A leathern girdle surrounds the
waist, from which are suspended a bowie and a hunter's knife, and
sometimes a brace of pistols. These, with the rifle and
holster-pistols, are the arms carried by officers and privates. A
single bugle (and a sorry one it is) composes the band. Many an embryo
Napoleon, in his own conceit, whose martial spirit has been excited to
flaming intensity of heat by the peacock-plumage and gaudy trappings of
our militia companies, when marching through the streets to the sound
of drum, fife, and brass band, if he could have looked upon us, and
then consulted the state of the military thermometer within him, would
probably have discovered that the mercury of his heroism had fallen
several degrees below zero. He might even have desired that we should
not come
"Between the wind and his nobility."
War, stripped of its pageantry, possesses but few of the attractions
with which poetry and painting have embellished it. The following is a
list of the officers composing the California Battalion:--Lieut.-colonel
J.G. Fremont, commanding; A.H. Gillespie, major; P.B. Reading,
paymaster; H.
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