The report of Arista's progress, however, proved to be false, so that we were fortunately saved from attack. Yet the sufferings of our army did not cease with those military inconveniences. "Two thirds of the tents furnished our soldiers were worn out or rotten, and had been condemned by boards of survey appointed by the proper authorities in accordance with the army regulations. Transparent as gauze, they afforded little or no protection against the intense heat of summer or the drenching rains and severe cold of winter. Even the dews penetrated the thin covering almost without obstruction. Such were the tents provided for campaigners in a country almost deluged three months in the year, and more variable in its climate than any other region, passing from the extreme of heat to that of cold in a few hours. During the whole of November and December, either the rains were descending with violence, or the furious "northers" which ravage this coast were breaking the frail tent-poles or rending the rotten canvas. For days and weeks every article in hundreds of tents was thoroughly soaked; and during these terrible months, the sufferings of the sick, in the crowded hospital tents, were indescribably horrible. Every day added to the frightfulness of the mortality. At one time a sixth of the entire camp was on the sick list, and at least one-half unfit for service, in consequence of dysentery and catarrhal fevers which raged like a pestilence."[79] The camp was without fires, and, being situated on the edge of a vast prairie sparsely covered with muskeet trees, was but scantily supplied with wood even for the most needful purposes. The quarter-master's department furnished only the weak and stunted _mustangs_ of the country; and the little and inefficient ponies, geared in the large harness made at the north for American horses, looked as if they would jump through their collars instead of use them for traction. With such teams only a sufficiency of wood could be drawn for cooking, and none for camp fires to comfort the sick and suffering soldiers. "As winter advanced, the prairie became a quagmire, the roads almost impassable, and as the _mustangs_ died in large numbers, wood enough for cooking even, could not be procured. The encampment now resembled a marsh, the water, at times, being three or four feet deep in the tents of whole wings of regiments. All military exercises were suspended, and the bleak gloomy days were passed in inactivity, disgust and sullenness. The troops, after being thoroughly drenched all day, without fires to dry them, lay down at night in wet blankets on the soaked ground, as plank for tent floors was not furnished by the quarter-masters until the rainy season was over. At times the men, at tattoo, gasped for breath in the sultry night air, and, at reveille, found their moist blankets frozen around them and their tents stiff with ice. A portion of the men were kept