We sat on our horses, facing the globe-shaped summit of El Telegrafo, and watching our flag as it swung out from the tower.

“Look yonder! what is that?” cried an officer, pointing across the barranca.

All eyes were now turned in the direction indicated. A white line was slowly moving down the face of the opposite cliff.

“Rein back, men! rein back!” shouted Twing, as his eye rested upon the strange object. “Throw yourselves under cover of the hill!”

In a minute our whole party—dragoons, officers, and all—had galloped our horses into the bed of a dry arroyo, where we were completely screened from observation. Three or four of us, dismounting, along with Twing, crept cautiously forward to the position we had just left, and, raising our heads over the bunch-grass, looked across the chasm. We were close to its edge, and the opposite “cheek” of the barranca, a huge wall of trap-rock, about a mile horizontally distant, rose at least a thousand feet from the river bottom. Its face was almost perpendicular, with the exception of a few stairs or platforms in the basaltic strata, and from these hung out stunted palms, cedars, and dark, shapeless masses of cacti and agave.

Down this front the living line was still moving—slowly, zigzag—along narrow ledges and over jutting points, as though some white liquid or a train of gigantic insects were crawling down the precipice. The occasional flash of a bright object would have told us the nature of this strange phenomenon, had we not guessed it already. They were armed men—Mexicans—escaping from the field of battle; and in a wood upon the escarpment of the cliff we could perceive several thousands of their comrades huddled up, and waiting for an opportunity to descend. They were evidently concealed, and out of all danger from their pursuers on the other side. Indeed, the main body of the American army had already passed their position, and were moving along the Jalapa road, following up the clouds of dust that hung upon the retreating squadrons of Santa Anna.

We lay for some time observing the motions of these cunning fugitives as they streamed downward. The head of their line had nearly reached the timbered bottom, through whose green fringes the Plan River swept onward, curving from cliff to cliff.

Impatient looks were cast towards the major, whose cold grey eye showed no signs of action.

“Well, Major—what’s to be done?” asked one.

“Nothing!” was the impressive reply.

“Nothing!” echoed everyone.

“Why, what could we do?”

“Take them prisoners—every one of them.”

“Whom prisoners?”

“These Mexicans—these before us.”

“Ha! before you they are—a long way, too. Bah! they are ten miles off, and, even if we could ride straight down the bluff with winged horses, what could our hundred men do in that jungle below? Look yonder!—there are a thousand of them crawling over the rocks?”

“And what signify numbers?” asked I, now speaking for the first time. “They are already defeated and flying—half of them, I’ll wager, without arms. Come, Major, let us go! We can capture the whole party without firing a shot.”

“But, my dear Captain, we cannot reach them where they are.”

“It is not necessary. If we ride up the cliffs, they will come to us.”

“How?”

“You see this dark line. It is not three miles distant. You know that timber like that does not grow on the naked face of a cliff. It is a gorge, and, I’ll warrant, a watercourse too. They will pass through it.”

&ld............