without pay for six months, and the rest for four months, although the law strictly requires payment every two months. "Officers and soldiers, destitute of funds, were compelled to borrow, upon the strength of pay due, of their more fortunate companions, or of the Shylocks, in search of victims, that polluted the camp. Sick soldiers, directed by their surgeons to return to the United States, had either to remain and die, or to submit to exorbitant exactions from unfeeling villains in their pension certificates and pay accounts, though the law requires the paymasters to cash them in specie. "On the first landing of the 3d and 4th infantry at Corpus Christi, "Kinney's Rancho," though a lawless, smuggling town, under the vigorous sway of its martial proprietor, was as quiet and peaceful as a village in New England. But every fresh arrival of troops was followed by some portion of that vast horde of harpies, that are ever to be found in the train of all armies, ready to prey upon the simple and unsuspecting among the soldiers. In a short time, hundreds of temporary structures were erected on the outskirts of the "Rancho," and in them, all the cut-throats, thieves, and murderers of the United States and Texas, seem to have congregated. No sight could have been more truly melancholy than that of their bloated and sin-marked visages, as they lounged through the purlieus of this modern Pandemonium. The air, by day, was polluted with their horrid oaths and imprecations,--and the savage yells, exulting shouts, and despairing groans of their murderous frays, made night hideous. But, not content with confining their hellish deeds to their own worthy fraternity, they laid their worthless hands on the troops. Many of the soldiers, enticed to their dram-shops, were drugged with stupefying potions, and then robbed of their hard earnings, or murdered in cold blood." General Taylor, looking to the probability of a movement against Mexico, warned the department that a ponton train was indispensable in a country wherein streams abounded and wood for bridges was scarce; but it was not despatched until after the next meeting of congress.