Meanwhile, the young man Taylor, left with only 4,759 raw troops, was set upon in February, 1847, at Buena Vista, by Santa Anna and 22,000 well-baked Mexicans. The South American Warwick left 1,500 men, his carriage, travelling equipage, and the best part of himself—his wooden leg—upon the field, and with the fragments escaped southwards. Almost simultaneously new-comers were seen flying, in movements more or less effective, across the room,—General Wool, with 2,900 men, at San Antonio; General Kearny, at Sante Fé, New Mexico; Captain John C. Fremont and Commodore Sloat, in California; all performing feats which brought murmurs of applause even from trans-sea critics. At last the Mexicans gave out, tired and glad to apply to their wounds that Mustang liniment, the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, mixed up March 2, 1848. New Mexico and California were, by this treaty, added, with eight hundred thousand square miles, to our westering borders. Henceforth the Rio Grande babbled a bi-lingual story to the Saxon Americans on its right, and the mezzo-tinted, mezzo-clad Mexicans on its left. The path of civilization, whose sun-leaning course through the centuries, from Assyria to America, is not unfamiliar to Americans, was now securely macadamized by Yankee pavers to the Pacific. The Atlantic slopes, of course, were easily turned westward, and their readily manufactured fruits rolled down into the Mississippi basin, and over its heaping rim beyond. Revolvers were boxed and transported in increased quantities to the Southwest, to supply the judicial demand; as every man who takes up government land is liable to sudden litigations, where the trials revolve quickly, and cast with fatal speed one of the litigants. The wonderful vegetation of this newly opened region, gorgeous in tropical luxuriance, was for a few years made more remarkable by the human fruitage, which not unfrequently hung suspended with impressive weight from the pendulous branches. Fortunately these productions are short-lived. They are but the morning mists that hide for an hour the mammoth sierras and wide-armed plains, that nurse continents and centuries to manly vigor. [Illustration: ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY. (p. 421) ] The little Calhoun trick had, quite unexpectedly to the wizard of the South, conjured up,—not a few paltry African patches grinning with ghastly spectres, chained in the linked dance of death,—but broad empires brimming soon with stalwart men and women. Calhoun proposes, but conscience disposes.