TUESDAY, JAN. 19. One of my boys caught a dove, a few days since, clipped his wing, and placed him in our yard, which has a high wall around it. He looked very lonely at first, but his mate soon came, hovered around on the wall, and finally preferring captivity with him to freedom without, flew down to his side. How beautiful is that affection which never forsakes in adversity, but becomes deeper and stronger as the waves of affliction roll higher over the object of its sympathy and trust! WEDNESDAY, JAN. 20. There is one feature in our military operations here which is far asunder from that system of order which appertains to a well-disciplined army. Every one who can raise among the emigrants thirty or forty men, becomes a captain, and starts off to fight pretty much on his own hook. Nor is he very scrupulous as to the mode in which he obtains his horses, saddles, and other equipments. He takes them wherever he can find them, and very often without leaving behind the slightest evidence by which the owner can recover the value of his property. He plunders the Californian to procure the means of fighting him. Public exigency is the plea which is made to cover all the culpable features in the transaction. This may justify, perhaps, taking the property, but it never can excuse the refusal or neglect to give receipts. It is due to Com. Stockton and Col. Fremont to say, that this has been done without their sanction. Still, it reflects reproach on our cause, and is a source of vast irritation in the community. No man who has any possible means of redress left will tamely submit to such outrages; and yet we expect the Californians to hug this chain of degradation, and help to rivet its links. Let foreigners land on our own coast, and do among us what Americans have done here, and every farmer, in the absence of a musket, would shoulder his pitchfork and flail. Human nature is the same here as there, and a sense of wrong will burn as deeply in the one place as the other. I utter, for one, my note of remonstrance, though it be as little heeded as the whispers of a leaf in the roar of a storm-swept forest. THURSDAY, JAN. 21. The scarcity of provisions in Monterey continues. Flour is twenty-five dollars the barrel, and there is hardly a barrel in the place at that. We have in our garrison about a hundred and fifty men, and all are on a short allowance of bread. There is wheat in the interior, but the mules which should be there to grind it have gone to the wars. Even that sorry animal seems here not wholly insensible to military glory. The trump of fame finds an echo even in his long ears.