GENERAL WOOL INSPECTS AND MUSTERS THE WESTERN TROOPS.—ARMY OF THE CENTRE.—NEW MEXICO—KEARNEY—MACNAMARA—CALIFORNIA.— FRÉMONT—SONOMA—CALIFORNIAN INDEPENDENCE—POSSESSION TAKEN.—SLOAT—STOCKTON.—A REVOLT—PICO—TREATY OF COUENGA.—KEARNEY AT SAN PASCUAL—IS RELIEVED—DISPUTES—SAN GABRIELLE—MESA—LOS ANGELES.—FRÉMONT'S CHARACTER, SERVICES, TRIAL.
General Wool, who had been for a long period inspector general of the United States army, was entrusted with the difficult task of examining the recruits in the west, and set forth on his journey after receiving his orders on the 29th of May, 1846. He traversed the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, and, in somewhat less than two months, had journeyed three thousand miles and mustered twelve thousand men into service. This expedition of a hardy soldier exhibits, at once, the powers of a competent American officer, and the facility with which an efficient corps d'armée, may at any urgent moment, be raised in our country.
Nearly nine thousand of these recruits were sent to Taylor on the Rio Grande, while those who were destined for the "Army of the Centre," rendezvoused at Bejar, in Texas. At this place their commander Wool joined them, and commenced the rigid system of discipline, under accomplished officers, which made his division a model in the army. He marched from Bejar with five hundred regulars and two thousand four hundred and fifty volunteers, on the 20th of September, and passed onwards through Presidio, Nava, and across the Sierra of San José and Santa Rosa, and the rivers Alamos, Sabine, and del Norte, until he