matamoras is over an open, rolling,
treeless prairie, until the timber that borders the bank of the Rio
Grande is reached. This river, like the Mississippi, flows through a
rich alluvial valley in the most meandering manner, running towards all
points of the compass at times within a few miles. Formerly the river
ran by Resaca de la Palma, some four or five miles east of the present