(MEXICAN WAR) John Lamb Letter by an occupying soldier descr

Sale 2646 - Lot 212

Price Realized: $ 500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(MEXICAN WAR.) John Lamb. Letter by an occupying soldier describing the wonders of Saltillo, Mexico. Autograph Letter Signed to friend Henry Blackwelder of Concord, NC. 3 pages, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches, on one folding sheet, plus address panel on final blank with ink stamps "Brazos Sept 25" and "10"; moderate dampstaining, mount remnants on final blank. Saltillo, Mexico, 9 September 1847

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Lamb's regiment of North Carolina volunteers has been decimated by disease, "which has reduced me to a perfect skeleton." He describes Mexico at length: "It is a very fine country, and has some of the richest lands & finest buildings as any I ever saw. All the Mexicans lack is proper farming tools & timber to fence in their lands. . . . They use wooden plows mostly drawn by two oxen, which they make but poor speed with. . . . You can go to the market any morning & see hundreds of bushels of fruit of the finest kind of grapes, figs, peaches. . . . They think more of their churches than anything else. There is in this town six or eight & they have the bells ringing every hour, which makes a tremendous noise. . . . All the buildings here are fine, made chiefly of brick & stone & have flat tops but lower down about the banks of the Rio Grande they live in miserable huts composed of cains, palmetto &c."