human
We're going into the country for mules, replied the major.
gpt
Mules, indeed! Heaven knows there isn't a mule within ten miles, unless with a yellow-hided Mexican on his back, and such mules we don't want. The volunteers--curse them!--have scared everything to the mountains: not a stick of celery nor an onion to be had at any price.
human
How long do you think we may be gone?
gpt
Long? Only a day. If I stay overnight in the chaparral, may a wolf eat me! Oh, no! if the mules don't turn up soon, somebody else may go fetch 'em--that's all.
human
I may ration them for one day?
gpt
Two--two; your fellows'll be hungry. Roberts, of the Rifles, who's been out in the country, tells me there isn't enough forage to feed a cat. So you'd better take two days' biscuit. I suppose we'll meet with beef enough on the hoof, though I'd rather have a rump-steak out of the Philadelphia market than all the beef in Mexico. Hang their beef! it's as tough as tan leather!
human
At four o'clock then, Major, I'll be with you,
gpt
Make it a little later, Captain. I get no sleep with these cursed gally-nippers and things; but, stay--how many men have you got?
human
In my company eighty; but my order is to take only fifty.
gpt
There again! I told you so; want me killed--they want old Bios killed! Fifty men, when a thousand of the leather-skinned devils have been seen not ten miles off! Fifty men! great heavens! fifty men! There's an escort to take the chaparral with!
human
But they are fifty men worth a hundred, I promise you.
gpt
Bring all--every son of a gun--bugler and all.
human
But that, Major, would be contrary to the general's orders.
gpt
Hang the general's orders! Obey some generals' orders in this army, and you would do queer things. Bring them all; take my advice. I tell you, if you don't, our lives may answer for it. Fifty men!
human
Hilloa!
gpt
Why, cried he,
human
I have lost my senses! Your pardon, Captain! This unlucky thing has driven me crazy. They must pick upon _me_! What will you drink? Here's some good brandy; sorry I can't say as much for the water.
gpt
(_piedmont_) of the great chain of the Andes lies a strip of low lands. In many places this belt is nearly a hundred miles in breadth, but generally less than fifty. It is of a tropical character, termed in the language of the country _tierra caliente_. It is mostly covered with jungly forests, in which are found the palm, the tree-ferns, the mahogany and india-rubber trees, dyewoods, canes, llianas, and many other gigantic parasites. In the underwood you meet thorny aloes, the
human
plant, and wild mezcal; various Cactacese, and flora of singular forms, scarcely known to the botanist. There are swamps, dark and dank, overshadowed by the tall cypress, with its pendent streamers of silvery moss (_Tillandsia usneoides_). From these arise the miasma--the mother of the dreaded