Mexico has fallen, the Stars and Stripes fly above the “Halls of the Montezumas”--a nation has been conquered. History records no deeds of greater daring, no triumphs of arms more brilliant. Empire was added to empire, 1,000,000 square miles of territory were acquired--three and a half times the area of France--a dwelling place for 100,000,000 of freemen, won by half a hundred thousand. Until then much of the territory of the Mississipi-Missouri belonged to Mexico. Now the whole valley of one million five hundred thousand square miles, the river, with thirteen hundred navigable branches, running from its source five hundred miles to the north, cutting through its magnificent mountain gateway turning to the sea, running through territories and states, until sweetened by the breath of the olive and the orange, and finally received into the warm embrace of the tropical gulf, 5,000 miles from the land of the pine to the land of the palm, long enough to reach from the mouth of the Hudson to the mouth of the Nile. Add the empire drained by the Colorado, crown these with California--and all is ours, and won under the flag that now protects it. Judge McKay’s reference to Colonel A. W. Donophan and his famous march from Missouri to Mexico with Colonel Sterling Price reminds me of the ever-to-be-remembered passage from Brazos Santiago to New Orleans on the old Mississipi River a tow-boat of six hundred tons, the “Mary Kingsland,” on which I was one of the invalid passengers. We had crowded on that small vessel nearly 900 men of Colonel Donophan’s regiment, over 800 men of the 2nd Indiana (Colonel Bowles) and over 100 sick men of other commands. Many of these men were down with yellow fever, of whom ten died during the five days’ passage, and were buried at sea. You may talk of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but I do not think it was any worse than the lower hold of that steamer, where we were obliged to lie packed together like sardines on square blocks of iron used as ballast, where the foul, stenchful bilge water came oozing up between these iron blocks. Then to add to our discomforts we had nothing to eat but the hardest kind of ship-biscuit that was impossible to masticate, and rotten, green measly pork and Rio coffee served out in the green bean. The stuff was so vile that we were often obliged to vomit after each meal, as we could not retain the putrid meat on our stomachs. The Government, no doubt, paid for sound pork, but in those days the Government contractors were principally gentlemen from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, located at Cincinnati, who were not over scrupulous as to the kind of meat they supplied providing they got the money.