privations, suff"erings, and evil influences of military service in a foreign land. When we recollect their long marches, some of them of a thousand miles Tinder a burmng sun, and not unfrequently exposed to the deadly vomito, we may readily believe that many lives have been lost through disease and casualties as well as in battle. Owing to the imbecility and ignorance of the Mexicans, the American loss in the field has been aston- ishingly small, not exceeding 5000 in killed and wounded in twenty-eight battles, as appears from official reports.
But who can count the number who have died in military hospitals, and of others who. worn down by disease and vice, have found a premature grave in their own country ? From very partial reports from some of our military hos- pitals in Mexico, it appears that the deaths exceed those that occurred on the field of battle.
A iSIew Orleans paper, noticing the return of the Ten- Regiment to that city, remarks : " Just one year ago there passed through our streets as noble and splen- did a body of men as ever went forth to battle. They were about nine hundred strong. On Friday last, the whole of this gallant regiment arrived in our city. It numbers just three hundred and fifty—about one -third the force with which it left ; and this loss it has sustained in a twelve months' campaign ! It has lost on an average fifty men a-month."
Of the Second Regiment of Mississippi Rifles, one hun- dred and sixty-seven died of disease. Said Mr. Hudson in Congress : " Our late associate. Colonel Baker, declared in his speech on this floor, that of his regiment about one hundred had left their bones in the Valley of the Rio Grande, and that about two hundred more, worn down by hardships, and emaciated by disease, had been dis- missed to perish by the way, or to find their graves with their friends at home ; that all this mortality had taken place in about six months, and that this regiment had never seen the foe. He also infoi'med us, that what was true of his regiment was generally