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There were quite a number of young officers at the post during the winter, and as our relations with the Mexican commandant at Piedras Negras were most amicable, we were often invited to dances at his house.
Remaining there until six o'clock in the evening, we watered our animals, and with freshly filled kegs started for Hole-in-the-Plain, where we stayed until the following evening, the animals passing the day on grass without water. A second night-drive brought us to Cisternas Negras, and the third to Date Creek, from which last point we resumed travelling by daylight.
From the manner in which scores of men wrapped in scarlet blankets and mounted on little wiry Mexican horses dashed hither and thither, one would think some startling event was to transpire; but this was not the case all was peaceful and quiet in Piedras Negras.
On the 1st day of July, 1853, I was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the First Regiment of United States Infantry, then stationed in Texas. The company to which I was attached was quartered at Fort Duncan, a military post on the Rio Grande opposite the little town of Piedras Negras, on the boundary line between the United States and the Republic of Mexico.
It is, however, only a westerly wind in appearance, and it is oftener the breeze of the east and north-east, which, rushing with extreme impetuosity, engulfs itself in the Quebrada de Tipe. Rebounding from the high mountains of Aguas Negras, this wind finds its way back to Caracas, in the direction of the hospital of the Capuchins and the Rio Caraguata.
The social affairs of Piedras Negras were sometimes on a fairly large scale. The General Manager had his winter residence there a meticulously cultivated demain which lay like a blue spot in a cloudy sky. There were grass and palms and, immediately beyond, the vast desert.
Were men and women created to suffer, to bear crosses which were not of their own making, to suffer injustices which seemed pointless?... Late in the afternoon he was back in Piedras Negras again. He had eaten nothing save a handful of figs which an old woman had given him, together with a bowl of goat's milk. He had wished to pay for them, but the old woman had shaken her head and turned away.
Climbing the Rastrojito slopes, we sighted the Pedras Negras: these are huge travelled rocks of basalt, jet-black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture, and showing debris like onion-coats about their base. The aspect was fantastic, resembling nothing so much as skulls 10 to 15 feet high.
Merritt's cavalry and the Fourth Corps still being at San Antonio, I went to that place and reviewed these troops, and having prepared them with some ostentation for a campaign, of course it was bruited about that we were going to invade Mexico. Then, escorted by a regiment of horse I proceeded hastily to Fort Duncan, on the Rio Grande just opposite the Mexican town of Piedras Negras.
Merritt's cavalry and the Fourth Corps still being at San Antonio, I went to that place and reviewed these troops, and having prepared them with some ostentation for a campaign, of course it was bruited about that we were going to invade Mexico. Then, escorted by a regiment of horse I proceeded hastily to Fort Duncan, on the Rio Grande just opposite the Mexican town of Piedras Negras.
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