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Updated: June 7, 2025
The night of the 13th of September was spent by the troops under General Worth in the houses near San Cosme, and in line confronting the general line of the enemy across to Belen. The troops that I was with were in the houses north of the road leading into the city, and were engaged during the night in cutting passage-ways from one house to another towards the town.
General Scott, coming up at this moment, ordered a simultaneous advance to be made on the city, along the two roads leading from Chapultepec to the gates of San Cosme and Belen, respectively. Worth was to command that on San Cosme, Quitman that on Belen. Both were prepared for defence by barricades, behind which the enemy were posted in great numbers.
The grounds are surrounded by a thick wall some fifteen feet in height. It is situated two miles from the Belen gate, and was regarded as the key to the city. The officer in command was General D. Nicholas Bravo, an officer of skill, distinction, and courage. Second in command was General D. Mariano Monterde. The chief of engineers was D. Juan Cano, and D. Manuel Gamboa commandant of artillery.
The middle-sized monkey was stupid and kindly, and all the rest of the company imposed on it; the little monkey invariably rode on its back, and the peccary used it as a head pillow when it felt sleepy. Belen, the capital of the state of Para, was an admirable illustration of the genuine and almost startling progress which Brazil has been making of recent years.
The gentlemen of our party go one day to visit the Jesuit College in Havana, yclept "Universidad de Belen." The ladies, weary of dry goods, manifest some disposition to accompany them.
It will be sufficient to note that the influence, where it exists, is external; it is nowhere the outcome of Christian allegory, nor does it arise out of the nature of the subject as such titles as the Pastores de Belén might suggest.
A flank discharge from Duncan's guns completed the work; the barricade was carried; and without a moment's rest Quitman advanced in the same manner on the garita San Belen, which was held by General Torres with a strong garrison. It too was stormed, though under a fearful hail of grape and canister; and the rifles moved forward toward the citadel.
The two aides found Loring himself, middle-aged and imposing, old Indian fighter, hero of Contreras, Churubusco, Chapultepec, and Garita de Belen, commander, since the transference of General Robert E. Lee to South Carolina, of the Army of the Kanawha, gallant and dashing, with an arm left in Mexico, with a gift for picturesque phrases, with a past full of variety and a future of a like composition, with a genuine tenderness and care for his men, and an entire conviction that both he and his troops were at present in the convoy of a madman they found Loring seated on a log beside a small fire and engaged in cooling in the snow a too-hot tin cup of coffee.
There are no Christmas trees in Spain, but each family makes its own Nativity scene, which is set out in time for Christmas Eve. In some cities contests are held for the most beautiful "Belen" scenes, as they are called, because "Belen" is the way Spanish people say Bethlehem. On Christmas Day everybody goes calling to see the Belens in other people's houses.
The procession was headed by the standard-bearers, with beards of hemp, crowns and striped dalmatics, holding aloft the Valencian banners adorned with enormous bats and large L's beside the coat of arms; then, to the sound of the flageolet, the retinue of brave Indians, shepherds from Belen, Catalans and Mallorcans; following these passed the dwarfs with their monstrously huge heads, clicking the castanets to the rhythm of a Moorish march; behind these came the giants of the Corpus and at the end, the banners of the guilds; an endless row of red standards, faded with the years, and so tall that their tops reached higher than the first stories of the buildings.
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