Note 47 — XXXI THE AMERICANS AS CONQUERORS 1846–1848

An English soldier in our army said with reference to the better class at Tampico: they were shy of “the strange, wild-looking, hairy-faced savages of the half-horse and half-alligator breed, who galloped about the streets and plazas mounted on mules and Mexican ponies, and armed with sabres, bowies, and revolvers, and in every uncouth variety of costume peculiar to the American backwoodsman”; adding that the Mexicans addressed them as “Gentlemen,” but in their absence spoke of them with intense bitterness as “cursed volunteers” (Ballentine, Eng. Sold., i, 276–7).