Zachary Taylor before he was twenty-one volunteered to leave home on a military expedition needed by the exigencies of the time. This, his first essay in war, proved very harmless; for no enemy was found, and he soon returned to his father’s farm, with a taste, however, for the new life he had made this short trial of. The taste thus acquired induced him to accept with great alacrity an opportunity that subsequently offered of joining the regular army of the United States, which he did in 1803, with the rank of lieutenant. Shortly afterwards an occasion arose for distinguishing himself, and he did not let it pass unimproved. He defended a post called Fort Harrison, against great odds; and by the check thus given to a large hostile party of Indians, saved a frontier from devastation. This gallant commencement was followed by a succession of equally noticeable exploits. He courted every chance of securing active service, and in succession won new reputation in contests with the Indians, with the English, and lastly with the Mexicans. Since it was with this last opponent that his chief battles were fought, and his really important victories won; and as those victories have gained an European reputation from the fact that they led to the acquisition of the real land of gold—El Dorado—California itself; we may glance over the events that induced and characterised the strife, and led to so memorable a result. Mexico and the United States had long had causes of quarrel; not the least of which was that the Mexicans got into debt to the Yankees, and would not pay what they admitted to be due. With several such unsettled and unsatisfactory accounts on hand, the Texas difficulty arose, and a large body of the Texians declaring for annexation with the United States, the few scruples that stood in the way of such an increase of dominion were quickly overlooked, and the large and fertile province was incorporated in the Union. Half such a cause of quarrel was enough to secure a declaration of war from a country like Mexico—_a country that has gone through eighteen revolutions in twenty-five years_—and accordingly war began. The Mexicans took steps for re-assuming the lost Texas, when, on the 4th of February, 1846, General Taylor received orders to march, with a force of three thousand men under his command, to the Rio Grande, the western limit of the newly-attached State. The President, for the time being, of Mexico claimed Texas as a revolted province, and hastened to submit the question to the ordeal of battle. The Mexicans shed the first blood. They took some prisoners—some Americans—and shot them in cold blood; and soon afterwards they captured more Americans, including some women, whose bodies were discovered subsequently with their throats cut. This brutality added fuel to the flame before existing, and the struggle began that ended in the capture of Mexico and the cession of California.