A print of the battle field of Palo Alto and the Mexican Army drawn up in battle array. This print, apparently based upon a sketch drawn by Thorpe on the actual battlefield, depicts a large, open and flat landscape with a singular soldier on horseback (the American advance guard) in the foreground (on a road leading into the distance) who is surveying a military blockade (the Mexican army lined up) in the background. Thorpe describes the scene as "a broad plain of three miles in extent, bounded by Palo Alto, or dwarfish mosquite trees" with "ponds of fresh water, and immediately beyond them, chapparal." Thorpe also describes the Mexican troop arrangement that included a division of Mexican cavalry with lances on the extreme right, next was placed the artillery, then infantry and they were placed alternatively making up six thousand men. [This print is from the book "Our Army on the Rio Grande," by Thomas Bangs Thorpe, opposite p. 74] Interestingly, the artist Carl Nebel never traveled to the battlefield himself and apparently used Thorpe's print in his research for his own rendering of the Battle of Palo Alto, but misinterpreted the engraved mottes of trees in the distance in Thorpe's print for escarpments and hills, which do not exist in the area. [See Stewart, Sandweiss, and Huseman, Eyewitness to War (1989), pages 109-111].
